GMW:_GM_contamination_of_Mexican_maize_-_great_article

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GMW:_GM_contamination_of_Mexican_maize_-_great_article

> " GM_WATCH " <info

> Sun, 11 Jul 2004 17:46:50 +0100

 

> GM WATCH daily

> http://www.gmwatch.org

> ------

> Best article we've seen on this issue.

>

> EXCERPT: They rejected too the " intolerable

> corruption " of officials who promote genetically

> modified organisms like-it-or-not style. " We are not

> interested in confirming whether or not they receive

> money from the corporations, whether they behave out

> of mercenary self-interest, ignorance or

> recklessness. We are not the police. But nor do we

> need more investigation to be able to affirm

> unreservedly that they do not represent us and that

> they are incapable of understanding our reality and

> aspirations, much less defend them. "

> ------

> Genetic Contamination of Mexican Maize

> by Carmelo Ruiz Marrero

> Z-Net, July 10, 2004

>

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13 & ItemID=5860

>

> Scientists from Mexico, Canada and the United States

> met on March 11th this year in the Hotel Victoria in

> Oaxaca for a symposium on the effects and possible

> risks of the presence of genetically modified maize

> in Mexico. The furtive and growing presence of this

> maize has been documented in small plots of land

> belonging to rural workers first in the southern

> State of Oaxaca and more recently throughout the

> whole country. This discovery could have serious

> implications for agricultural biodiversity since

> maize is the third most important crop in the world

> after wheat and rice and Mexico is the center of its

> origin and diversity.

>

> Alejandro de Avila, director of the Oaxaca

> Ethnobotanic Garden reported that the most recent

> archaeological studies indicate that maize was

> discovered and domesticated in Oaxaca ten thousand

> years ago, not six thousand or eight thousand as had

> been believed until recently. Maize is considered to

> be humanity's greatest agricultural achievement and

> the greatest treasure Christopher Columbus took back

> to Europe from the American continent. Today, it is

> grown all around the Mediterranean, in Africa and in

> China. But its center of diversity continues to be

> Mexico, where the greatest part of the thousands of

> varieties and stocks are sown which are the result

> of millenia of patient work and experiment by

> campesinos. These varieties were developed so as to

> bring out favorable characteristics such as, among

> others, nutritional value, tolerance to acidic or

> salty soils, immunity to disease. There is even a

> variety which fixes its own nitrogen. It is far from

> strange to see in an indigenous community like

> Sierra Juarez of Oxaca more varieties of maize than

> in the whole of the United States.

>

> This astonishing diversity leads agronomists from

> all over the world to travel to Mexico to get

> specimens so as to improve their own varieties of

> maize which is the reason Mexico is the seat of the

> International Center for Investigations for the

> Improvement of Maize and Wheat (CIMMYT). The maize

> fields of the Mexican campesinos are thus an

> irreplaceable resource of agricultural biodiversity.

> Social or ecological disruption in that area might

> compromise the viability of maize as a food and

> endanger world food supply. The CIMMYT, with all its

> laboratories and seed banks, could not replace the

> dense and complex rural social and ecological skein

> from which innumerable varieties of maize srping.

>

> That morning of March 11th, while the participants

> arrived at the hotel to register for the symposium

> of the Commission on Environmental Cooperation,

> which resulted from the parallel agreement of the

> North American Free Trade Area, the organizers and

> private security guards seemed tense and expectant.

> They knew a protest demonstration was imminent and

> that the demonstrators would arrive any moment.

>

> The day before, groups representing indigenous

> people, environmentalists and progressive

> intellectuals had held an alternative forum called

> Defending Our Maize, Protecting Life. They feared

> that the experts, generally favourable to the

> biotechnology industry and its genetically modified

> products would declare that the genetic

> contamination of maize is an irreversible fact of

> life and that in future Mexicans would have to get

> used to it. The forum participants agreed to go to

> the symposium the following day so as to present

> their arguments and concerns to the bureaucrats and

> the scientists. Their admission to the symposium was

> not confirmed, but they were going to go anyway.

