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  • From: Linda Ray <lindaray@att.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Fw: The Great Mexican Maize Massacre- Heads Up!!!
  • Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2012 12:13:31 -0800 (PST)





 



IMO this should be of interest to all-
 
Namaste,
 
Linda
----------------------------------------------------------

--- On Thu, 11/15/12, ETC Group <ETC_Group@mail.vresp.com> wrote:

From: ETC Group <ETC_Group@mail.vresp.com>
Subject: The Great Mexican Maize Massacre
Date: Thursday, November 15, 2012, 9:49 AM

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ETC Group
News Release
Thursday, 15 November 2012
www.etcgroup.org  
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
that contamination’s negative effects on peasant varieties might be
irreversible and progressive, thanks to the accumulation of transgenes in its
genome, 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:
 
Silvia Ribeiro, ETC Group Latin America Director, silvia@etcgroup.org
Verónica Villa, ETC Group, Mexico, veronica@etcgroup.org
Tel: (+52) 55 63 2664
 
Ana de Ita, CECCAM, anadeita@ceccam.org.mx
Tel: (+52) 56 61 53 98
 
Pat Mooney, ETC Group Executive Director, mooney@etcgroup.org
Tel: 1-613-241-2267
 
Red en Defensa del Maíz: http://redendefensadelmaiz.net/
Centro de Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo Mexicano, ceccam:
http://www.ceccam.org/

[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.
[5] A. Serratos, El origen y la diversidad del maíz en el continente
Americano, 2nd edition, September 2012, Mexico City Autonomous University and
Greenpeace, available online:
http://www.greenpeace.org/mexico/es/Footer/Descargas/reports/Agricultura-sustentable-y-transgenicos/El-origen-y-la-diversidad-del-maiz-2a-edicion/;
National Commission for Biodiversity, Project Centers of Origin and
diversification.
http://www.biodiversidad.gob.mx/v_ingles/genes/centers_origin/centers_origin.html.
[6] Ceccam, La determinación de los centros de origen y diversidad genética
del maíz, Mexico, 2012, available online:
http://www.ceccam.org/publicaciones?page=1.
[7] UCCS, “Transgenic Maize Estrangement,” México, 2009, available online:
http://www.unionccs.net/comunicados/index.php?doc=sciencetrmaize.
[8] Olivier de Schutter report on Mexico, paragraphs 53-55. See Mission to
Mexico, 2011, available online:
http://www.srfood.org/index.php/en/country-missions.
[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).
[10] The letter is available online:
http://www.etcgroup.org/content/open-letter-international-civil-society-organizations-transgenic-contamination-centers.
[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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  • [permaculture] Fw: The Great Mexican Maize Massacre- Heads Up!!!, Linda Ray, 11/15/2012

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