Letters for Sunday, Feb. 24, 2013
• A right to label GMOs • Private lands or public lands? • Facing reality • Endangered birds • Appalled by amenities at beaches • On Waimea graffiti
A right to label GMOs
Time to speak up for the labeling of “genetically engineered” foods — known as GE or GMO foods. Hawai‘i’s House and Senate bills, HB174, SB615 are in process.
About 70 to 80 percent of our U.S. food supply has genetically engineered ingredients without public knowledge of their accumulative effects. Precaution is needed and labeling. Twenty-nine countries ban growing GMOs or putting them in food, and 61 countries restrict or label them.
They know what we as a public do not. Think: why do our companies not label GMO for us in America? Stand up now for the right to know as a U.S. population.
What GE is in our food and give us back the power to, at a minimum, have it labeled in our state.
Let your legislators know you want transparency with GE in your food; you do not consent to unlabeled genetic engineering in your food since the public is not informed regarding genetic engineering known and unknown regulatory effects on the body and it is your inalienable right to be informed regarding what you put in your body, as well as control over your own genetic lines.
Express concern for lack of contained human studies where prior consent should have been required.
I’ve reviewed four studies on labeling costs that counter industry claims on significant cost to consumers. Unfortunately California’s “Right to Know” initiative ran out of money to counter consumer cost fear propaganda by big industry.
Hold the line! Testify: http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov
Cynthia Unmani Groves
Kihei, Maui
Private lands or public lands?
State of Hawai‘i’s 2005 ACT 183 relating to “Important Agricultural Lands” (IAL) refers to “public lands” only, according to Internet sourcing of that ACT. In The Garden Island edition dated Feb. 11, 2013, a front page article states that “The state Land Use Commission unanimously approved a petition from Grove Farm Company to convert a total of 11,048 acres to Important Lands. … The petition filed by Grove Farm and their subsidiary, Haupu Land Company, preserves and protects the farming industry by maintaining land as ‘ag lands’ forever.”
Grove Farm Co. (GF) Vice President Mike Tressler stated in that article: “You can’t rezone lands covered by IAL.” Several issues arise from this article.
First, does approval of GF’s petition mean that 11,048 acres of private agricultural land has been turned into “public lands”, no longer “private lands” owned by GF? Will the Department of Agriculture have the absolute power “to manage, administer, and exercise control over” these” (new) public lands that are designated important agricultural lands” as stated in a copy of “H.B. 2361 H.B. 1, A BILL FOR AN ACT” (copy acquired on the Internet from “Capitaol.Hawaii.gov)? Reading Hawai‘i’s 2005 ACT 183, “IAL” is referred to only in the context of “public lands”; there is no mention of “private lands” being allowed to be designated as IAL.
Secondly, Tressler should be reminded that “the government” can do anything it wants to do or undo; it all depends on who is in office and who needs to be paid off to “get’er done” or get’er undone! GF should know that!
Another question; are these 11,048 acres of newly acquired IAL “public lands”, that can never be “rezone”(d), capable of being “subdivided” into “gentlemen farmers” farms which will only be affordable to the wealthy who now seem to be America’s “artificial aristocracy?”
John Hoff
Lawa‘i
Facing reality
Bob Bartolo wrote an interesting letter printed Feb. 18 about facing reality. He stated that Russian citizens are not benefiting from capitalism.
Are the people here in the U.S. benefiting from capitalism? If so, then why have we entered a new Gilded Age where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?
He worries about the money we are borrowing from China. China is lending the U.S. money, but its is only about $1T out of $16T. Most of the debt is actually owed to Social Security.
Bob claims that “our progressive administration” is using “quantitative raising” to trick our economy into European socialism. Obama and the federal government have nothing to do with “quantitative easing.”
The USA does not control its own currency, rather it is controlled by the Federal Reserve which is a private organization owned by the member banks.
Now do you understand why they are called “banksters”?
Although, Obama is hardly blameless (he doesn’t represent “the rest of us” — which includes Bob), the banksters are the ones manipulating the stock market, not Obama.
I wish Bob would stop drinking the free-market Kool-Aid so we could come up with answers to our economic and social problems. The economy Bob is pushing will only guarantee that the super-rich will be able to hoard even more money so that, as in Russia, the oligarchs will own everything, and the rest of us nothing.
