Monsanto and the State of Oregon’s Brian Clem are attempting to circumvent the Jackson and Josephine County GMO bans, and make it next to impossible for any county in the state to enact such a ban. In other words, what ‘you the people’ want doesn’t mean a hill of beans compared to what the people who pay us want.
Just as we are battling to defend our democratic vote banning GMO’s in Jackson County, the Oregon House just passed a sneak attack on the ability of our county and all others to pass laws that protect family farmers growing traditional crops from practices such as growing GMOs.
The bill, HB 3212, was proposed by Rep. Brian Clem, and is not only targeted at GMOs, but undermines the ability of every county and city to adopt any law, like Jackson County’s ban on GMOs, that protects family farmers from damaging agricultural practices.
HB 3212 would define any county, city or state law addressing farming practices as a ‘land use regulation’ and would require local governments to either pay ‘compensation’ for a landowners claimed reduction in their property value OR waive the law entirely. That’s right – under HB 3212 Jackson County could be allowed to waive the GMO ban if individual GMO growers claimed the ban had reduced the value of their property, or the county could face potentially millions of dollars in compensation claims.
Help us stop this misguided law that would expose Jackson County and many other counties to costly litigation threats that put family farmers at risk. OFFC is working closely with Senator Bates and Rep. Buckley to help stop HB 3212, but we need your help today.
This post was published at FarmWars on May 9, 2015.
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