Tortured Tortillas, Redux | Transgenic corn a threat to cornmeal for tamales and tortillas

Photo courtesy of David Kamm Photoworks.

GMO contamination of masa harina consumer products

EATING
BIOFUEL CORN IN YOUR NEXT TORTILLA? – A CALL TO ACTION!

Devon
G. Peña | Seattle, WA | April 14, 2017

In
September 2000, Kraft, Inc. had to recall taco shells after admitting that they
contained a genetically engineered corn that was not approved for human
consumption. The case was a serious breach of biosafety and posed a significant
health risk for persons with allergies to the proteins produced by the
transgenic corn mistakenly added to the processed flour destined for the
tortilla shells (see the original New
York Times report). Now, we have a new incident involving the likely
contamination of masa harina
(cornmeal flour) by transgenic corn in what is supposed to be a GMO-free product
used to make tamales and tortillas.

According
to a report posted to the Huffington Post,
the transgenic corn (Enogen) may have been behind a mysterious incident in
California involving bad masa harina for tamales sold in California at Amapola
Market, a grocery chain in Los Angeles that serves the Mexican and Central
American populations. Reports about consumer complaints indicate that the
tamales “were gooey, fell apart, and even made some people sick.” The Enogen
transgenic corn, a GMO variety from Syngenta (soon to be merged with ChemChina), is approved only for use in the production of biofuel (ethanol) and has already been mired in another controversy involving the transgenic contamination of
nonGMO corn fields; see the report in the NonGMO
Report, which warned of this threat as early as 2013.

Photo courtesy of the Grocery Girls.

One
nonGMO corn supplier made the case four years ago that, “This will ruin corn for
milling…The ethanol industry is happy but other industries are seriously
undermined by this corn.” The same NonGMO
Report also cites Jerry Strissel, a corn breeder who worked at Syngenta for
20 years and who now breeds non-GMO corn for food use, noted: “Getting
contamination from Enogen in corn for the tortilla industry would be
devastating.” 

It
seems these warnings went unheeded and that the threat of contamination posed
by the ethanol-producing transgenic corn is proceeding unchecked, unregulated,
and unmonitored by the EPA, FDA or USDA. Given the current presidential regime’s
dismantling of the EPA and the continued domination of the FDA and USDA by the
industries these agencies regulate, we have few expectations of a regulatory
solution. Instead, it will be litigation (by nonGMO farmers and consumers) that
will have to challenge this threat.

This problem is a case of
environmental racism because the Mexican-origin population is especially
vulnerable to any adverse effects of contamination since we  consume more corn in the form most likely to
be affected (cornmeal).

This
problem is a case of environmental racism because the Mexican-origin population
is especially vulnerable to any adverse effects of contamination since we tend
to consume more corn directly in the form that is most likely to be affected (dry
and wet nixtamalized cornmeal). Compared to other groups, our consumption of
maize is a daily part of our diet and we are dealing with something more
directly threatening than the consumption of derivatives (like cooking oil or
high fructose corn syrup) other consumers regularly use. The tortilla is more
than staple of the Mexican and Mesoamerican diet; it is also symbol of our
culture and identities and a central part of our rich heritage cuisines.

The
most recent incident in California, if it bears out, may not be the only case
and there are reasons to suspect that such contamination events have occurred
more widely than acknowledged. The federal agencies charged with monitoring
these incidents have not done their job so it may be that other cases have gone
unnoticed or unreported.

A Call to Action!

From
the vantage point of the environmental and food justice movements, the threat
posed by transgenic corn to the tamal/tortilla food-processing chain represents a
twofold challenge:

(1) Confronting the direct threat to the health
of Mexican and other Latinx consumers will not be easy given past and current
neoliberal regulatory apparatuses that allow corporations to determine
biosafety and health risks based on their own (proprietary and therefore
secretive) studies. We need to agitate
and litigate to require independent third party testing of biosafety and health
risks, period.

(2) Launching a nation-wide movement to pressure all of the food processors (wholesalers)
and retailers of masa harina to join the NonGMO Project certification program.
This should apply to those companies producing raw masa harina as well as any
manufacturer of finished tortilla product lines. Joining the NonGMO Project
would also provide a more solid footing for legal action by these processors
and retailers in the event of proven contamination by transgenic maize
products.

