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Serious Concerns Over Possible Approval of Large-Scale Planting of GM Maize in Mexico THIRD WORLD NETWORK BIOSAFETY INFORMATION SERVICE
Dear friends and colleagues,
Re: Serious concerns over possible approval of large-scale planting of GM maize in Mexico
In 1999, the Mexican National Agricultural Biosafety Commission established a moratorium on GM maize trials and commercial planting because of Mexico’s unique position with regard to maize. Mexico is not only the cradle of maize, the second most important commodity crop in the world, but it is also the steward of one of the few centres of origin and diversity, from which the world derives the genetic diversity needed to maintain food production amidst the challenges to food security, including that posed by climate change.
The Calderón government lifted the moratorium in 2009, although the conditions that motivated the moratorium were unchanged. Since then, the new biosafety commission (CIBIOGEM) has given its approval for 177 small GM maize field trials to four transnational companies (Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta).
After his official visit to Mexico in 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food recommended that the Mexican government reinstate the moratorium on GM maize, both because of its impact on biodiversity and on Farmers’ Rights. However, the moratorium has not been reinstated and instead, the possible imminent approval by the Mexican government of the large-scale, commercial planting of GM maize is now raising serious concerns. The world’s two largest commercial seed companies, Monsanto and DuPont, and Dow AgroSciences (the world’s 8th largest seed company) have applied to the government for the planting of 2,500,000 hectares (more than 6 million acres) of GM maize in Mexico.
Transgene flow from GM maize has already been demonstrated in Mexico. Commercial-scale planting (and subsequent re-planting) will therefore contaminate peasant varieties via the dispersal of GM pollen by insects and wind, as well as via grain elevators and accidental escape from trucks that transport maize all over Mexico. There are thousands of locally adapted native maize varieties that are distributed over the whole country and any planting of GM maize implies the infiltration and accumulation of transgenes into the genomes of landraces, with unpredictable and non-desirable consequences.
The Union of Scientists with Social Commitment (Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad, UCCS; www.uccs.mx) is calling on the present and future Mexican governments to prevent the large-scale planting of GM maize, and also to cancel all permits for open-field releases of GM maize in Mexico already in place as “experiments” or “pilot-scale” plantations (Item 1). Their statement has since gathered more than 1,400 signatures from concerned scientists. Others are asking the new directors of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to take immediate action to protect the centre of origin and diversity of maize (Item 2).
With best wishes,
Third World Network
131 Jalan Macalister
10400 Penang
Malaysia
Item 1
Statement: call to action vs the planting of GMO corn in open field situations in Mexico.
http://www.uccs.mx/doc/g/planting-gmo-corn
Imminent approval of large-scale planting of GMO corn:
Scientists alert over threat to maize in its center of origin and diversification. Human health is also at risk.
Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad (UCCS)
November, 2012
Statement
A pro-forma public consultation period in Mexico of five requests for commercial-scale planting of GM maize promoted by some of the biotechnological corporations (Semillas y Agroproductos Monsanto S.A. de C.V. and Monsanto Comercial S.A. de C.V.; PHI Mexico S.A. de C.V.) has just finalized, all but clearing the path for the final approval by the Mexican government of the large-scale, commercial planting of GMO corn in its center of origin: Mexico.
This process has not been transparent and has lacked a trully public or scientific discussion, or consideration by the affected sectors of society (peasants, farmers, consumers). For example the results from the previously performed "experimental" and "pilot" plantings has not been made public and thus the process lacks both scientific certainty and social endorsement.
This is grave, as Mexico is not only the cradle of corn, the second most important commodity crop in the world, but it also stewards one of the few Centers of Origin and Diversification, from which the world derives the genetic diversity needed to maintain its production in the mist of new plagues, climatic challenges (Ureta et al., 2011), and consumption preferences.
Unlike other countries, where corn production is controlled by corporations and maize is used mainly as feed and as an industrial raw material, in Mexico thousands of different varieties of open-pollinated landraces are cultivated by millions of indigenous and campesino families, with all the Mexican territory being maize Center of Origin and Diversification. Campesinos produce most of the corn for human consumption and Mexico’s population ingests large amounts of corn directly, placing its entire population at an acute level of risk from the large-scale exposure to GM agriculture that uses hybrids that are nutritionally inferior to landraces (i.e., higher glycemic index, less fiber, less antioxidants, etc.), as well as to its associated agrotoxics and derived products.
