hey, my tamale has a monsanto stamp on it...

[Guest guest]

Seeds of Secrecy The Mexican government has tried to silence scientists who

discovered genetically modified corn where it doesn't belong.

by Kristi Coale May/June 2002

 

An empty office building in a rough section of Mexico City was not the place

where Ignacio Chapela expected to be on a rainy evening early last September.

The microbial ecologist from the University of California at Berkeley had

traveled to the capital to meet with Mexican scientists who were working to

verify some disturbing findings that had turned up in his research. DNA from

genetically modified corn, Chapela discovered, is contaminating local varieties

developed over centuries in the remote mountains of Oaxaca. The implications are

far-reaching: If GM corn can find its way into such an isolated region,

scientists warn, then it can go anywhere.

 

The discovery was especially startling because Mexico has banned the planting of

GM corn for nearly four years while it considers how best to safeguard the

natural varieties grown in Oaxaca. But instead of sounding the alarm over

Chapela's findings, a government official named Fernando Ortiz Monasterio

summoned him to the deserted building. There, to Chapela's surprise, Ortiz

suggested he withhold his research. Mexico's biosafety commission, Ortiz

explained, was preparing new rules that would end the government moratorium on

planting GM corn. " Everything is going fine, except we have this one hurdle, "

Chapela recalls Ortiz telling him, " and that one hurdle is you. "

 

The warning rattled Chapela. " For him to say this to me in an empty building was

intimidating, " he says. He ignored the pressure, however, and published his

findings in the November 29 issue of the journal Nature.

 

The Mexican government, for its part, has continued its efforts to squelch the

news. When scientists from Mexico's biodiversity commission and the National

Institute of Ecology found the spread of GM corn to be even more extensive than

Chapela reported, top-level officials pressured them to keep quiet. Three

government scientists who helped verify Chapela's findings told Mother Jones

that they have been told not to discuss their research. " The biosafety

commission and other parts of the government have said this is something we

shouldn't be talking about, " says Jorge Soberon, director of Mexico's

biodiversity commission.

 

The Mexican government did not respond to requests for interviews, but documents

show that officials are more concerned about preventing publicity than

addressing the findings. In a letter to Chapela last November, Mexico's

then-undersecretary for agriculture, Víctor Manuel Villalobos, said the

government was working to undo " the damage to agriculture and the economy caused

by the publication " in Nature.

 

A major issue in the debate over genetically modified foods is whether consumers

and farmers can choose unaltered seeds and food products. But if GM corn has

spread to Oaxaca, the region where corn originated, choice may be on its way to

irrelevancy. Agrochemical companies acknowledged last summer that they can't

guarantee the conventional seed they sell is free of genetic modification, and

organic crops labeled " GM Free " are testing positive for altered DNA.

 

The Oaxaca discovery has sparked a new drive for labeling and segregating crops

and food products in Mexico. Opponents of lifting the ban on GM corn in Mexico

are also pushing the government to further examine the extent of the

contamination. " We have been telling the government that this is technology we

can't control, " says Soberon.