Elsewhere, Jackson County, Oregon is home to a world-famous Shakespeare festival and lots of seed and hay production. Ashland, the largest city in the county, has the lowest vaccination rate of any city in Oregon. Earlier this year, Jackson County was ground zero of the current national obsession with plant breeding; the voters there, by a two-to-one margin, banned the growing of GM seed in the county. If you’re convinced, all evidence to the contrary, that the measles vaccine has been detrimental to society, then you probably aren’t going to be a fan of genetic engineering either. Farmers in Jackson County have 12 months to destroy their GMO alfalfa; it’s a crop that’s expensive to plant, with an expected productive life of 7 or 8 years. Proponents of the ban on GMOs based their appeal on their property rights: stray pollen from a neighboring farmer’s alfalfa field could contaminate organic crops. (The property rights of farmers raising genetically engineered crops were conveniently ignored by the voters.)
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 01:42:59 +0000