Independent scientists from the world, heeding a call by the Union of Scientists with Social Commitment (Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad, UCCS; www.uccs.mx) call upon the current Mexican Government -as well as to the upcoming administration of the elected president Enrique Peña Nieto- not only to prevent the large-scale planting of GM corn, but also to cancel all permits for open-field releases of transgenic corn in Mexico already in place as “experiments” or “pilot-scale” plantations. The interests of transnational biotechnological and seed companies should not ride roughshod over those of the Mexican population or the environment in this most important and delicate biogeographical and cultural region.
Not long ago, Mexico used to be a net exporter of corn but the erosion of its campesino economy and lack of government support to agricultural production, have generated a production deficit for this, its main staple. This situation is used as the main excuse to consider the planting of GM corn as an inevitable future for Mexico. Well-established scientific evaluations show, however, that GM corn does not provide a solution to this problem as it does not provide higher yield when compared to conventional varieties. Furthermore, Mexico has other alternatives to face its corn deficit without GM corn plantations (Turrent et al., 2012; and forthcoming second part of the UCCS announcement). It is also crucial to consider that it is impossible to contain transgenes within the GM corn plantings; and given that transgene flow from such plantings would occur up to thousands of km via pollen and seed (Quist & Chapela, 2001; Acevedo et al., 2011; Cleveland et al., 2005; Dyer et al., 2009; Piñeyro-Nelson et al., 2009 a y b; van Heerwaarden, et al., 2012) and that thousands of locally adapted native varieties are distributed over the whole country (data from the Mexican Commission for Biodiversity; CONABIO: http://www.biodiversidad.gob.mx/genes/origenDiv.html), such GM corn plantings would imply the infiltration and accumulation of transgenes into the genomes of landraces, with unpredictable and non-desirable consequences.
Far from being a solution to Mexico’s problems, GMO corn has become the spearhead of agricultural and economic practices that are deeply damaging to the social and agroecological fabric that underlie traditional agricultural practices in this part of the world. These systems are invaluable and through the investment of resources aimed at perfecting them, they could be key for a sustainable agroecological solution for the production deficit with the provision of healthy food.
The system of approval used to justify the planting of GM corn is inadequate and inapplicable in the specific Mexican context. At the heart of this regulatory failure is the inability of the Mexican Government to reject the promotional stance forced upon it by transnational corporations, and its failure to implement a precautionary stance with rigorous scientific bases and without a conflict of interest in order to protect the environment and the society with which it is entrusted. The consequences of this failure are of dire global importance and many of them will be irreversible.
Call to Action
The undersigned, scientists, scholars and intellectuals of the world call on the Mexican Government, Mexican Citizens and those around the world with a stake in the well-being of the food and agricultural basis of the world and our culture:
To stop the processing of any application for open-field release of GM corn in Mexico and in its place promote a thorough, transparent and publicly acceptable review of both the specific crops and transgenic lines, as well as the process of review itself leading to their possible planting vis a vis technological alternatives that do not imply the use of GMOs and/or highly indistrialized agriculture.
To cancel all existing permits for "pilot scale" and "experimental scale" releases into the open, public environment.
To begin an immediate review of the environmental and social aspects of GM corn plantation in Mexico based on thorough scientific criteria and public engagement, through a transparent and participatory process that can lead to a set of criteria that are socially and environmentally acceptable. Such process should consider the best technological options to address issues of food production in our country, and should consider traditional alternatives that gave way to the diversity of cultivars in their Centers of Origin and Diversification and that continue to be instrumental for their dynamic conservation, as well as the representatives of expert campesino and indigenous maize production cultures in Mexico whose livelihoods are acutely endangered by the introduction of GM plantations.
To review, through thorough and transparent scientific and public consultation, the overeaching policies leading to the planting of GM corn in Mexico. We believe that such a process should be guided by a precautionary approach as well as by criteria guided by social justice and sustainability assessments, based on rigorous scientific knowledge, not an unquestioning acceptance and promotion of the studies done by the corporations that produce and commercialize GMOs and that promote the open-field planting of GM corn in Mexico.
References cited.
Acevedo, F., Huerta, E., Burgeff, C., Koleff, P., and Sarukhán, J. (2011) Is transgenic maize what Mexico really needs? Nature Biotechnology 29, 23-24.
Cleveland, D., Soleri, D., Aragon-Cuevas, F., Crossa, J. and Gepts, P. (2005) Detecting (trans)gene flow to landraces in centers of crop origin: lessons from the case of maize in Mexico. Environ. Biosafety Res. 4:197–208.
Dyer, G.A.; Serratos-Hernández, J.A.; Perales, H.R.; Gepts, P.; Piñeyro-Nelson, A.; Chávez, A.; Salinas-Arreortua, N.; Yúnez-Naude, A.; Taylor,J.E.; and Alvarez-Buylla, E.R. (2009) Dispersal of transgenes through maize seed systems in Mexico. PloS ONE 4(5): e5734.
