Dr. Pang on GMO in Kaua'i

Today I learned about Dr. Pang, watched his recent testimony on Kaua'i about Bill 2491 and GMO, and found it compelling. While 100% of what he says may not be perfect, this overall message is the best thought out and well reasoned I have yet to seen by far. It's must-see (linked above) if you care about this issue.

Dr. Pang makes a number of excellent points that I won't attempt to condense and summarize here - he is the expert and speaks for himself most capably.

Speaking for myself, not an expert, my key takeaway that I found convincing is his appeal to disclosure: the first thing that we must do is to get the companies doing this work to log and report on their activities. The reasoning is quite straightforward: without solid information it's impossible to do any kind of scientific investigation at all. Only when we have actual data can we begin to look into claims of harm as well as exonerate the same activities from culpability. Absent reliable data, everything remains unclear, nothing can be proven one way or the other. (Again, this just touches on one part of he presentation and following Q&A in the video, but it's such a fundamental point I think it's worth focus.)

He anticipates and counters a number of obvious possible objections, but the bottom line here is even if it is imperfect data, even if the county cannot rigorously enforce accurate and full disclosure, collection of data enables science going forward. We can improve on data quality and quantity, compliance over time but the longer we delay we lose the opportunity to gather data at all in the present. Surely any responsible business already has all of this data and more internally. To the degree details are confidential the county should be trustworthy to keep it private, or only publish digests to interested parties such as researchers that would not reveal proprietary business intelligence inappropriately. Providing data about operations to the county cannot be a major expense at the scale these companies operate, nor is it at all a threat to their business.

Also the analogy Dr. Pang draws to sugar cane burning oversight on Maui seemed relevant and promising. Companies are obliged to log and report whenever they plan to burn cane fields, an essential part of the growing cycle for sugar cane. They provide the county details such as location, area, wind conditions before and after, and so forth. The county in turn can not establish buffer zones or warn citizens as appropriate given the information. Relating this back to GMO and Bill 2491, Dr. Pang aptly noted that ideally the county should get disclosure first and based on that information it could better set effective buffer zones rather than pre-establish buffers in the bill itself; however, he concurred that if the situation was deemed urgent then early setting of buffers arbitrarily was reasonable.

Additionally, Dr. Pang recommended (which Bill 2491 does not do) getting disclosure of the specific GMO mutations being released into the environment. This makes good sense as basic data gathering practice. There was confusion in Q&A, but I believe what this means is disclosure of the type of GMO product (for example, in the case of corn, is it herbicide-resistant or insecticide-producing).

We will see if touching on this topic leads to vociferous responses in the comments: I welcome input so long as it is respectful and backed by evidence cited (see below for my part; naturally, Dr. Pang backs up his statements with citations himself). Should anyone reading this disagree with my takeaway, I would invite them to comment, and only ask for a specific response ("disclosure" below means per Sec. 22-22.4 of Kauai County Bill 2491). Here are a few points I would like to see anybody's best rebuttal:

1. How would reasonable disclosure make the situation significantly worse?
2. If required disclosure is onerous to business, exactly how, and what are the major costs and impacts incurred?
3. Without real data from required disclosure, how can government or independent researchers possibly study the impact of GMO on west Kaua'i communities at all?

Background info:

• Dr. Pang on GMO health concerns
• GMO position paper referenced in the above talk (I don't necessarily "support" this)
• Kauai County Bill 2491 (as amended, latest version as of 2013/10/8)