Mexico Bans GE Corn
October 19th, 2013Via: Care2:
Just when you think there’s no winning against the biotech industry, news out of Mexico City shows that all is not lost. After years of deliberation, a Mexico judge has placed an indefinite ban on genetically-engineered corn. Effective immediately, companies like Monsanto and DuPont/Pioneer will no longer be allowed to plant or sell their corn within the country’s borders.
The decision comes nearly two years after Care2 reported that the Mexican government had put Monsanto’s GE corn on hold, citing the need for more tests.
“Corn is a staple food crop in Mexico, intricately intertwined with the country’s cuisine, history, and culture. Authorities are concerned that Monsanto’s genetically modified corn will contaminate native species, and could cause both health and environmental issues,” Care2 reported at the time.
Now, it appears that Mexican authorities have finally made their decision. According to Environmental Food and Justice, Judge Jaime Eduardo Verdugo J. of the Twelfth Federal District Court for Civil Matters of Mexico City ruled that the genetically-engineered corn posed ”the risk of imminent harm to the environment.” He also ordered Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture and SEMARNAT (Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales), equivalent to the U.S. EPA, to immediately “suspend all activities involving the planting of transgenic corn in the country and end the granting of permission for experimental and pilot commercial plantings.”
The ruling means that Monsanto and other biotech companies will be required to halt all activities in the country, giving collective action lawsuits initiated by citizens, farmers, scientists and other concerned parties a chance to work their way through the judicial system.
Good luck getting the genie back into the bottle:
“In the late 1990s Zapotec farmers in Oaxaca began to notice what they thought were unusual numbers of mutant plants in their fields. Already inflamed by the government’s agricultural policies, the Zapotecs were deeply suspicious of genetically modified corn and approached two scientists then working in the area, Ignacio Chapela and David Quist of the University of California, Berkeley, and asked them to test the plants for evidence of transgenes.
In their lab, Chapela and Quist found not only evidence of transgenes but also, to their great surprise, what they considered to be clear evidence that the genetically modified genes had fragmented and become redistributed within the host plants. This seemed to fulfill the worst fears of those concerned about genetically modified crops: that implanted genes were unstable and could run wild inside related genomes.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/36330/retreat-subsistence?page=0,0