Ortiz-García, S., Ezcurra, E., Schoel, B., Acevedo, F., Soberón, J. and Snow, A. A. (2005) Absence of detectable transgenes in local landraces of maize in Oaxaca, Mexico (2003–2004) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102 (35): 12338-12343
Piñeyro-Nelson, A., van Heerwaarden, J., Perales, H., Serratos, J., Rangel, A., Hufford, M., Gepts, P., Garay-Arroyo, A., Rivera-Bustamante, R., Álvarez-Buylla, E.R. (2009a) Transgenes in Mexican maize: molecular evidence and methodological consideratios for GMO detection in landrace populations. Molecular Ecology 18(4):750-761.
Piñeyro-Nelson, A., van Heerwaarden, J., Perales, H.R., Serratos-Hernández, J.A., Rangel, A., Hufford, M.B., Gepts, P., Garay-Arroyo, A., Rivera-Bustamante, R. and Álvarez-Buylla, E.R. (2009b) Resolution of the mexican transgene detection controversy: Error sources and scientific practice in commercial and ecological contexts. Molecular Ecology 18: 4145-4150.
Quist, D. and Chapela, I. (2001). Transgenic DNA introgressed into traditional maize landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico. Nature 414(6863): 541–543.
Turrent A., Wise, T. and Garvey, E. (2012.) Factibilidad de alcanzar el potencial productivo maíz en México. Universidad de Tufts, Mexican Rural Development Research Reports. Reporte 24. 36 pag. http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/wp/12-03TurrentMexMaize.pdf
Ureta C, Martínez-Meyer E, Perales H, Álvarez-Buylla, E.R. (2011). Projecting the effects of climate change on the distribution of maize races and their wild relatives in Mexico. Global Change Biology 18(3):1073-1082
van Heerwaarden J., Ortega Del Vecchyo D., Alvarez-Buylla, E.R., Bellon M.R. (2012) New Genes in Traditional Seed Systems: Diffusion, Detectability and Persistence of Transgenes in a Maize Metapopulation PLoS ONE 7(10): e46123. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046123
———-
Item 2
ETC Group
News Release
Thursday, 15 November 2012
The Great Mexican Maize Massacre:
Gene Giants Prepare the Genetic Wipe-out of One of the World’s Most Important Food Crops
Agribusiness giants Monsanto, DuPont and Dow are plotting the boldest coup of a global food crop in history. If their requests to allow a massive commercial planting of genetically modified (GM) maize are approved in the next two weeks by the government of outgoing president Felipe Calderón, this parting gift to the gene giants will amount to a knife in the heart of the center of origin and diversity for maize. The consequences will be grave – and global. With the approvals and December planting deadlines looming, social movements and civil society organizations have called for an end to all GM maize in Mexico. Mexico’s Union of Concerned Scientists (UCCS) has called on the Mexican government to stop the processing of any application for open-field release of GM maize in Mexico.[1] ETC Group joins these calls, and appeals to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) – intergovernmental bodies mandated to support food security and biodiversity – to take immediate action.
Outrage and alarm rang out through Mexico when the world’s two largest commercial seed companies, Monsanto and DuPont (whose seed business is known as DuPont Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.), and Dow AgroSciences (the world’s 8th largest seed company) applied to the government for the planting of 2,500,000 hectares (more than 6 million acres) of transgenic maize in Mexico.[2] The land area is massive – about the size of El Salvador. Scientists have identified thousands of peasant varieties of maize, making Mexico the global repository of maize genetic diversity. If the agribusiness applications are approved, it will mark the world’s first commercial-scale planting of genetically modified varieties of a major food crop in its center of origin.
