Mexico Judge Orders Total Ban of GM Maize Crops over Environmental Harm

Posted on Oct 12 2013 - 1:42pm by Sustainable Pulse

A Federal Judge in Mexico has ordered the country’s food and agricultural authorities to ban the planting of all GM maize, La Coperacha announced this week.

According to the group that issued the press release, La Coperacha, a federal judge has ordered Mexico’s SAGARPA (Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca, y Alimentación), which is Mexico’s Secretary of Agriculture, and SEMARNAT (Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales), which is equivalent of the EPA, to immediately “suspend all activities involving the planting of transgenic corn in the country and end the granting of permission for experimental and pilot commercial plantings”.

The unprecedented ban was granted by the Twelfth Federal District Court for Civil Matters of Mexico City. Judge Jaime Eduardo Verdugo J. wrote the opinion and cited “the risk of imminent harm to the environment” as the basis for the decision. The judge’s ruling also ruled that multinationals like Monsanto and Pioneer are banned from the release of transgenic maize in the Mexican countryside” as long as collective action lawsuits initiated by citizens, farmers, scientists, and civil society organizations are working their way through the judicial system.

The decision was explained during a press conference in Mexico City yesterday by members of the community-based organizations that sued federal authorities and companies introducing transgenic maize into Mexico.

The group, Acción Colectiva, is led by Father Miguel Concha of the Human Rights Center Fray Francisco de Vittoria; Victor Suarez of ANEC (National Association of Rural Commercialization Entertprises); Dr. Mercedes Lopéz of Vía Organica; and Adelita San Vicente, a teacher and member of Semillas de Vida, a national organization that has been involved in broad-based social action projects to protect Mexico’s extraordinary status as a major world center of food crop biodiversity.

Some of the native maize varieties from Oaxaca, Mexico According to the press release, Acción Colectiva [Collective Action] aims to achieve absolute federal declaration of the suspension of the introduction of transgenic maize in all its various forms – including experimental and pilot commercial plantings – in  Mexico, “which is the birthplace of corn in the world”.

This ruling marks a milestone in the long struggle of citizen demands for a GMO-free country, acknowledged Rene Sanchez Galindo, legal counsel for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, adding that the ruling has serious enforcement provisions and includes the possibility of “criminal charges for the authorities responsible for allowing the introduction of transgenic corn in our country”.

Father Miguel Concha said the judge’s decision reflects a commitment to respect the Precautionary Principle expressed in various international treaties and statements of human rights. Concha emphasized that the government is obliged to protect the human rights of Mexicans against the economic interests of big business. The lawsuit seeks to protect the “human right to save and use the agro biodiversity of native landraces from the threats posed by GMO maize”, said the human rights advocate.

The class action lawsuit is supported by scientific evidence from studies that have – since 2001 – documented the contamination of Mexico’s native corn varieties by transgenes from GMO corn, principally the varieties introduced by Monsanto’s Roundup ready lines and the herbicide-resistant varieties marketed by Pioneer and Bayer CropScience. The collection of the growing body of scientific research on the introgression of transgenes into Mexico’s native corn genome has been a principal goal and activity of the national campaign, Sin Maíz, No Hay Paíz [Without Corn, There Is No Country].

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4 Comments so far. Feel free to join this conversation.

  1. [email protected] October 13, 2013 at 21:32 - Reply

    sin maiz no hay paiz, means without maid, no country and no peace. Paiz = paz and pais = peace and country

    • j.link January 4, 2014 at 18:54 - Reply

      sin maiz no hay paiz…without corn there is no country Nothing to do with peace whatsoever as there is no peace in mexico

  2. Audrey Collins October 15, 2013 at 21:51 - Reply

    Thank You so much for this decision. It gives me hope. I have stopped eating corn in US as it makes me sick. Thank You , Thank you,

  3. Alejandro Or September 18, 2015 at 21:38 - Reply

    This is not a “Mexico matter” only, this means lots to the people of the whole world.
    This damn monsanto is doing this to one country then to another then to another and another and so on.
    World united against this crap and multinational greedy companies, they don’t want to stop with some few millions the want billions and they want you, to control you and manage you in every way they want!
    We have to stop them!

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