Monsanto in Mexico | Breaking News: Mexican Supreme Court Upholds Lower Court Ban on Transgenic Corn

Imagen de una protesta en
el Centro de la Ciudad de México

contra la trasnacional
Monsanto. Photo by Pablo Ramos.

Moderator’s Note: We have been waiting for news on this
important case, the latest, and perhaps the last, in a ten-year campaign by
Monsanto and its allies to impose transgenic maize products on Mexico. Due
process in Mexico is a tangled and lengthy juridical process and Monsanto has
exploited the ‘amparo’ rights clause of the Mexican Constitution to prolong and
intensify its attacks on Indigenous and peasant farmers. These are the farmers
who sustain the living seed libraries of the vital Mesoamerican Vavilov Center
of Origin and Diversification of corn among more than three dozen other native
crops that literally feed the world.

This attack
continued through the means of repeated challenges to successful court
decisions and rulings verifying the legality of the ban on genetically
engineered corn, soy, and other transgenic crops. The underlying rationale of
the anti-GMO movement in Mexico has always been premised on the principle of
the right of Indigenous and peasant farmers to protect Mexico’s unique status
as the center of origin and diversification of maize and its wild relatives and
intermediaries (e.g., Zea diploperennis).
The benefits of this fact are said to outweigh those associated with free trade
and commercialization of  GMOs which come
with serious environmental, socioeconomic, and cultural impacts.

In the latest
ruling, issued earlier today, Mexico’s Supreme Court refused to review an
appeals court decision from 2013, which in effect will allow the appeals court
to verify the suspension of permits for the planting of GE corn grain and
uphold the enforcement of the ban throughout the country. The original decision
included a declaration that the benefits of GMO corn remain unproven.

I am posting my translation
of a report on the ruling written by Angélica Enciso and Gustavo Castillo for
the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, who
broke the story earlier this morning. This is a major substantive victory for
the anti-GMO movement in Mexico with huge implications globally. Efforts like
this will continue to spread across the globe, including, I hope, north of the
border into the centers of origin and diversification of our beloved Turtle Island
Corn Belt in the USA.

SCJN rejects Monsanto
ammunition on transgenic maize

THE
APPEALS COURT HAD RULED THAT THE BENEFITS OF THESE PRODUCTS ARE UNCERTAIN

Angélica Enciso
and Gustavo Castillo

Newspaper La
Jornada

Friday, May 12,
2017, p. 38

The first chamber
of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) refused to review or
analyze an amparo promoted by the company Monsanto, with which the
multinational intended that the maximum court of the country pronounce on the
final status of the issuance of commercial permits for the sowing of transgenic
maize.

In this way, the
decision to resolve this trial involving the companies Monsanto, Dow, Pioneer
and Dupont, as well as the secretariats of the Environment and Agriculture, and
on the other hand, the civil society and academic organizations that are opposed
to the marketing of transgenic maize, will have to be resolved by the first
collegiate court in civil matters.

This review case
began last January, when the collegial court was about to issue a ruling on whether
to maintain the precautionary measure imposed in September 2013, which banned
the authorizations for transgenic maize plantings pending resolution of the
problem. Demand of collective action that organizations presented that year. On
January 26, the court suspended the vote on the resolution because Monsanto had
submitted the petition to the SCJN and should await the determination of this
instance.

The lawyer of the
Corn Collective, René Sánchez Galindo, explained that last Wednesday in a
private meeting, the Supreme Court justices evaluated the appeal that Monsanto
filed. None of the justices endorsed the company’s request, which is a requirement
for the Court to place it on iys docket, as individuals cannot impose these
requirements.

Galindo
considered that the arguments of the company—that transgenic maize is not
harmful to health and the environment—are repetitive and reiterate what the
companies Dow, Pioneer and Dupont said in another 22 lawsuits for amparo. He
recalled that the appeals court ruled, inter alia, that the benefits of
transgenics are uncertain. This phrase was not contested by the company which has
not shown the economic benefit of those products.

The suspension of
planting transgenic maize has been in force throughout the country by a court
decision for three and a half years, after a group of organizations, academics
and citizens presented a collective action against the planting of transgenic
maize in Mexico.

In that year (2013)
the federal government was about to give commercial permits for the cultivation
of these products, but District Court 12 determined that the government should
set as a precautionary measure the suspension of the issuance of planting
permits to companies [until the courts could consider the scientific and
economic metrics - brackets added].

This original measure
was decided based on considering the risk of environmental damage with the
cultivation of transgenic maize. The companies that had submitted applications
for commercial planting permits determined to challenge the resolution.

Since then, both
the Environment and Agriculture secretariats and the companies have filed about
100 challenges, including 26 amparo trials, 16 review appeals, 15 complaints,
seven revocations and seven challenges to the admission of the complaint,
According to the organization Seeds of Life.

After surpassing
all those challenges, the trial of the lawsuit began in May 2016, with the
judicial determination to maintain the suspension of the cultivation of the
transgenic maize.