Up in Arms Against GM Maize in Mexico

by Katherine Gustafson · 2009-12-08 06:00:00 UTC
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In Mexico, where maize (otherwise known as corn) was first wrestled into domestication, planting of any genetically modified version of the plant has been outlawed for the past 11 years. This restriction was in part meant to prevent the traditional varieties of maize, Mexico's living heritage, from becoming contaminated by transgenic species.

It is profoundly distressing, therefore, to hear that in November the Mexican government permitted Monsanto and Dow AgriSciences to plant GMO maize on test 24 plots totaling almost 32 acres in the northern states of Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Coahuila and Tamaulipas, according to the journal Nature.

The tests are intended to see if hardier varieties of the crop will be suitable for the Mexican landscape, and while officials claim to be putting measures in place to prevent contamination, I'm having a hard time believing it.

A whole lot of scientists, it turns out, agree with me; almost 2,000 of them signed a petition aiming to stop the testing. "There is no way to stop gene flow to the native crops," Montgomery Slatkin, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, told Nature. A coalition of environmental groups, including Greenpeace, filed a legal challenge, but the government rejected it.

Sigh. We might as well say goodbye to uncontaminated maize here and now. I swear, soon enough no one on this planet will know what real, nature-made food looks like.

Photo courtesy of David Spender via flickr

Katherine Gustafson is a freelance writer and editor with a background in international nonprofit organizations.
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