>

> Enter genetically modified foods

>

> In 1996 the US began to grow genetically modified

> maize and in five years it came to make up 30% of

> that crop's national harvest. Mexican scientists and

> environmentalists expressed concern that this maize

> might enter Mexico through imports with uncertain

> consequences for agricultural biodiversoty. The

> government responded the following year by imposing

> a moratorium on the sowing of genetically modified

> crops. But the measure was never complied with and

> maize imports carried on without any regulation at

> all. No one ever explained to people in Mexico that

> those grains could not be used as seed.

>

> Already in 1999 the Mexican branch of Greenpeace had

> analyzed samples of United States maize that were

> entering the country and had shown positive traces

> of genetic modification. The government then formed

> the Interdepartmental Commission on Bio-security and

> Genetically Modified Organisms (CIBIOGEM) to examine

> the issue. To this day it has done nothing according

> to civil society groups. The web page of CIBIOGEM

> has not been updated since August 2003.

>

> In 2001 it was proven that genetically modified

> maize had been used as seed and sown by rural

> families who had no idea what it was. Silvia Ribeiro

> of the Action group on Erosion, Technology and

> Concentration (ETC Group) remarks, " And that's not

> all. You're talking about contamination in the very

> centre of origin of a crop with huge importance for

> world food supply, which means significant effects

> in other zones since the contamination can spread

> not just to the native varieties of maize but also

> to their wild parents. "

>

> This genetic flow " contaminates and degrades one of

> Mexico's main treasures. In contrast to dispersion

> and genetic flow between native maize and

> conventional hybrid varieties, it doesn't just

> transfer maize genes but also pieces of genes of

> bacterias and viruses (that have nothing to do with

> maize) whose environmental and health effects have

> not been seriously evaluated. "

>

> " The contamination of our traditional maize attacks

> the fundamental autonomy of our indigenous and

> agricultural communities because we are not just

> talking of our food source; maize is a vital part of

> our cultural heritage, " declares indigenous leader

> Aldo Gonzalez, " For us native seeds are an important

> element of our culture. The pyramids may have

> disappeared and been destroyed but a handful of

> maize is a legacy we can leave behind for our

> children and grandchildren and today they are

> denying us that possibility. "

>

> The following year environmental, indigenous and

> rural workers organizations took their case to the

> North American Commission on Environmental

> Cooperation (CCA), an inter-governmental body

> created to remedy environmental problems caused by

> the Free Trade Treaty. The CCA took up the case and

> named a multinational panel of 17 experts to

> investigate the problem and to report with

> recommendations.

>

> The panel took submissions from the public but only

> via the Internet, which outraged the rural workers

> and indigenous peoples. After all, how many Mixteca

> or Zapateca communities in the Sierra Juarez have

> internet cafes? To respond to demand for authentic

> participation, the CCA set up the panel to carry out

> the symposium of March 11th.

>

> In the meantime, the Fox government did what wanted.

> At the end of last year Victor Villalobos the

> executive secretary of CIBIOGEM and coordinator of

> international affairs for the Department of

> Agriculture signed an international agreement as

> part of the Free Trade Treaty behind the backs of

> the Senate and the citizenry permitting legal entry

> to genetically modified products into the country

> without labelling requirements

>

> Countdown to Oaxaca

>

> One month before the March 11th symposium, the

> Seventh Biodiversity Convention was held in

> Malaysia, followed immediately by the first

> conference on the Cartagena Protocol, also in

> Malaysia. The Protocol which entered into effect

> last Septemberis an international agreement to deal

> with the possible risks posed by genetic

> engineering. During the conference a dispute broke

> out when Professor Terje Traavik of the Norwegian

> Institute for Genetic Ecology presented a pilot

> study which pointed to the dangers for human health

> inherent in genetically modified crops and in the

> very process of genetic engineering.

>

> On the other side of the world, the day before, in

> Washington DC, the Union of Concerned Scientists

> (UCS) presented a study indicating that varieties of

> traditional United States maize seeds, soya and

> canola used as a reference and source of re-supply

> by agronomists and farmers are contaminated with

> genetically modified material. Taken together the

> studies of Traavik and the UCS make up a damning

> critique of the biotechnology industry.

