Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Transgeninc plants in Hawai'i: A new colonialism?

Hawai'i has the distinction of being the site of the first (and I think only) commercial trangenic fruit crop, a transgenic virus-resistant papaya. Without the transgenic papaya, there basically would be no Hawai'ian papaya industry. Even what little non-transgenic papaya production is left survives only by burying it in buffer zones of the transgenics.

Because of the level acceptance already in place for transgenic papaya, and probably because of the relative isolation of the island, Hawai'i is a popular plance for trials of transgenic crops. That's not real popular with some folks.

I'm a month late getting this posted, but Karl Haro von Mogel has a post on this up at Biofortified:

Hawai'i's curious relationship with with GE (Biofortified)

I can't remember if I've posted it before, but Karl's own blog, The Inoculated Mind is also worth a read.