OPINION/COMMENTARY

Biotech Bans Falter

While voters in Marin County went the way of the Luddite and approved a ballot initiative on Tuesday banning genetically engineered (GE) crops, three other California counties resoundingly rejected similar proposals. The good people of Butte, San Luis Obispo, and Humboldt counties dealt a blow to groups like the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and the deceptively-named Center for Food Safety, which seek to ban all GE foods in California and beyond. Sad to say, while the activists may have lost this time, we haven't seen the last of these Chicken Little scaremongers and their anti-technology campaigns. California's movement to outlaw biotech crops by ballot initiative began in March, when a group called Californians for GE-Free Agriculture launched a campaign to pass an anti-biotech measure in Mendocino County. The strategy was simple: Take the path of least resistance. Without a single biotech crop under cultivation, Mendocino was an easy starting point....