Carelessness_and_cover-up_-_GM_contamination_in_Mexico

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Carelessness_and_cover-up_-_GM_contamination_in_Mexico

> " GM_WATCH " <info

> Sun, 5 Sep 2004 12:00:11 +0100

 

>

> GM WATCH daily

> http://www.gmwatch.org

> ---

> Excellent article on the Mexican maize contamination

> scandal, bringing the issue bang up to date.

>

> For articles from the press on the Monsanto dirty

> tricks ( " neo-viral " ) campaign referred to:

> http://www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=25 & page=1

>

> For links to profiles of individuals and

> organisations involved:

> http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=166

> ---

> PAN-AMERICAN ADVENTURE: Oaxaca, Mexico

>

http://www.newfarm.org/international/pan-am_don/aug04/oaxaca.shtml

>

> Transgenic contamination of Mexican corn adds insult

> to NAFTA injury

>

> In his second of two stories on Mexican corn, Don

> Lotter traces the history of carelessness - and

> cover-up - that threatens the heart of the world's

> corn biodiversity.

>

> By Don Lotter

>

> Native varieties of corn near Guelatao de Juarez,

> Oaxaca, where genes from genetically engineered US

> corn have been found contaminating the native corn.

>

> Posted August 31, 2004: Small-scale Mexican corn

> farmers were expected by experts to abandon fields

> all over Mexico, due to the near-complete loss of

> farm subsidies combined with the opening of the

> Mexican market to heavily subsidized US corn.

> Subsidies for Mexican farmers have dropped, at the

> behest of US " free market " proselytizers, from 33%

> of farm income to less than 13%, while during the

> same period subsidies for US farmers have grown and

> now make up 40% of US farm income. Cheap corn from

> the US is flooding the Mexican market and competing

> with the locally grown corn.

>

> But against all predictions, corn acreage is up in

> Mexico, despite the economic disincentives.

> Different theories are tossed about as to the

> reasons. Remittances (money sent from Mexicans in

> the US), a $13 billion industry, larger than

> Mexico’s agricultural economy, are believed by some

> to currently subsidize small-scale corn production.

> Some farmers must keep cultivating land in order to

> maintain rights to it, so they plant what they are

> accustomed to growing: corn.

>

> These small-scale corn farmers, now almost

> completely abandoned by their government, as well as

> by the market system, are also the guardians of most

> of the world's corn biodiversity -- the

> approximately 60 major land races, as Mexico is the

> major center of origin and diversity of corn. The

> fact that the Mexican government, along with the

> NAFTA administration, willfully designed an economic

> policy to drastically reduce the number of small

> farmers who are the keepers and original developers

> of such a valuable resource, is unconscionable.

>

> On top of the loss of corn as the economic base of

> rural Mexican communities is the problem of

> contamination of indigenous corn by transgenes,

> genes from genetically modified US corn.

>

> Mexico's shift to the " free market " directly

> underpins the contamination of the native varieties

> corn by transgenes: Mexico imports about five

> million tons of corn a year from the US. On the

> average, 30% of the US corn is transgenic, which has

> been mixed with non-transgenic corn. While the

> cultivation of transgenic crops is not yet permitted

> in Mexico, their import as food and feed is. It is

> now believed that the transgene contamination came

> from Mexican peasant farmers buying corn from local

> stores and, as is common here, planting it as part

> of their corn crop.

>

> According to Aldo Gonzales of the Uníon de

> Organizaciones de la Sierra Juarez Oaxaca, a group

> dedicated to the welfare of indigenous farmers, the

> most likely channel of entry of transgenic corn was

> via the local government stores which sell grain in

> rural areas all over Mexico. Transgenic corn that

> was imported from the US was mixed with corn for

> sale via the government stores, named DICONSA.

> Farmers often plant the seed sold at DICONSA stores.

> The distinction between corn as feed or food and

> corn as seed for planting has never traditionally

> existed in rural Mexico.

>

> Guelatao de Juarez, the town where Gonzales' group

> is based, is one of the communities where transgenes

> were found in the corn crops of indigenous farmers.

> Samples from the local DICONSA stores were transgene

> positive as well.

>

> The controversy first broke when Ignacio Chapela and

> David Quist of UC Berkeley published a paper in the

> journal Nature in December 2001 showing that

> transgenes from Bt and RoundUp Ready corn

> contaminated the local corn in Oaxaca. The evidence

> showed that the transgenes had " introgressed " into

> the local corn, meaning that, mostly likely via

> pollen transfer from transgenic corn plants, the

> genes had been transferred to the local corn. The

> next year, Mexican government scientists showed the

> same result, concluding that 3% to 60% of corn

> samples were contaminated with transgenes.

