Meet the Senator Who Just Stood up to GMOs and Said ‘No Way’
Gary Hooser stands up for the island of Kaua’i as one of the city council members and one of the few former senators who is speaking out against biotech. Specifically, this fight is against biotech giant Syngenta, a company which doesn’t even spray its own chemicals in its native country of Switzerland.
As Hooser points out, one of Syngenta’s main GMO chemicals – Atrazine – is sprayed all over Kaua’i. It is even sprayed near school children and hospitals. It is not sprayed in Switzerland because it is illegal there. Snygenta also sprays paraquat, a highly toxic weedkiller which has been banned in 36 countries around the world. Yet this and four other highly toxic chemicals that have been banned elsewhere are sprayed in Hawaii.
Paraquat has long been banned in its country of origin, but it continues to be sold indiscriminately in developing countries where farmers and workers often cannot read technical labels and are unable to protect themselves from the pesticide’s harmful effects.
Atrazine is Dangerous
Atrazine itself has been linked to the reproductive mutation of frogs, as evidenced in multiple scientists’ research, and especially that of Tyrone Hays. Tyrone Hays proved that Atrazine was a potent endocrine disruptor that castrated and feminized male amphibians.
The chemical essentially turned males into females. Despite his findings, Hayes was prohibited from publishing his findings, and was coerced into resigning from his position. Instead of giving up, he gave hundreds of lectures all over the world, trying to warn people of the effects of Atrazine.
Furthermore, the run-off of Atrazine (from over 80 million pounds used annually) ends up in streams, rivers, and often our drinking water, which has led 16 cities to sue Syngenta for contaminating their water supplies with the herbicide.
There are numerous pesticides and herbicides being sprayed on GE test fields all over Hawaii to date. The biotech industry has seen fit to call Hawaii their own personal GMO playground while poisoning wildlife and people alike.
Hooser speaks in Basel, Switzerland, the home country of Syngenta, and asks them to follow the laws of Hawaii and stop spraying the people with toxic chemicals. You can see him speak in the following video:
