Monsanto in Mexico | Court rules against the Gene Giant in Yucatán

Mexican
judge bans planting of GMO soy

CROP
SEEN AS THREAT TO HONEY BEE COLONIES

Devon
G. Peña | Seattle, WA | July 24, 2014

According to reports appearing
in the Mexican print media, a federal district court judge
in Yucatán yesterday overturned a permit issued to Monsanto, the U.S.-based multinational corporation that is a leading purveyor of genetically
modified crops (GMOs). The permit, which had been
issued by the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development,
Fisheries and Food on June 6, 2012, allowed
the commercial planting of GM soy bean
in Yucatán. The ruling was based on
consideration of scientific evidence demonstrating (to the judge’s
satisfaction) that GMO soy crop plantings threaten Mexican
honey production in the states of
Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatán.

An op-ed piece appearing in
yesterday’s La Jornada
(July 23), applauded the decision with insightful commentary suggesting that the
federal agencies involved in this dispute are guilty of corruption and
collusion with the transnational Gene Giant.

Map of transgenic crops in Mexico. Source: FAO

According to La Jornada, the permit(s) revoked
by court order had been issued by SAGARPA (Mexico’s agriculture
ministry) and SEMARNAT (Mexico’s environmental protection agency) despite longstanding recommendations for denial made by the nation’s own leading environmental
institutions – the Mexican National
Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity, National
Commission of Natural Protected Areas, and National Institute of Ecology. As
was reported
here on March 16, the federal permit approval also came despite objections
by several hundred scientific research scholars
associated with Mexico’s Union of Concerned Scientists
Committed to Society.



At the very heart of the court ruling is the all important
conclusion that coexistence is not possible: The court
is in effect agreeing with scientists, farmers, beekeepers, and indigenous
communities that Monsanto GM soy and
honey production are incompatible. According
to La Jornada, the scientific concerns are
complemented by economic factors:
“[T]he aforementioned permit runs the severe risk of
undermining the marketing of honey
produced in these states and destined for the European market”. According to the
data cited in the ruling,  85 percent of Mexican honey
is exported to European Union (EU) markets and the Court
of Justice of the EU already prohibits (as of 2011) the sale of honey
containing pollen from GM crops.

The editorial in La Jornada further opined that:

Taken together, these elements make this judicial determination of particular importance: This is a setback
to the major transnational
corporation involved with the production and marketing of genetically modified foods, whose
presence in our country has grown in recent years, and is
an extremely valuable victory for
peasant farmer, indigenous, environmental, and scientific organizations that are
opposed to these crops because
they constitute a risk factor for the health and nutrition of populations and biodiversity. [My
translation]

The decision is also a rebuke to
a set of federal governmental agencies that continue to exhibit a “clearly
inappropriate and irresponsible attitude” that borders on complicity with transnational capitalist
interests and against the national interest. The Mexican government – despite
the nation’s status as a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity
and the Cartegena Biosafety Protocils – has refused to take the responsible
approach being followed across much of Europe “where...national governments are adopting a precautionary approach to scientific
evidence and risk effects”. In
contrast, the Mexican government is not just failing to respect its various
treaty obligations – which carry the force of binding law – the agriculture and
environmental protection ministries are actually “by-passing guarantees owed native communities – such as the right to be consulted on operations of
individuals that affect their
territories, and leaving them to
their fate in legal battles
against of powerful multinationals.”

2013 Mexican protests against Monsanto. Source: cipamericas

The editorial in La Jornada celebrates the setback dealt Monsanto
but it also notes, somewhat somberly, that this “is clearly
insufficient to reverse the damage
caused by opening the free production of genetically modified crops” across Mexico. However, the editorial suggests that
the ruling reinforces the need for a broad and systematic review by federal agricultural and food
authorities of their current policies that favor large transnational
corporations like Monsanto that peddle GM crops and foods
and against traditional farmers and the nation’s own food sovereignty.

The editors conclude by noting:

If it is true that
the eradication of hunger is a
priority of the current federal
government, then the starting point must be the
recognition of the relationship between
the [GMO] scourge and the food policy model that
has been imposed on the entire
population, which has transformed the human right
to food into the private business of a few
companies. [My translation]

Indeed, this is the principal rationale for
resisting Monsanto: A democratic food system can ill afford to allow a handful
of monstrously large transnational corporations to control our food and agriculture. It really is that simple,
whatever else the science might tell us, food is best produced, served, and consumed from the bottom up, mostly at the local level.