“ … a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight.”
John Steinbeck wrote that in “The Winter of Our Discontent” and though he was writing fiction, the passage applies to modern media. It applies especially well to the final report of the Kauai Joint Fact-Finding Group on pesticide use on the island.
The JFFG was created to investigate allegations of dangerous and irresponsible activities of seed farms on the island’s west side. To hear some tell it, companies like Syngenta, Pioneer and Dupont willfully poison the land and the people with all manner of pesticides, leading to shocking stories of illness and suffering. Call it the Seeds of Wrath.
After a year of gathering evidence — which, in part, amounted to people shaking their fists at community gatherings and shouting vague, scary stories about sea urchins and bats and asthma — the final report was released this week.
Guess what? Nobody could verify all those scary stories.
Guess what else? The people who told those scary stories are taking that as proof that there’s a conspiracy to keep the stories quiet. They want the state and county to spend more money on research so that “the truth can come out.”
The report claims to stick to facts but includes all sorts of subjective claims and even contains “personal statements” from the group’s members, all of whom are opponents of the seed companies. (Participants on the other side, including a retired county extension agent, quit when it became clear where the group was being steered.) Part of the report’s cover letter even congratulates Kauai politicians for hiring Peter Adler, the consultant who ran the study, which cost taxpayers $100,000.
“Regardless of the bumps in the process, the report contains an excellent analysis of the available local data in response to the specific questions raised,” the cover letter reads. It then goes on to pitch for future work. “Tough issues deserve this kind of sustained inquiry and government should consider similar approaches when confronted with other science-intensive, politically contentious issues. We hope that this effort serves their needs.”
Scott Enright, chairman of the Hawaii Board of Agriculture, has demonstrated the patience of Job through this circus. The Department of Agriculture, which regulates the use of pesticides, is, of course, part of the conspiracy theorists’ conspiracy. Enright’s office issued a response to the report that managed to refrain from sounding too much like, “Told you so!”
“There have been inaccurate claims made by the public, most notably through social media, about pesticide exposure on Kauai. HDOA notes that the JFFG … has found no conclusive evidence that the seed companies are misusing pesticides or ‘drenching’ west side communities with pesticides, a common rumor circulating on social media.”
The report made recommendations for water, air and soil monitoring to which the state and county seem amenable. Sounds reasonable. But in a world in which manufactured and naturally occurring elements mingle, where there is disagreement about how many parts per billion is too many, who will decide what level of monitoring is reasonable? Hopefully not the same “fact-finders” who make outrageous, untruthful claims and give more weight to peer-affirmed feelings than to peer-reviewed science.
This fight is about the thrill of fighting.
It started out as “GMO food will kill you!” and then morphed into screaming about pesticides and now seems to be circling back to arguments that seed companies are greedy and shouldn’t own the patents on their products. Whatever. There’s something gleeful and addicting about having an enemy, like a rival frat house or the opposing football team.
There’s a guy who dresses in black, wears a death mask and dances on the side of the road on Kauai protesting GMOs in general and Monsanto specifically. Monsanto isn’t even on Kauai, but that doesn’t stop the guy from doing his dance, painting it with his own delight.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@taradvertiser.com.
