California Wine Country Ponders Ban on GE Crops

>From <www.commondreams.org>
Published on Saturday, February 5, 2005 by Reuters

California Wine Country Considers Biotech Ban

by Jim Christie

SAN FRANCISCO - A measure to ban genetically modified crops in the heart of
California's wine country has qualified for a local ballot, officials said
on Friday.

Hard work by hundreds of volunteers put the GE-Free Sonoma initiative on
the ballot with 45,387 signatures - the most in county history!

The measure, which would impose a 10-year moratorium on raising genetically
engineered crops and livestock, is now eligible for the Sonoma County
ballot, said Gregory Conko, director of food safety policy at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute.

"It's an important symbolic victory for biotech's skeptics," Conko said.
"It certainly is something that should make supporters of biotechnology,
including myself, a little bit nervous."

Activists gathered 38,000 valid signatures -- more than needed to qualify
the measure -- which county supervisors now may enact or put to voters in a
special election as soon as May or June. If the measure is approved, Sonoma
would become the fourth California county to ban raising genetically
engineered foods.

Genetically modified wine grapes are not grown in Sonoma County but farmers
are interested in using genetic engineering to develop products to replace
pesticides, said Ben Drake, chairman of the California Association of
Winegrape Growers.

Without biotechology, Sonoma County's world famous wine industry could be
disadvantaged, said Henry Miller, a Hoover Institution fellow and past
director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's office of biotechnology.

"A ban could remove important technological tools for combating significant
economic problems such as Pierce's disease," said Miller, author of the "The
Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution."

The vine-killing disease is spread by the glassy-winged sharpshooter
insect. Several colonies of the pest were discovered last spring in northern
California.

Activists claim the value of biotech crops is outweighed by unknown health
and environmental effects, a message they expect will resonate in Sonoma
County as in neighboring counties.

"We talk about healthy farms and healthy organic foods for our counties,
that's our trademark," said Frank Egger, a northern California environmental
activist. "Stopping genetically engineered crops is an enhancement and a
protection for today's farmers."

Voters in neighboring Marin County, an affluent area north of San
Francisco, approved a ban in November. Last March voters in Mendocino County
north of Sonoma County passed the nation's first county-level ban on
genetically engineered crops.

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