Hawaii

Hawaii’s legislature should “undertake a major update of [state] pesticide laws and regulation,” says a draft report commissioned by the Hawaii Department of Agriculture, and by Kauai county.

Ten employees at Syngenta Kauai were taken to the hospital when they walked onto a corn field 20 hours after the application of chlorpyrifos, reports The Civil Beat. Typically, workers are supposed to wait 24 hours before going back into the fields after a chlorpyrifos spray. Three of the workers stayed overnight at the hospital, but all have since been released and cleared for work.

The Hawaii state Department of Agriculture plans to expand statewide a voluntary program in which major agricultural companies such as Dow, Pioneer, Sygenta and BASF report the types and amounts of restricted-use pesticides that they use each month on Kauai, says Honolulu Civil Beat. Under the "Good Neighbor Program," the companies put a 100-foot buffer zone around pesticide applications and, if requested, notify neighbors before spraying. State agriculture director Scott Enright "said he expects the program to be implemented statewide by the end of the year."

Trade ministers from the 12 nations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership covering 40 percent of the global economy say they will "continue work on resolving a limited number of remaining issues" that prevented a final agreement in Hawaii.

At the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks in Hawaii, "Canada has begun discussions with the United States on allowing more foreign dairy products into the Canadian market – among the thorniest issues for Ottawa" in the negotiations, says the Toronto Globe and Mail.

A voter-approved ban on crops containing genetically modified organisms in Maui County, Hawaii, was invalidated by a federal judge, says the Associated Press.

Lockheed Martin, "the world's largest defense contractor," has launched a series of series of initiatives tied to climate change as a potential threat to national security," reports the Washington Post.

A paper published online in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry says the concentration of mercury in yellowfin tuna "currently is increasing at a rate of at least 3.8 percent per year."

Officials in Jackson County, Oregon, won't enforce a voter-approved ban on genetically engineered crops until there is a U.S. District Court decision, says the Medford Mail Tribune.

The first case of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus was confirmed in Hawaii, on a farm in Waianae Valley on Oahu, says The Pig Site, and the state Agriculture Department has issued a guarantine order against movement of hogs on the west side of the island.

Seed companies Monsanto and Dow filed suit in U.S. District Court in Honolulu to overturn a voter-approved moratorium on genetically engineered crops in Maui County, Hawaii, said the Maui Times.

Agribusiness giants Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences are looking at legal options in the wake of passage of a moratorium on genetically engineered crops by voters in Maui County, Hawaii, says DTN.

A dozen elections today may influence food and agriculture policy nationally, They range from the Kansas race that could determine the next chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee to referendums on soda taxes and GMO labeling.

A large Chinese fishing company declared in a draft document "that it intended to circumvent international conservation limits on tuna – by simply ignoring them" with little fear of discipline for it, says the Guardian.

Sen Pat Roberts, potentially Agriculture Committee chairman if Republicans win control of the Senate, rarely mentions his record on agriculture - defender of crop insurance and author of the 1996 Freedom to Farm law - on the campaign trail.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Kurren ruled that a Kauai County ordinance that restricted plantings of biotech crops is pre-empted by state law, says KHON-TV in Honolulu.