Environmental for Food Justice

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 m...

Provisional suspension of the planting of transgenic maize in Yucatán 16 COURT APPEALS & SUPREME COURT HAVE MAINTAINED THE SUSPENSION FOR TWO YEARS Devon G. Peña | Viejo San Acacio, CO | November 4, 2015 In a press release dated November 3, the lead plaintiffs’ organization, Demanda Colectiva Maíz , announced that opponents of genetically engineered corn in Mexico prevailed in an important new federal appeals court ruling. The federal judge, Benjamin Soto Sánchez, head of the second Unitarian Court in Civil and Administrative Matters of the First Circuit, upheld the provisional suspension that prohibits pertinent federal agencies from processing and granting the privilege of sowing or releasing into the environment of transgenic maize in the country. The federal suspension has been in force since September 2013 despite 100 challenges by transnational agribusiness interests and the federal government. The attorneys for the defenders of maize had also argued that, in the case of GMO ...