“If Mexico’s government allows this crime of historic significance to happen, GMOs will soon be in the food of the entire Mexican population, and genetic contamination of Mexican peasant varieties will be inevitable. We are talking about damaging more than 7,000 years of indigenous and peasant work that created maize – one of the world’s three most widely eaten crops,” said Verónica Villa from ETC’s Mexico office. “As if this weren’t bad enough, the companies want to plant Monsanto’s herbicide-tolerant maize [Mon603] on more than 1,400,000 hectares. This is the same type of GM maize that has been linked to cancer in rats according to a recently published peer-reviewed study.”[3]
The poor in Latin America, but also in Asia and Africa, will particularly feel the effects, where breeding from maize diversity supports their subsistence and helps them cope with impacts of climate chaos. Along with Mexico, southern African countries Lesotho, Zambia, and Malawi have the highest per capita maize consumption in the world.[4]
The Mexican government insists that the target areas in the north are not part of the center of origin for maize, as traditional varieties weren’t found there. But this is not true: peasant varieties have been collected in these states, although to a lesser degree than in areas to the south. Many scientists as well as the National Biodiversity Commission (Conabio) consider the whole Mexican territory to be the center of origin for maize.[5] According to a review made by Ceccam (Center for Study of Change in Rural Mexico), the government’s newly drawn ‘center of origin’ map is historically and scientifically wrong, designed in order to justify the planting of GM maize by transnational companies.[6]
Commercial-scale planting (and subsequent re-planting) of GM maize will contaminate peasant varieties beyond the target regions, via the dispersal of GM pollen by insects and wind, as well as via grain elevators and accidental escape from trucks that transport maize all over Mexico. Scientists expect contamination’s negative effects on peasant varieties to include deformities and sterility, leading to an erosion of biodiversity.[7]
Hundreds of Mexican agronomists and other scientists as well as Mexico’s peasant, farmers’ and consumers’ organizations have voiced their opposition to the proposed planting, but the outgoing administration of President Calderón – with nothing to lose before his term ends on December 1 – is expected to side with agribusiness. Mounting pressure, both inside and outside the country, may complicate matters.
If the planting is allowed, however, farmers growing maize may become unwitting patent infringers, guilty of using “patented genes” and may be forced to pay royalties to the patent owners, as has already happened in hundreds of cases in North America.
“It would be a monumental injustice for the creators of maize – who have so benefited humankind – to be obliged to pay royalties to a transnational corporation that exploited their knowledge in the first place,” said Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group’s Latin America Director.
In 1999, the Mexican National Agricultural Biosafety Commission established a moratorium on GM maize trials and commercial planting because of Mexico’s unique position as the center of origin and genetic diversity for maize. Calderón’s government arbitrarily broke the moratorium in 2009, although the conditions that motivated the moratorium were unchanged. Since then, the new biosafety commission (CIBIOGEM) has given its approval of 177 small GM maize field trials to 4 transnational companies (Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta). The GM field trials themselves have been criticized for lacking biosafety rigour – failing to comply even with Mexico’s weak biosafety law.
Silvia Ribeiro argues: “The so-called public consultations have been a charade, since the trials were approved without taking into account critical comments – even when they represented the majority of comments, many of them from well-known agronomists and other scientists. On top of that, the results of the trials were kept confidential, but are now providing the justification to allow commercial planting.”
After his official visit to Mexico in 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, recommended that the Mexican government reinstate the moratorium on GM maize, both because of its impact on biodiversity and on Farmers’ Rights.[8] The Mexican government ignored the recommendation.
Ana de Ita of Ceccam points out that the area applied for in the Sinaloa and Tamaulipas (Mexican states in the North of Mexico) exceeds the area currently planted to irrigated maize there. “So it appears the companies are planning to replace the whole area of maize as well as other crops,” she says. “This is outrageous, as there is no reason for Mexico to risk its own history and biodiversity with GM maize. Mexico already produces enough maize to exceed the human consumption needs in the country, and it could produce much more by supporting peasants and small-scale farmers without handing over its food sovereignty to transnational companies.”
Maize is central to the cultures, economies and livelihoods of the Mexican population, where most people eat maize in different forms every day. The amount of maize that Mexicans consume far exceeds the average per capita consumption of most other countries (115 kg/year). 85% of the Mexican maize producers are peasants and small farmers, with fields smaller than 5 hectares. These producers have an essential role in providing more than half the food for the population, particularly the poor. At the same time, they are caring for and increasing the crop’s genetic diversity because of the decentralized way they grow maize – planting many different varieties, adapted at local levels, along with a number of other crops and wild species.
In 2009, the Network in Defense of Maize,[9] together with La Via Campesina North America, sent an open letter signed by thousands of other organizations and individuals to FAO and the CBD, asking them to take action to prevent GM maize contamination in Mexico.[10] The former directors of both international organizations dodged the request, even though both institutions have committed to protect agricultural centers of origin.[11] We now ask the new directors of FAO and the CBD to take immediate action to protect the center of origin and diversity of maize.
For further information:
Tel: (+52) 55 63 2664
Tel: (+52) 56 61 53 98
Tel: 1-613-241-2267
[1] UCCS (Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad), “Statement: Call to action vs the planting of GMO corn in open field situations in Mexico,” November 2012, available online: http://www.uccs.mx/doc/g/planting-gmo-corn. [2] The list of commercial applications for environmental release of GMOs is available here: http://www.senasica.gob.mx/?id=4443. (In Mexico, DuPont Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., is known by the name PHI México.) [3] Gilles-Eric Séralini et al., “Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize,” Food and Chemical Toxicology, Volume 50, Issue 11, November 2012, pp. 4221–4231. See also, John Vidal, “Study linking GM maize to cancer must be taken seriously by regulators,” The Guardian, 28 September 2012, available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/28/study-gm-maize-cancer. [4] Alfred W. Crosby, review of James C. McCann, Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500-2000 in Technology and Culture, Vol. 47, No. 1, January 2006, pp. 190-191.