> Furthermore, it was stated in the Chapela article

> that the promoter gene, known as the 35S promoter,

> originally from cauliflower mosaic virus, was

> probably one of the polluting genes. The function of

> the promoter gene is to turn on the target

> transgene. Much is unknown about what the promoter

> gene would do in the native corn plants.

>

> Transgenes in corn are independent entities so that

> when they introgress into populations they can be

> more or less hidden. In other words, if pollen from

> transgenic yellow corn (all commercial transgene

> corn is yellow) fertilizes white corn, the kernels

> that were pollinated will develop into yellow grains

> where the transgenic pollen fertilized, but not

> necessarily in subsequent generations. Subsequent

> generations of corn can be yellow with transgenes,

> white with transgenes, yellow without transgenes, or

> white without transgenes.

>

> Different transgenes can end up mixed in one plant.

> No testing has ever been done on such mixes, and no

> one knows what effect this kind of mixture may have

> on human or animal health.

>

> A storm of controversy, created by the biotech

> industry PR machine, followed the findings of Quest

> and Chapela. For the first time in its 133 year

> history, Nature, considered the top science journal

> in the world, published an " apology " (short of a

> retraction) stating that they should not have

> published the paper, even though it had been

> reviewed by scientific peers. It turns out that they

> were under intense pressure from the biotechnology

> community, reportedly facilitated by a PR firm hired

> by Monsanto, to retract the paper.

>

> When scientists from the Mexican government

> submitted to the results of their study, which

> verified the Quist and Chapela results that there is

> transgenic contamination in Mexican corn, the two

> peer reviewers for Nature turned it down – one

> stating that the results were already common

> knowledge (!) and the other rejecting it saying that

> the percentage contamination was too high to be

> believable.

>

> The possible reasons behind the Nature editors'

> questionable decisions came out via some aggressive

> investigative journalism by a writer for The

> Guardian (UK), George Monbiot, who uncovered a

> surreptitious, neo-viral type PR campaign whose goal

> was to attack and undermine the work of Chapela and

> the Mexican scientists. The PR firm, the Bivings

> Group, was reported by Monbiot to be a client of

> Monsanto and other biotech firms. The attacks were

> carried out, using the names of individuals who were

> supposedly scientists, via postings on the main

> pro-biotech Internet discussion group, AgBioWorld.

>

> The Guardian quoted the following from the Bivings

> Group's website about their " viral marketing "

> strategy:

>

> " There are some campaigns where it would be

> undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience

> know that your organization is directly involved ...

> it is possible to make postings to these outlets

> that present your position as an uninvolved third

> party ... Perhaps the greatest advantage of viral

> marketing is that your message is placed into a

> context where it is more likely to be considered

> seriously. "

>

> Incredible is the fact that, despite world concern

> and huge gaps in knowledge, no new analyses have

> been done for the 2003 Mexican corn crop, or at

> least, no results have been released. Just at the

> time that the whole issue needs clarifying, there is

> no information whatsoever. I received the following

> response from the David Poland of the International

> Center for the Improvement of Maize and Wheat

> (CIMMYT), near Mexico City, the world center for the

> monitoring of corn genetics, when I asked about

> follow-up analyses of Mexican corn:

>

> " I don’t know of any analysis of field samples done

> by CIMMYT for 2003… Nobody has stepped forward with

> funds to conduct such studies. Our core budget is

> under extreme pressure from …. cutbacks …. We have

> sought, without success, to get the (latest

> analysis) data from INE/CONABIO (the Mexican

> government), including methodology, but they will

> not release it nor publish it in a peer reviewed

> journal. "

>

> There may be legitimate questions about the

> methodology and accuracy of the analyses that have

> been done for transgenes. At least one corn

> geneticist maintains that transgene contamination

> levels of over a few tenths of a percent would

> indicate faulty methodology. False positives can

> also be a problem, especially when the levels of the

> target compounds are low, such as 1% to 3%.

>

> If this is the case, then why have there not been

> any new analyses which attempt to remedy these

> methodological problems and clarify the situation?

>

> The whole thing smacks of cover-up, not necessarily

> by CIMMYT, but by the entities involved in funding

> further studies, making policy, and developing

> transgene products.

