GEO Watch: Mexican judge suspends transgenic corn plantings [updated 10-17-13]

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 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 ruling 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.

Judge rules that GMOs are imminent threat

MONSANTO, PIONEER, PROHIBITED
FROM MARKETING TRANSGENIC SEED

Devon G. Peña | Seattle, WA |
October 11, 2013

An October 10 press release with
Mexico City byline announces the banning of genetically-engineered corn in
Mexico. According to the group that issued the press release, La Coperacha, a
federal judge has ordered Mexico’s SAGARPA (Secretaría
de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca, y Alimentación), which is
Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture, and SEMARNAT (Secretaría de
Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales), which is equivalent of the 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 unprecedented ban was granted
by the Twelfth Federal District Court for Civil Matters of Mexico City. Judge
Jaime Eduardo Verdugo J. wrote the opinion and cited “the risk of imminent harm
to the environment” as the basis for the decision. The judge’s ruling also
ruled that multinationals like Monsanto and Pioneer are banned from the release
of transgenic maize in the Mexican countryside” as long as collective action
lawsuits initiated by citizens, farmers, scientists, and civil society organizations
are working their way through the judicial system.

The decision was explained
during a press conference in Mexico City yesterday by members of the community-based
organizations that sued federal authorities and companies introducing
transgenic maize into Mexico. The group, Acción Colectiva, is led by Father
Miguel Concha of the Human Rights Center Fray Francisco de Vittoria; Victor
Suarez of ANEC (National Association of Rural Commercialization Entertprises);
Dr. Mercedes Lopéz of Vía Organica; and Adelita San Vicente, a teacher and member
of Semillas de Vida, a national
organization that has been involved in broad-based social action projects to
protect Mexico’s extraordinary status as a major world center of food crop
biodiversity.

Some of the native maize varieties from Oaxaca, Mexico

According to the press release, Acción
Colectiva [Collective Action] aims to achieve absolute federal declaration of the
suspension of the introduction of transgenic maize in all its various forms –
including experimental and pilot commercial plantings – in  Mexico, “which is the birthplace of
corn in the world”.

This ruling marks a milestone in the long struggle of citizen demands for a
GMO-free country, acknowledged Rene Sanchez Galindo, legal counsel for the
plaintiffs in the lawsuit, adding that the ruling has serious enforcement
provisions and includes the possibility of “criminal charges for the
authorities responsible for allowing the introduction of transgenic corn in our
country”.

Father Miguel Concha said the
judge’s decision reflects a commitment to respect the Precautionary Principle
expressed in various international treaties and statements of human rights. Concha
emphasized that the government is obliged to protect the human rights of
Mexicans against the economic interests of big business.The lawsuit seeks to
protect the “human right to save and use the agrobiodiversity of native
landraces from the threats posed by GMO maize”, said the human rights advocate.

The class action lawsuit is
supported by scientific evidence from studies that have – since 2001 –
documented the contamination of Mexico’s native corn varieties by transgenes
from GMO corn, principally the varieties introduced by Monsanto’s Roundup
ready lines and the herbicide-resistant varieties marketed by Pioneer and Bayer
CropScience. The collection of the growing body of scientific research on the
introgression of transgenes into Mexico’s native corn genome has been a
principal goal and activity of the national campaign, Sin Maíz, No Hay Paíz [Without
Corn, There Is No Country].