[9] The Network in Defense of Maize includes more than 1000 indigenous communities and civil society organizations. It was created in 2001, when it was first discovered that native Mexican maize had been contaminated by GM maize. Since then, the Network has resisted the advance of GM maize contamination at the local level, particularly in rural areas. Both ETC Group and Ceccam are members of the Network (http//: endefensadelmaiz.org). [11] The CBD’s former Secretary General, Ahmed Djoghlaf, did not reply to the open letter. The former FAO Director General Jacques Diouf did not reply either, but delegated Shivaji Pandey, Director of FAO’s Plant Production and Protection Division, to respond. Pandey, a well-known advocate of genetically modified crops, wrote that FAO could offer advice, but that biosafety was a Mexican issue.
Serious Concerns Over Possible Approval of Large-Scale Planting of GM Maize in Mexico Item 1
Statement: call to action vs the planting of GMO corn in open field situations in Mexico.
http://www.uccs.mx/doc/g/planting-gmo-corn
Imminent approval of large-scale planting of GMO corn:
Scientists alert over threat to maize in its center of origin and diversification. Human health is also at risk.
Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad (UCCS)
November, 2012
Statement
A pro-forma public consultation period in Mexico of five requests for commercial-scale planting of GM maize promoted by some of the biotechnological corporations (Semillas y Agroproductos Monsanto S.A. de C.V. and Monsanto Comercial S.A. de C.V.; PHI Mexico S.A. de C.V.) has just finalized, all but clearing the path for the final approval by the Mexican government of the large-scale, commercial planting of GMO corn in its center of origin: Mexico.
This process has not been transparent and has lacked a trully public or scientific discussion, or consideration by the affected sectors of society (peasants, farmers, consumers). For example the results from the previously performed "experimental" and "pilot" plantings has not been made public and thus the process lacks both scientific certainty and social endorsement.
This is grave, as Mexico is not only the cradle of corn, the second most important commodity crop in the world, but it also stewards one of the few Centers of Origin and Diversification, from which the world derives the genetic diversity needed to maintain its production in the mist of new plagues, climatic challenges (Ureta et al., 2011), and consumption preferences.
Unlike other countries, where corn production is controlled by corporations and maize is used mainly as feed and as an industrial raw material, in Mexico thousands of different varieties of open-pollinated landraces are cultivated by millions of indigenous and campesino families, with all the Mexican territory being maize Center of Origin and Diversification. Campesinos produce most of the corn for human consumption and Mexico’s population ingests large amounts of corn directly, placing its entire population at an acute level of risk from the large-scale exposure to GM agriculture that uses hybrids that are nutritionally inferior to landraces (i.e., higher glycemic index, less fiber, less antioxidants, etc.), as well as to its associated agrotoxics and derived products.
Independent scientists from the world, heeding a call by the Union of Scientists with Social Commitment (Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad, UCCS; www.uccs.mx) call upon the current Mexican Government -as well as to the upcoming administration of the elected president Enrique Peña Nieto- not only to prevent the large-scale planting of GM corn, but also to cancel all permits for open-field releases of transgenic corn in Mexico already in place as “experiments” or “pilot-scale” plantations. The interests of transnational biotechnological and seed companies should not ride roughshod over those of the Mexican population or the environment in this most important and delicate biogeographical and cultural region.
Not long ago, Mexico used to be a net exporter of corn but the erosion of its campesino economy and lack of government support to agricultural production, have generated a production deficit for this, its main staple. This situation is used as the main excuse to consider the planting of GM corn as an inevitable future for Mexico. Well-established scientific evaluations show, however, that GM corn does not provide a solution to this problem as it does not provide higher yield when compared to conventional varieties. Furthermore, Mexico has other alternatives to face its corn deficit without GM corn plantations (Turrent et al., 2012; and forthcoming second part of the UCCS announcement). It is also crucial to consider that it is impossible to contain transgenes within the GM corn plantings; and given that transgene flow from such plantings would occur up to thousands of km via pollen and seed (Quist & Chapela, 2001; Acevedo et al., 2011; Cleveland et al., 2005; Dyer et al., 2009; Piñeyro-Nelson et al., 2009 a y b; van Heerwaarden, et al., 2012) and that thousands of locally adapted native varieties are distributed over the whole country (data from the Mexican Commission for Biodiversity; CONABIO: http://www.biodiversidad.gob.mx/genes/origenDiv.html), such GM corn plantings would imply the infiltration and accumulation of transgenes into the genomes of landraces, with unpredictable and non-desirable consequences.
