KONA, Hawaii — From the moment the bill to ban genetically engineered crops on the island of Hawaii was introduced in May 2013, it garnered more vocal support than any the County Council here had ever considered, even the perennially popular bids to decriminalize marijuana.
Public hearings were dominated by recitations of the ills often attributed to genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.s: cancer in rats, a rise in childhood allergies, out-of-control superweeds, genetic contamination, overuse of pesticides, the disappearance of butterflies and bees.
Like some others on the nine-member Council, Greggor Ilagan was not even sure at the outset of the debate exactly what genetically modified organisms were: living things whose DNA has been altered, often with the addition of a gene from a distant species, to produce a desired trait. But he could see why almost all of his colleagues had been persuaded of the virtue of turning the island into what the bill’s proponents called a “G.M.O.-free oasis.”
“You just type ‘G.M.O.’ and everything you see is negative,” he told his staff. Opposing the ban also seemed likely to ruin anyone’s re-election prospects.
Yet doubts nagged at the councilman, who was serving his first two-year term. The island’s papaya farmers said that an engineered variety had saved their fruit from a devastating disease. A study reporting that a diet of G.M.O. corn caused tumors in rats, mentioned often by the ban’s supporters, turned out to have been thoroughly debunked.
And University of Hawaii biologists urged the Council to consider theglobal scientific consensus, which holds that existing genetically engineered crops are no riskier than others, and have provided some tangible benefits.
“Are we going to just ignore them?” Mr. Ilagan wondered.
Urged on by Margaret Wille, the ban’s sponsor, who spoke passionately of the need to “act before it’s too late,” the Council declined to form a task force to look into such questions before its November vote. But Mr. Ilagan, 27, sought answers on his own. In the process, he found himself, like so many public and business leaders worldwide, wrestling with a subject in which popular beliefs often do not reflect scientific evidence.
At stake is how to grow healthful food most efficiently, at a time when a warming world and a growing population make that goal all the more urgent.
Scientists, who have come to rely on liberals in political battles over stem-cell research, climate change and the teaching of evolution, have been dismayed to find themselves at odds with their traditional allies on this issue. Some compare the hostility to G.M.O.s to the rejection of climate-change science, except with liberal opponents instead of conservative ones.
“These are my people, they’re lefties, I’m with them on almost everything,” said Michael Shintaku, a plant pathologist at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, who testified several times against the bill. “It hurts.”
But, supporters of the ban warned, scientists had not always correctly assessed the health and environmental risks of new technology. “Remember DDT?” one proponent demanded.
Ms. Wille’s bill would ban the cultivation of any genetically engineered crop on the island, with the exception of the two already grown there: corn recently planted by an island dairy to feed its cows, and papaya. Field tests to study new G.M.O. crops would also be prohibited. Penalties would be $1,000 per day.
Like three-quarters of the voters on Hawaii Island, known as the Big Island, Mr. Ilagan supported President Obama in the 2012 election. When he took office himself a month later, after six years in the Air National Guard, he planned to focus on squatters, crime prevention and the inauguration of a bus line in his district on the island’s eastern rim.
He had also promised himself that he would take a stance on all topics, never registering a “kanalua” vote — the Hawaiian term for “with reservation.”
But with the G.M.O. bill, he often despaired of assembling the information he needed to definitively decide. Every time he answered one question, it seemed, new ones arose. Popular opinion masqueraded convincingly as science, and the science itself was hard to grasp. People who spoke as experts lacked credentials, and G.M.O. critics discounted those with credentials as being pawns of biotechnology companies.
“It takes so much time to find out what’s true,” he complained.
So many emails arrived in support of the ban that, as a matter of environmental responsibility, the Council clerks suspended the custom of printing them out for each Council member. But Mr. Ilagan had only to consult his inbox to be reminded of the prevailing opinion.
“Do the right thing,” one Chicago woman wrote, “or no one will want to take a toxic tour of your poisoned paradise.”