European Socialism suddenly looks pretty good, but I think we should be able to do better than that.
John Zwiebel
Kalaheo
Endangered birds
A letter writer has stated that people who neuter and feed homeless cats on Kaua‘i are responsible for the endangerment of native birds. He ends his letter by stating that a person cannot support both feral cats and endangered birds on Kaua‘i.
I do not agree with this position. Wildlife management is a complex matter, requiring thorough scientific investigation followed by carefully thought out, rational and unbiased decision making by experts in the field.
Species become endangered by a number of factors. A primary cause is destruction of native species and their habitat by humans, usually accompanied by the introduction of non-native species which prey on the native species or compete with them for habitat and resources.
Native birds on Kaua‘i have fallen victim to all of these factors and cats are not necessarily the worst. Rats have been identified as major predators of birds and their eggs and a threat to their survival on Kaua‘i. Most of the birds seen in developed areas — and sometimes killed by cats — are introduced birds that do not belong on Kaua‘i and could be contributing to the endangerment of native species.
As to the role of cats; the very study mentioned in the letter estimates that for every bird killed by a cat a hundred small mammals (mostly rodents) are also killed by cats. The only small mammals on Kaua‘i are rats and mice, destructive invasive species that without the predation of cats could easily reach epidemic proportions.
Articles can be deceptive and misleading.
Vague terms like “wildlife”, “small mammals” and “free ranging” obscure the facts. Careful reading reveals the details: cats kill primarily small rodents like mice and rats which are so prolific that they are considered pests and people expend considerable effort to control them.
Cats that are fed hunt less — not more — and neutered cats produce no offspring. So how, exactly, does neutering and feeding cats endanger birds?
Jill Friedman
Hanapepe
Appalled by amenities at beaches
We recently spent three weeks enjoying Kaua‘i’s unparalleled beauty. We were, however, truly surprised and dismayed by the lack of basic facilities at the island’s major beaches. At magnificent Hanalei Beach, at Lydgate, at ‘Anini, Anahola and Salt Pond, the facility buildings housed, on average for each gender, two toilets and one sink. None looked as if regular (daily) cleaning occurred, but in most there was a roll of toilet paper and most toilets worked.
Toward the end of our trip, we visited Po‘ipu Beach Park in the upscale tract of homes, high-end hotels and resorts. We were stunned when we saw the amenities four portable toilets. Only one of the three had toilet paper; all were filthy.
One of the stalls had feces on the seat and floor; another had effluence and paper backed up nearly to the toilet seat. The smell wafted over the grassy area whenever someone opened a stall. According to one of the lifeguards, the same empty box of M&M candy had been on the floor of stall No. 4 for five days.
Clearly, the portables are not cleaned on any reasonable schedule. A man at the picnic table next to ours told us that the boarded up facility building 50 feet away from the portables had been closed “for a long time — some months.”
The property taxes in that one area alone — not to mention the thousands of tourist dollars per day — must certainly be able to fund someone to hose down, clean, and bring in toilet paper for the portables. (And what about fixing the actual facility?)
Until Po‘ipu, we had recognized that the county of Kaua‘i isn’t too concerned about tourist comfort. After Po‘ipu, we realize that an element of disrespect must be part of Kaua‘i’s approach to tourists and to local residents.
That last day we also learned that awhile ago, the showers weren’t working at Po‘ipu Beach Park, and tourists tracked sand back through the lobbies of the resorts and hotels. Once those establishments added their voices to the ignored complaints of individual tourists and local residents, the mayor stopped by to investigate the lack of water for outdoor shower rinse-offs. The next day, we were told, the showers were working.
It’s time for the mayor to make another visit to Po‘ipu Beach.
Michelle and Alan Abramson
Corbett, Ore.
On Waimea graffiti
Read with interest the graffiti problem in Waimea. Realistically, the police cannot be everywhere all the time
We had the same problem where I come from. Our solution probably wouldn’t work here: well placed buckshot in the fanny completely stopped the problem. Wonder where the parents of these punks are?
Billy Whelan
Kilauea