Many
scholars, farmers, plant breeders, seed savers, and consumers of cornmeal
products view this as more than a biosafety, environmental, and public health
problem. For those of us who are from Mexican-origin communities, the assault
on corn is an attack on our civilization. We are, as Roberto ‘Cintli’ Rodriguez
states, “a corn
civilization,” and maize is at the center of who we are as a diverse
amalgamation and mosaic of cultures, with more than sixty languages, all of
which consider corn to be sacred.

Mexican heirloom corn. Photo courtesy of Regeneration International.

This
past December, a group of 54 Indigenous corn growers from nine countries
drafted the Ek Balam Declaration and presented it to the 13^th
Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (see our report of January
3, 2017). The Ek Balam Declaration makes it clear that corn is
considered a relative and progenitor of humanity and is therefore also experienced
and respected as a sacred entity; maize it is not a mere commodity to be
genetically engineered for the sake of sustaining corporate profiteering at the
expense of biosafety, environmental protection, public health, the genomic integrity
of native heirloom corn varieties, or the agroecological farming practices that
make this variety possible.

It is
well past time for the Chicanx, Mexican-origin, and other Latinx communities to
demand nonGMO corn for our tamales and tortillas. 

It
is well past time for the Chicanx, Mexican-origin, and other Latinx communities
to demand nonGMO corn for our tamales and tortillas. We must mobilize marches,
direct action protests, lawsuits, campaigns to educate our communities and to pressure
elected and regulatory official and agencies, and perhaps most importantly,
boycotts of any manufacturer refusing to join the NonGMO Project. Even from the
point of view of simple economic rationality, we need to understand and
exercise our consumer power:

All
of the marketing research I have reviewed indicates the same thing: The U.S.
Hispanic [sic] population has almost tripled since1988 from 18 to 55 million in
2013. According to Jim Kabbani, chief executive of a trade group called the
Tortilla Industry Council, the so-called Hispanic market for corn products is
worth more than $3 billion. There were 352 tortilla factories in the U.S. in
2012, according to the U.S. Census, up 46 percent from 1998. Flour tortilla
sales edged corn by about $120 million (all figures from a 2014 Bloomberg
News
report). 

These figures likely fail to include the thousands of smaller artisan
producers or neighborhood tortillerias found
in the larger inner cities with significant Latinx populations and therefore considerable consumer demand for fresh masa harina and related products. I recently drove down a
major thoroughfare in Denver’s west-side and counted more than a dozen such small tortilla
factories along a two-mile stretch of the avenue. We should start pressuring the
larger factories to produce tortillas, tamales, and masa harina only with nonGMO ingredients. We must
also support the local artisan producers of nonGMO masa harina and tortilla
products. No more GMO tortillas or tamales—it really could be up to us.

It
is therefore also important for Chicanx, Mexican-origin, and other Latinx
consumers to pressure food processers and manufacturers of tortillas, chips,
and related products to establish working relationships with Latinx corn
growers to create alternative nonGMO (and even heirloom) sources for masa
harina. This would strengthen our growing presence as farmers and help to nudge
the entire agricultural economy in a nonGMO direction.

There
have been some previous efforts in this direction but these have been localized
(regional or state wide, for e.g., in California) and lack the regulatory
muscle to directly ban GMO corn from entering the food chain (purposefully and
accidentally). Every self-respecting member of our corn cultures need to take
back the idea of what constitutes a “corn civilization.”

In
his 2007 book, The
Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan postulated that the U.S. had
replaced Mexico as the world’s preeminent “corn civilization” since our country surpassed Mexico as a consumer of corn products, mostly by gulping down corn
oil, high fructose corn syrup, or corn-fed pigs and beef cows rather than
directly eating fresh corn. This is a flawed argument: The US transgenic corn
machine and consumer market is not a civilization; it is an industrialized
enclosure of a sacred grain. Civilizations must have a sense of what is
sacred. The corn industry in the U.S. lacks such a cultural understanding while the
average American consumer is clueless and unable to replace the Mayan “Corn Walkers” as heirs of the deep foods of such a civilization. The entire US transgenic corn industry is based on violence against a sacred and precious grain and it cannot be allowed to feed us this sacrilege.

It is up to us to reclaim the sacred meaning and to restore the integrity of what it
means to be a true corn civilization.

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Make
Our Corn Great Again! Support the campaign to ban GMO corn in all Mexican product lines.