Far from being a solution to Mexico’s problems, GMO corn has become the spearhead of agricultural and economic practices that are deeply damaging to the social and agroecological fabric that underlie traditional agricultural practices in this part of the world. These systems are invaluable and through the investment of resources aimed at perfecting them, they could be key for a sustainable agroecological solution for the production deficit with the provision of healthy food.
The system of approval used to justify the planting of GM corn is inadequate and inapplicable in the specific Mexican context. At the heart of this regulatory failure is the inability of the Mexican Government to reject the promotional stance forced upon it by transnational corporations, and its failure to implement a precautionary stance with rigorous scientific bases and without a conflict of interest in order to protect the environment and the society with which it is entrusted. The consequences of this failure are of dire global importance and many of them will be irreversible.
Call to Action
The undersigned, scientists, scholars and intellectuals of the world call on the Mexican Government, Mexican Citizens and those around the world with a stake in the well-being of the food and agricultural basis of the world and our culture:
To stop the processing of any application for open-field release of GM corn in Mexico and in its place promote a thorough, transparent and publicly acceptable review of both the specific crops and transgenic lines, as well as the process of review itself leading to their possible planting vis a vis technological alternatives that do not imply the use of GMOs and/or highly indistrialized agriculture.
To cancel all existing permits for "pilot scale" and "experimental scale" releases into the open, public environment.
To begin an immediate review of the environmental and social aspects of GM corn plantation in Mexico based on thorough scientific criteria and public engagement, through a transparent and participatory process that can lead to a set of criteria that are socially and environmentally acceptable. Such process should consider the best technological options to address issues of food production in our country, and should consider traditional alternatives that gave way to the diversity of cultivars in their Centers of Origin and Diversification and that continue to be instrumental for their dynamic conservation, as well as the representatives of expert campesino and indigenous maize production cultures in Mexico whose livelihoods are acutely endangered by the introduction of GM plantations.
To review, through thorough and transparent scientific and public consultation, the overeaching policies leading to the planting of GM corn in Mexico. We believe that such a process should be guided by a precautionary approach as well as by criteria guided by social justice and sustainability assessments, based on rigorous scientific knowledge, not an unquestioning acceptance and promotion of the studies done by the corporations that produce and commercialize GMOs and that promote the open-field planting of GM corn in Mexico.
References cited.
Acevedo, F., Huerta, E., Burgeff, C., Koleff, P., and Sarukhán, J. (2011) Is transgenic maize what Mexico really needs? Nature Biotechnology 29, 23-24.
Cleveland, D., Soleri, D., Aragon-Cuevas, F., Crossa, J. and Gepts, P. (2005) Detecting (trans)gene flow to landraces in centers of crop origin: lessons from the case of maize in Mexico. Environ. Biosafety Res. 4:197–208.
Dyer, G.A.; Serratos-Hernández, J.A.; Perales, H.R.; Gepts, P.; Piñeyro-Nelson, A.; Chávez, A.; Salinas-Arreortua, N.; Yúnez-Naude, A.; Taylor,J.E.; and Alvarez-Buylla, E.R. (2009) Dispersal of transgenes through maize seed systems in Mexico. PloS ONE 4(5): e5734.
Ortiz-García, S., Ezcurra, E., Schoel, B., Acevedo, F., Soberón, J. and Snow, A. A. (2005) Absence of detectable transgenes in local landraces of maize in Oaxaca, Mexico (2003–2004) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102 (35): 12338-12343
Piñeyro-Nelson, A., van Heerwaarden, J., Perales, H., Serratos, J., Rangel, A., Hufford, M., Gepts, P., Garay-Arroyo, A., Rivera-Bustamante, R., Álvarez-Buylla, E.R. (2009a) Transgenes in Mexican maize: molecular evidence and methodological consideratios for GMO detection in landrace populations. Molecular Ecology 18(4):750-761.
Piñeyro-Nelson, A., van Heerwaarden, J., Perales, H.R., Serratos-Hernández, J.A., Rangel, A., Hufford, M.B., Gepts, P., Garay-Arroyo, A., Rivera-Bustamante, R. and Álvarez-Buylla, E.R. (2009b) Resolution of the mexican transgene detection controversy: Error sources and scientific practice in commercial and ecological contexts. Molecular Ecology 18: 4145-4150.