>

> Strengthening the case for cover-up is the recent

> decision by the North American Commission for

> Environmental Cooperation (CEC), under pressure from

> the US to delay the release of a report on transgene

> contamination of Mexican corn, which had been

> scheduled to be released June 7. The report

> ostensibly contains the most recent analyses of

> Mexican corn for transgenes.

>

> The CEC, a Montreal-based body set up as part of the

> environmental aspects of NAFTA, is currently the

> main international organization that appears to be

> " in charge " of monitoring and recommending policy on

> the issue of trans-border transgene contamination in

> North America, as the contamination came about as a

> result of trade.

>

> The CEC report comes as part of a legal process

> initiated by non-governmental organizations in

> Mexico, led by Greenpeace Mexico, filed under

> Article 13 of the North American Agreement on

> Environmental Cooperation, which challenges the

> legitimacy and safety of US corn exports to Mexico.

>

> As part of this process, the CEC created the Maize

> and Biodiversity Advisory Group and in March 2004

> hosted a conference in Oaxaca " Maize and

> Biodiversity: The Effects of Transgenic Maize in

> Mexico " . Some of the world’s top corn scientists

> presented papers on the issue. The conclusions were

> not earthshaking, but they were significant:

>

> The fact that transgenes have indeed polluted

> Mexican indigenous corn crops is irrefutable. This

> backs up the Chapela study and throws the entire

> incident of its retroactive disavowal by Nature, and

> the attacks by the biotech community, into sharp

> relief: it was and continues to be politically-based

> manipulation of science and the suppression of

> scientific evidence.

>

> The dynamics of gene flow in corn are

> extraordinarily complex and scientists know little

> about how the genetics of transgenes will develop in

> the Mexican corn populations. Nor does anyone know

> what the ecological and human health effects will

> be.

>

> Transgene contamination is currently continuing and

> will spread, if no action is taken.

> The final report and recommendations of the Advisory

> Group were to have been released this month (June

> 2004) at a conference in Puebla, Mexico. However,

> the commission, made up of representatives from the

> US, Canada, and Mexico, has postponed the release of

> the report. According to a June 22 article in the

> Mexican newspaper La Jornada, the commission is

> under pressure from the US and multinational biotech

> companies to delay the report, whose release would

> support the case of an EU ban on transgenic crops

> from the US. The US is currently challenging, via

> the WTO, the EU ban.

>

> The pressure from the US to delay the release of the

> Maize and Biodiversity Advisory Group's report comes

> despite the fact that the group is heavily skewed

> toward the biotech industry, despite Article 13's

> proviso that advisory groups be made up of

> " independent experts " . At least five of its 16

> members are directly involved in or benefit

> economically from the biotech industry. The original

> group had no one whatsoever from groups representing

> indigenous farmers or environmental groups, nor did

> it have any scientists specializing in corn. After

> pressure from the original groups who brought on the

> investigation, one woman from a Oaxaca farmers group

> was admitted.

>

> Mexico is under intense pressure from the US to back

> the US's pro-transgenic crops policies. Many groups

> here in Mexico are accusing the Mexican government

> of caving in to pressure from the US and

> multinationals in not moving swiftly to develop a

> strong policy against transgenics. The incipient

> weak Mexican government policy on transgenics is

> consistent with its policy toward small farmers,

> that of catering more to the interests of

> large-scale agriculture and industry.

>

> Similar scenarios are being played out in other

> countries like India and Thailand.

>

> The next year or two will continue to be watershed

> years in the history of the genetic makeup of the

> human food system, and the story unfolding in Mexico

> may play a critical role in determining which

> direction the issue flows.

>

> COMING NEXT: An overview of organics in Mexico

>

> IMAGE CAPTIONS accompanying this article:

>

> *Aldo Gonzales of the Uníon de Organizaciones de la

> Sierra Juarez Oaxaca (UNOSJO), a group dedicated to

> the welfare of indigenous farmers. Gonzales and

> UNOSJO have been very active in the campaign to

> bring transgene contamination of native corn to the

> public's attention, and to raise awareness of the

> problem among campesinos in Oaxaca.

>

> *Despite falling prices corn acreage in Mexico is

> up. Some farmers must keep cultivating the land in

> order to maintain rights to it - others just don't

> know what else to do. Above, Fidel Lopez weeds his

> father's corn crop near the town of Guelatao de

> Juarez, Oaxaca.

>

> *Benito Lopez examines last year's corn, a local

> variety, from which he selected seed for this year's

> crop, now about a month in the ground. Even though

> cultivation of transgenic corn is banned in Mexico

> farmers here face a serious contamination problem

> —an estimated 3% to 60% of corn contaminated with

> transgenes.