They’ve been banned in many places in Europe and Asia, now two counties in Oregon have banned GMOs after a two year campaign to get it done.

Jackson county and Josephine county will soon be free of GMO growers as voting has been completed with both counties voting in favor of the ban. Josephine at 57% in favor and Jackson at 68% in favor.[2,3] Although the voters had it right in my view, not all believe that.

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“Regrettably, ideology defeated sound science and common sense in Jackson County,” Barry Bushue, president of the Oregon Farm Bureau, said in a statement. “We respect the voice of the voters, but remain convinced Measure 15-119 is bad public policy. While this election is over, this debate is not. We will continue to fight to protect the rights of all farmers to choose for themselves how they farm.”

I guess Barry Bushue hasn’t seen all the science considering we’ve seen beyond any reasonable doubt that GMOs are not completely safe, or at least we don’t know enough to take those chances. More here.

Not only that, many of the voters in Jackson county are long time and well educated fruit and vegetable farmers. If they are so concerned with GM crops, is it because they have false/insufficient information? Or is it possible they know are aware?

Opposition Raises $1 Million

Although these towns are small, they’ve generated a great deal of hype around the GMO issue as pro GMO campaigns raised nearly $1 million in an attempt to sway voters in favor of keeping GMOs around.

“The voters here have many generations of fruit and vegetable growing, so they’re among the most educated voters,” said Chuck Burr, president of the Southern Oregon Seed Growers Association. “The opposition spent a million dollars and couldn’t convince the people.”

The unfortunate aspect to this story is that Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber previously signed a bill last fall that prohibits local governments from regulating GM crops on their own. This means it’s ultimately up to the state. Luckily in the case of Jackson, their measure had already qualified for the ballot so an exception had to be made.

In the case of Josephine county, they went ahead with the ballot regardless of the bill and will now let the courts decide whether their ban will go through.

Common Sense Says Interesting Things

Like many things in our world, much of what truly matters does not get voted on by the people. Sure we have government elections and so forth, but not only are the accuracy of these elections shady but once the leaders are in power they can do pretty much whatever they want, or more accurately, the corporate powerhouses that tell them what to do can do whatever they want.

This vote shows just how much the people in given areas are against GMOs, yet the government keeps them all in place simply because members are being paid to do so by large corporations to benefit from their decisions.[1] I feel that if you gave the people the actual vote and decision on a number of issues like GMOs, war, fluoridated water etc., they would vote in numbers very much against what those in power continue to enforce. Sure, the idea is that those voted in have the care and knowledge to make the best decisions, but time and time again we see this simply isn’t the case nor does the system operate on integrity. More Good News

The added bit of good news here, possibly why the opposition was willing to raise so much money to sway the vote, is that this will act as an example of the power of the people and also the desires of the people. Others in North America and in the world will see small victories like this and want to do something about it. This is why spreading this information is so important.

Sources