Quist, D. and Chapela, I. (2001). Transgenic DNA introgressed into traditional maize landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico. Nature 414(6863): 541–543.
Turrent A., Wise, T. and Garvey, E. (2012.) Factibilidad de alcanzar el potencial productivo maíz en México. Universidad de Tufts, Mexican Rural Development Research Reports. Reporte 24. 36 pag. http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs/wp/12-03TurrentMexMaize.pdf
Ureta C, Martínez-Meyer E, Perales H, Álvarez-Buylla, E.R. (2011). Projecting the effects of climate change on the distribution of maize races and their wild relatives in Mexico. Global Change Biology 18(3):1073-1082
van Heerwaarden J., Ortega Del Vecchyo D., Alvarez-Buylla, E.R., Bellon M.R. (2012) New Genes in Traditional Seed Systems: Diffusion, Detectability and Persistence of Transgenes in a Maize Metapopulation PLoS ONE 7(10): e46123. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046123
———-
Item 2
ETC Group
News Release
Thursday, 15 November 2012
The Great Mexican Maize Massacre:
Gene Giants Prepare the Genetic Wipe-out of One of the World’s Most Important Food Crops
Agribusiness giants Monsanto, DuPont and Dow are plotting the boldest coup of a global food crop in history. If their requests to allow a massive commercial planting of genetically modified (GM) maize are approved in the next two weeks by the government of outgoing president Felipe Calderón, this parting gift to the gene giants will amount to a knife in the heart of the center of origin and diversity for maize. The consequences will be grave – and global. With the approvals and December planting deadlines looming, social movements and civil society organizations have called for an end to all GM maize in Mexico. Mexico’s Union of Concerned Scientists (UCCS) has called on the Mexican government to stop the processing of any application for open-field release of GM maize in Mexico.[1] ETC Group joins these calls, and appeals to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) – intergovernmental bodies mandated to support food security and biodiversity – to take immediate action.
Outrage and alarm rang out through Mexico when the world’s two largest commercial seed companies, Monsanto and DuPont (whose seed business is known as DuPont Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.), and Dow AgroSciences (the world’s 8th largest seed company) applied to the government for the planting of 2,500,000 hectares (more than 6 million acres) of transgenic maize in Mexico.[2] The land area is massive – about the size of El Salvador. Scientists have identified thousands of peasant varieties of maize, making Mexico the global repository of maize genetic diversity. If the agribusiness applications are approved, it will mark the world’s first commercial-scale planting of genetically modified varieties of a major food crop in its center of origin.
“If Mexico’s government allows this crime of historic significance to happen, GMOs will soon be in the food of the entire Mexican population, and genetic contamination of Mexican peasant varieties will be inevitable. We are talking about damaging more than 7,000 years of indigenous and peasant work that created maize – one of the world’s three most widely eaten crops,” said Verónica Villa from ETC’s Mexico office. “As if this weren’t bad enough, the companies want to plant Monsanto’s herbicide-tolerant maize [Mon603] on more than 1,400,000 hectares. This is the same type of GM maize that has been linked to cancer in rats according to a recently published peer-reviewed study.”[3]
The poor in Latin America, but also in Asia and Africa, will particularly feel the effects, where breeding from maize diversity supports their subsistence and helps them cope with impacts of climate chaos. Along with Mexico, southern African countries Lesotho, Zambia, and Malawi have the highest per capita maize consumption in the world.[4]
The Mexican government insists that the target areas in the north are not part of the center of origin for maize, as traditional varieties weren’t found there. But this is not true: peasant varieties have been collected in these states, although to a lesser degree than in areas to the south. Many scientists as well as the National Biodiversity Commission (Conabio) consider the whole Mexican territory to be the center of origin for maize.[5] According to a review made by Ceccam (Center for Study of Change in Rural Mexico), the government’s newly drawn ‘center of origin’ map is historically and scientifically wrong, designed in order to justify the planting of GM maize by transnational companies.[6]
Commercial-scale planting (and subsequent re-planting) of GM maize will contaminate peasant varieties beyond the target regions, via the dispersal of GM pollen by insects and wind, as well as via grain elevators and accidental escape from trucks that transport maize all over Mexico. Scientists expect contamination’s negative effects on peasant varieties to include deformities and sterility, leading to an erosion of biodiversity.[7]
Hundreds of Mexican agronomists and other scientists as well as Mexico’s peasant, farmers’ and consumers’ organizations have voiced their opposition to the proposed planting, but the outgoing administration of President Calderón – with nothing to lose before his term ends on December 1 – is expected to side with agribusiness. Mounting pressure, both inside and outside the country, may complicate matters.
