GEO Watch | Correction & Update | Mexican judge suspends transgenic corn plantings

UPDATE: Upon further review of a second press release and correspondence with colleagues in Mexico City, San Diego, California, and  Seattle,Washington, I have decided to use a different post headline. It is more accurate to state that a federal judge suspended transgenic corn plantings rather than to imply a nationwide ban. That may be a future possibility but is not the nature of this particular ruling. It was not my intent to mislead but the original post heading was careless. 

However, the original and still unedited title of the post of October 11 accurately reflects what the first press release made clear, and that is simply: That a federal judge in Mexico City issued a temporary restraining order involving the suspension of new plantings of transgenic maize as part of a fairly narrow legal opinion to allow for the resolution of several pending lawsuits that will affect federal law on TRIPs, biosafety, and perhaps even the preservation of biocultural diversity in the Mexican Vavilov center. I will have another report on the pending lawsuits in the coming weeks.

There are also reports on growing demands by eco-activists for the Mexican EPA to use prosecutorial powers to pursue conscious violators of GMO plantings, but others argue for a shift in focus to the producers and purveyors of GMO seeds, especially since many farmers often do not realize they are planting transgenic crops. Reports suggest that some farmers are not informed because of purposeful mislabeling, the removal of labeling, or other factors that restrict their access to information, which in any case is unlikely to serve as a sufficient basis for farmer decisions on farm management, given interference and political subterfuge by market-steered interests.