>

> In the Conference on the Cartagena Protocol, after

> many difficulties and intense negotiations the

> delegations of the signatory countries imposed

> themselves against the pressures of the

> multinational genetic engineering companies and

> reached an agreement. The agreement required that

> all genetically engineered products traded

> internationally should be labelled. But this

> agreement came to nothing because at the last

> minute, right before it was to be signed, the head

> of the Mexican delegation, the same Victor

> Villalobos of CIBIOGEM said that he found the text

> unacceptable. Even the members of the Mexican

> delegation looked at him openmouthed and

> dumbfounded. As the Protocol works by consent,

> Villalobos managed to scupper all the hard won

> progress and so the delegates had to return home

> with a diluted, emasculated agreement that left the

> matter of labelling in the hands of individual

> governments. Various observers asked, if each

> country is to do as it pleases what point is there

> to an international agreement?

>

> The reaction of civil society in Mexico was furious.

> In the forum of March 10th, the participants signed

> a declaration against Villalobos demanding his

> resignation. " We are ashamed that Mexico is accused

> in international fora of doing the dirty work of

> multinational corporations to the detriment of other

> countries, " says the declaration. " Villalobos

> represents neither the feelings nor the interests of

> Mexicans. "

>

> They rejected too the " intolerable corruption " of

> officials who promote genetically modified organisms

> like-it-or-not style. " We are not interested in

> confirming whether or not they receive money from

> the corporations, whether they behave out of

> mercenary self-interest, ignorance or recklessness.

> We are not the police. But nor do we need more

> investigation to be able to affirm unreservedly that

> they do not represent us and that they are incapable

> of understanding our reality and aspirations, much

> less defend them. "

>

> And to sharpen the tense atmosphere that growing up

> around the Oaxaca symposium, news arrived of the

> vote in Mendocino County, California in the US

> approving a measure against genetically modified

> foods.

>

> Different languages

>

> The demonstrators finally arrived at the Hotel

> Victoria: rural workers, Greenpeace militants,

> indigenous peoples representatives, academics and

> committed intellectuals, all entering to register

> for the symposium. the organizers wisely gave them

> all admission and the conference hall promptly

> changed into a Tower of Babel. The scientists,

> bureaucrats and journalists who spoke English,

> Spanish or French were now accompanied by indigenous

> peoples speaking Mixteco, Zapateco, Chinanteco or

> any other of dozens of pre-Colombian languages that

> are spoken in the region.

>

> The differences between the two parties went far

> beyond language barriers. It was a clash between

> ways of thinking and world views totally distinct

> and incompatible. The members of the CEC panel spoke

> in a highly technical language limiting themselves

> to their particular speciality. They tried to

> discuss ethical, technical environmental and

> economic issues in isolation from each other.

>

> But the indigenous peoples and their allies with an

> integral, holistic vision did not accept this. For

> them it was unethical to look at the various issues

> separately. They spoke of their age old indigenous

> cosmology, spirituality, culture, inalienable

> principles and duties, colonialism, neo-liberalism,

> sovereignty and struggle. They raised the risks of

> genetically modified products and questioned

> industrialized agriculture and the power of the

> agribusiness multinationals.

>

> The demonstrators demanded the end of all maize

> imports, genetically engineered or not, and that the

> government comply with its inescapable duty to act

> to hold back and stop genetic contamination. " We

> seek the solidarity and support of all in Mexico and

> the world, who have taken up a struggle similar to

> our own so as to extend ever further the territories

> free from genetically modified food. "

>

> Carmelo RUIZ MARRERO is a journalist based in Puerto

> Rico published in Ecoportal and other media. He is

> the author of , " Agricultura y globalizacion:

> Alimentos transgenicos y control corporativo "

> published by the Americas Program of the

> Interhemispheric Resource Center .This article was

> assisted by Tania Fernandez for EcoPortal.

>

> Translation by toni solo

>

>