§ 30A-3. Findings.

(a)

The rapid, long-term, and unregulated growth of commercial agricultural entities engaged in the cultivation and development of GE organisms threatens the stability and growth of Sonoma County's agricultural economy, the health of its citizens, and its environment.

(b)

Sonoma County residents have the right to decide that the risks associated with cultivating genetically engineered crops are unacceptable and to take action to prohibit such crops.

(c)

Agriculture is a vital component of Sonoma County's economy. Sonoma's agricultural economy relies on maintaining its reputation for high quality organic and conventional crops. According to the Sonoma County Agricultural Commissioners' (SCAC) Office, as of January 1, 2014, there were approximately two hundred sixty (260) individual organic registrants in Sonoma County encompassing more than twenty thousand (20,000) acres. The SCAC 2013 Crop Report stated that there were approximately forty (40) individual registrants for organic dairy operations with approximately six thousand eight hundred forty-six (6,846) head of cattle, and about fifty-two (52) individual organic wine grape registrants. According to the SCAC Crop Report for 2013, there was a total of approximately sixty-four thousand seventy-three and three-tenths (64,073.3) acres of registered wine grapes in Sonoma County. The SCAC Crop Report for 2013 also recorded thirteen (13) organic individual meat registrants, raising about nine hundred fifty-six thousand seventy-one (956,071) head, and approximately twenty thousand two hundred twenty-four (20,224) acres of organic pasture/rangeland. The SCAC 2013 Crop Report states that traditional livestock and poultry production was valued at approximately sixty-five million one hundred three thousand one hundred dollars ($65,103,100.00). Preserving the identity, quality, and reliability of Sonoma's non-GMO conventional and organic agricultural products, and exports is therefore critical to its economic well-being.

(d)

Transgenic contamination can and does occur as a result of cross-pollination, comingling of conventional and GE seeds, accidental transfer by animals, weather, and other mechanisms. Transgenic contamination results in GE crops growing where they are not intended.

(e)

The contamination of both conventional and organic agricultural products with GE material can have a myriad of significant impacts. Organic and many foreign markets prohibit GE crops, and even a single event of transgenic contamination, can and has resulted in significant economic harm when the contaminated crops are rejected by buyers. Farmers and other parties who lose markets, through no fault of their own, as a result of transgenic contamination may not find adequate legal recourse. Further, contamination causes the loss of the fundamental right to choose, for the farmer and the public, to sow crops that are not engineered.

(f)

Currently, no mechanisms exist to guarantee that transgenic contamination will not occur.

(g)

The rapid development and introduction of GE crops, combined with inadequate regulatory oversight at the state and federal levels, have left the citizens of Sonoma County with significant concerns regarding the long-term safety of GE crops. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not require or conduct safety studies of genetically engineered foods. Instead, any safety consultations are voluntary, and genetically engineered food developers may decide what information to provide to the agency. Market approval of genetically engineered food is based on industry research alone. There have been no long-term or epidemiological studies in the U.S. that examine the safety of human consumption of genetically engineered foods.

(h)

Manipulating genes in plants and animals via genetic engineering and inserting them into organisms is an imprecise process and often causes unintended consequences. Mixing plant, animal, bacterial, and viral genes through genetic engineering in combinations that cannot occur in nature may produce results that lead to adverse health or environmental consequences.

(i)

Independent scientists are limited from conducting safety and risk-assessment research of genetically engineered materials due to industry restrictions on research of those materials.

(j)

The cultivation of GE crops can have serious effects on the environment. For example, in 2014, ninety-four percent (94%) of all soy grown in the U.S. was engineered to be herbicide resistant. In fact, the vast majority of GE crops are designed to withstand herbicides, and therefore promote indiscriminate herbicide use. As a result, GE herbicide-resistant crops have caused five hundred twenty-seven million (527,000,000) pounds of additional herbicides to be applied to the nation's farmland over the sixteen-year period from 1996 to 2011. These toxic herbicides damage the vitality and quality of our soil, harm wildlife, contaminate our drinking water, and pose health risks to consumers and farm workers.

(k)

Increased use of herbicides in GE agriculture has resulted in the rapid development and proliferation of previously unknown herbicide-tolerant superweeds. These superweeds threaten to overtake the habitat of native flora and fauna in uncultivated lands and force farmers to use increasingly toxic and expensive herbicides to remove them from cultivated lands.

(l)

Insect-resistant GE crops pose a high risk of fostering rapid evolution of pests resistant to organic pesticides, to the detriment of organic farmers, and they also facilitate agriculturally and environmentally harmful monocultures, such as growing com continuously on the same field year after year.

(m)

The impacts of the direct introduction into Sonoma County of genetically engineered organisms such as trees or fishes, or contamination by them, would be unknowable in advance. However, such introduction or contamination would have the potential to seriously imperil local ecosystems, to threaten traditional ways of life in our rural county, and to undermine critical local industries including forestry, fisheries, and tourism. Many countries and regions around the world have prohibited or strictly regulated their cultivation, use and/or importation. In the absence of such appropriate, effective regulation in California or the broader United States, many local governments in our region have acted to restrict or prohibit the growing of genetically engineered organisms within their borders. Such local governments include the Counties of Mendocino, Marin, Trinity, Humboldt and Santa Cruz.

(n)

For these reasons, the people of Sonoma County find that the propagation, cultivation, raising or growing of genetically engineered organisms in the county is not consistent with proper and accepted agricultural customs and standards of Sonoma County. Furthermore, because the risk of transgenic contamination increases the longer a genetically engineered organism remains in an uncontrolled environment, the people find that the contamination risk caused by the propagation, cultivation, raising or growing of genetically engineered organisms shall be remedied as set forth below.

(Ord. No. 6196 R , § 3, 11-8-2016)