From GM Watch: How “the Biofortified boys” defended the pesticide industry’s secrets in Hawaii

http://gmwatch.org/news/latest-news/16432

Industry calls pro-GMO scientists “part of our overall public education strategy”

In 2013 in Kauai, Hawaii, Kauai County Councilman Gary Hooser proposed a bill to protect people from pesticide spraying on GMO crops. Bill 2491 would have enforced buffer zones between sprayed and public areas and required disclosure of the pesticides being sprayed. 

Reasonable demands, you might think – but the pesticide industry disagreed. It launched a massive PR and lobbying exercise to defeat the bill, as revealed by a recent New York Times’ investigation. The industry’s chosen mouthpieces for the Hawaii project were the pro-GMO scientist Kevin Folta and a group of other supposedly independent scientists, who travelled to Kauai to testify against the bill in Kauai County Council hearings.