If the planting is allowed, however, farmers growing maize may become unwitting patent infringers, guilty of using “patented genes” and may be forced to pay royalties to the patent owners, as has already happened in hundreds of cases in North America.
“It would be a monumental injustice for the creators of maize – who have so benefited humankind – to be obliged to pay royalties to a transnational corporation that exploited their knowledge in the first place,” said Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group’s Latin America Director.
In 1999, the Mexican National Agricultural Biosafety Commission established a moratorium on GM maize trials and commercial planting because of Mexico’s unique position as the center of origin and genetic diversity for maize. Calderón’s government arbitrarily broke the moratorium in 2009, although the conditions that motivated the moratorium were unchanged. Since then, the new biosafety commission (CIBIOGEM) has given its approval of 177 small GM maize field trials to 4 transnational companies (Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Monsanto and Syngenta). The GM field trials themselves have been criticized for lacking biosafety rigour – failing to comply even with Mexico’s weak biosafety law.
Silvia Ribeiro argues: “The so-called public consultations have been a charade, since the trials were approved without taking into account critical comments – even when they represented the majority of comments, many of them from well-known agronomists and other scientists. On top of that, the results of the trials were kept confidential, but are now providing the justification to allow commercial planting.”
After his official visit to Mexico in 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter, recommended that the Mexican government reinstate the moratorium on GM maize, both because of its impact on biodiversity and on Farmers’ Rights.[8] The Mexican government ignored the recommendation.
Ana de Ita of Ceccam points out that the area applied for in the Sinaloa and Tamaulipas (Mexican states in the North of Mexico) exceeds the area currently planted to irrigated maize there. “So it appears the companies are planning to replace the whole area of maize as well as other crops,” she says. “This is outrageous, as there is no reason for Mexico to risk its own history and biodiversity with GM maize. Mexico already produces enough maize to exceed the human consumption needs in the country, and it could produce much more by supporting peasants and small-scale farmers without handing over its food sovereignty to transnational companies.”
Maize is central to the cultures, economies and livelihoods of the Mexican population, where most people eat maize in different forms every day. The amount of maize that Mexicans consume far exceeds the average per capita consumption of most other countries (115 kg/year). 85% of the Mexican maize producers are peasants and small farmers, with fields smaller than 5 hectares. These producers have an essential role in providing more than half the food for the population, particularly the poor. At the same time, they are caring for and increasing the crop’s genetic diversity because of the decentralized way they grow maize – planting many different varieties, adapted at local levels, along with a number of other crops and wild species.
In 2009, the Network in Defense of Maize,[9] together with La Via Campesina North America, sent an open letter signed by thousands of other organizations and individuals to FAO and the CBD, asking them to take action to prevent GM maize contamination in Mexico.[10] The former directors of both international organizations dodged the request, even though both institutions have committed to protect agricultural centers of origin.[11] We now ask the new directors of FAO and the CBD to take immediate action to protect the center of origin and diversity of maize.
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[1] UCCS (Unión de Científicos Comprometidos con la Sociedad), “Statement: Call to action vs the planting of GMO corn in open field situations in Mexico,” November 2012, available online: http://www.uccs.mx/doc/g/planting-gmo-corn. [2] The list of commercial applications for environmental release of GMOs is available here: http://www.senasica.gob.mx/?id=4443. (In Mexico, DuPont Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., is known by the name PHI México.) [3] Gilles-Eric Séralini et al., “Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize,” Food and Chemical Toxicology, Volume 50, Issue 11, November 2012, pp. 4221–4231. See also, John Vidal, “Study linking GM maize to cancer must be taken seriously by regulators,” The Guardian, 28 September 2012, available online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/28/study-gm-maize-cancer. [4] Alfred W. Crosby, review of James C. McCann, Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500-2000 in Technology and Culture, Vol. 47, No. 1, January 2006, pp. 190-191.
[9] The Network in Defense of Maize includes more than 1000 indigenous communities and civil society organizations. It was created in 2001, when it was first discovered that native Mexican maize had been contaminated by GM maize. Since then, the Network has resisted the advance of GM maize contamination at the local level, particularly in rural areas. Both ETC Group and Ceccam are members of the Network (http//: endefensadelmaiz.org). [11] The CBD’s former Secretary General, Ahmed Djoghlaf, did not reply to the open letter. The former FAO Director General Jacques Diouf did not reply either, but delegated Shivaji Pandey, Director of FAO’s Plant Production and Protection Division, to respond. Pandey, a well-known advocate of genetically modified crops, wrote that FAO could offer advice, but that biosafety was a Mexican issue.
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