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On August 30, residents of a neighborhood in Key West, Florida, will head to the polls to vote on a referendum that would kick off genetically modified mosquito testing in the Keys. While the vote is non-binding, the majority of the district’s board of commissioners say they will adhere to the outcome of the vote, The Key West Citizen reports.
The testing, which would be run by British biotech company Oxitec, would involve releasing about 3 million male mosquitos on a semi-isolated peninsula north of Key West over the course of 22 months.
“I think a referendum is great, as long as it is done in an independent way,” Derric Nimmo, Oxitec’s product development manager on the project, told the Associated Press. “An informed choice is what we want.”
But not everyone in the Keys is excited about the prospect of their home being used as a testing ground for GMO mosquitos. The Citizen reported there were 60 anti-testing signs visible in Key Haven, the neighborhood of 444 homes where the testing would take place.
The battle about GMO mosquito testing is an ongoing issue in Key West, where in 2012 the city commission passed a resolution to prevent GMO mosquitos being released within city limits (Key Haven is outside of the city-limit boundaries). In the four years since then, a Change.org petition against mosquito testing in the Keys has garnered more than 165,000 signatures, many of them from people who don’t live in Key West but feel passionately about GMOs.
Read full, original post: The Fate Of Anti-Zika GMO Mosquitoes In The U.S. Rests On Florida