Distrust on the Left
Margaret Wille, 66, had the island’s best interests at heart when she proposed the ban, Mr. Ilagan knew.
She majored in cultural anthropology at Bennington College in Vermont and practiced public advocacy law in Maine before moving a decade ago to the island, where her brothers once owned a health food store.
And her bill, like much anti-G.M.O. action, was inspired by distrust of the seed-producing biotechnology companies, which had backed a state measure to prevent local governments from regulating their activity.
That bill, which passed the State Senate but stalled in the House, appeared largely aimed at other Hawaiian islands, which were used by companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and Dow as a nursery for seeds. On Kauai, for instance, activists had been talking about how to limit the companies’ pesticide use.
The companies had no corporate presence here on the Big Island, which lacks the large parcels of land they preferred. Still, Ms. Wille said at a “March Against Monsanto” rally last spring, if the island allowed farmers to grow genetically modified crops, the companies could gain a foothold. “This represents nothing less than a takeover of our island,” she told the crowd. “There’s a saying, ‘If you control the seed, you control the food; if you control the food, you control the people.’ ”
Ms. Wille, chairwoman of the Council’s Agriculture Committee, warned her colleagues that what mattered was not the amount of food produced, but its quality and the sustainability of how it was grown.
“My focus is on protecting our soil and the farms and properties that are not G.M.O.,” she said, noting also that there was a marketing opportunity for non-G.M.O. products.
Such sentiments echoed well beyond Hawaii, as Mr. Ilagan’s early research confirmed.
College students, eco-conscious shoppers and talk show celebrities likeOprah Winfrey, Dr. Oz and Bill Maher warned against consuming food made with genetically modified ingredients. Mr. Maher’s audience, in turn, recently hissed at a commentator who defended genetic modification as merely an extension of traditional breeding.
New applications of the technology, so far used mostly on corn, soybeans, cotton, canola and sugar beets to make them more resistant to weeds and pests, have drawn increased scrutiny. A recent Organic Consumers Association bulletin, for instance, pictures the first genetically modified animal to be submitted for regulatory approval (a faster-growing salmon) jumping from a river to attack a bear, with the caption “No Frankenfish!” In a 2013 New York Times poll, three-quarters of Americans surveyed expressed concern about G.M.O.s in their food, with most of those worried about health risks.
As Ms. Wille’s bill was debated here throughout 2013, activists elsewhere collected 354,000 signatures for a petition asserting that G.M.O.s endanger public health. In the Philippines, protesters, citing safety concerns, ripped up a test field of rice genetically engineered to address Vitamin A deficiency among the world’s poor. A new children’s book turned its heroine into a crusader against genetic modification: “These fruits and vegetables are not natural,” she declares.
And bills were proposed in some 20 states to require “G.M.O.” labels on foods with ingredients made from genetically engineered crops (about three-quarters of processed foods now have such ingredients, mostly corn syrup, corn oil and soy meal and sugar).
The legislation is backed by the fast-growing organic food industry, which sees such labeling as giving it a competitive advantage. It has also become a rallying cry among activists who want to change the industrial food system. Rachel Maddow declared the narrow failure of ballot initiatives to require G.M.O. labeling in California and Washington a “big loss for liberal politics.”
Whole Foods has pledged that by 2018 it will replace some foods containing genetically modified ingredients and label others; signs in Trader Joe’s proclaim, “No G.M.O.s Sold Here.” General Mills announced last week that it would stop using genetically modified ingredients in its Cheerios.
But the groundswell against genetically modified food has rankled many scientists, who argue that opponents of G.M.O.s have distorted the risks associated with them and underplayed the risks of failing to try to use the technology to improve how food is grown. Wading into a debate that has more typically pitted activists against industry, some have argued that opposition from even small pockets of an American elite influences investment in research and the deployment of genetically modified crops, particularly in the developing world, where hunger raises the stakes.
