Just when you think there’s no winning against the biotech industry, news out of Mexico City shows that all is not lost. After years of deliberation, a Mexico judge has placed an indefinite ban on genetically-engineered corn. Effective immediately, companies like Monsanto and DuPont/Pioneer will no longer be allowed to plant or sell their corn within the country’s borders.
The decision comes nearly two years after Care2 reported that the Mexican government had put Monsanto’s GE corn on hold, citing the need for more tests. “Corn is a staple food crop in Mexico, intricately intertwined with the country’s cuisine, history, and culture. Authorities are concerned that Monsanto’s genetically modified corn will contaminate native species, and could cause both health and environmental issues,” Care2 reported at the time.
Now, it appears that Mexican authorities have finally made their decision. According to Environmental Food and Justice, Judge Jaime Eduardo Verdugo J. of the Twelfth Federal District Court for Civil Matters of Mexico City ruled that the genetically-engineered corn posed ”the risk of imminent harm to the environment.”
Where’s that economic hit-man when you need him?
Good for Mexico. The US is not going to go against any large corporation. It is up to other countries to stop the US corporations from screwing the rest of the world like they have done to the US.
Maize is a huge part of the culture. Correct me if I am wrong but they first cultivated corn? It would be like Monsanto introducing genetically modified Pinot or Cabernet grapes to the Bordeaux.
This stuff is modified to not die when 2,4-D (Round Up) is sprayed directly on it. I wash all my food before serving.
All grains are genetically modified one way or another. One of my jobs was for a giant (I mean giant) Agri-University. All milk, All meat, All seed comes from crossbreeding. Your organic chicken is about as pure as your inbred “pure bred” hunting dog.
Our life expectancy is up. Why? Reliable quality food with high nutritional content and vaccines.
I spent all summer trying to grow heirloom Okra. 40-50 pods out of ten plants. Fail. Had I been feeding my family they would have starved to death.
I’ll take GMO, in fact, irradiate it please so it last longer without chemicals.
I see a sea of starving Mexicans flooding the Southland and eating genetically modified food.
For the Mexico decision – it is strictly scientific, be it focusing on only one dangerous aspect of GMO. Repeatable studies have been done (some of the best in Canada, because their environment allows for large scale tests) confirming that GMO species cross-pollinate with local varieties up to 200km away form intentional plantings. Whats bad in that? – GMO plants are typically sterile, so farmer next door (or maybe 200km away) from the GMO field may find that his next seeding of his own stock fails… Just this aspect of GMO and “patented seeds” is very destructive.
Real threat in my opinion is much worse – incorporating genetic material from very different species together may (and most certainly will, questions is only “when”) foster inter-species disease propagation with globally catastrophic consequences (just remember the chaos of AIDS jumping much narrower species gap from monkeys to humans).
Indeed. The problem of cross-pollinating is yet another example of corporations externalizing the costs of damage caused by their activity.
It has a long history and it isn’t pretty. Superfund (which, see) for example. But it goes way, way back. In the initial days of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, a farmer with land adjacent to the tracks sued because the soot spewed from locomotives was damaging his crops. The courts, while they agreed that the damage was caused by the railroad, determined that the new technology of steam powered railways was so valuable and useful that they did nothing about it. And that set a precedent.
Years later, Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River catches on fire and people are dying from air pollution in Donora Pennsylvania.
If the bugs wont eat it..
If the Mice/rats wont eat it..
IF nature cant eat it…
I TRY NOT TO EAT IT..
Good luck with that not eating thing.
I bet you drink (or have had) soda pop. Or maybe you prefer some kind of juice instead. I bet you never considered things like barbeque sauce, salad dressing nor even an average can of soup. So you probably have no idea how much SUGAR you consume.
And I bet if you’re overweight, you’re probably an American and may even be so arrogant as to think that it’s not your fault too. Think again!
There’s one thing you haven’t considered when you say you “TRY NOT TO EAT IT”. Nature never considered human intervention. And she certainly never considered human greed nor human arrogance either.
Same with Sodium, ~75% of our intake comes from restaurant and prepared food.
What about ants and roaches?
Has anyone ever gotten sick from eating a GMO food?
I am no fan of big agrabusiness. I kind-of loathe them, actually.
But I have lived overseas and I think some of the anti-GMO push is really just anti-Americanism rather than any sort of science.
Hey, one guy who chooses not to be a denier of science.
Plus I suspect that much of the native crop in Mexico is genetically modified as well, through hybridization not in an indoor laboratory.
Ask Dr. Gary Null that question.
FOOL!
Oh, you mean Gary Null with _maybe_ a PhD? http://quackwatch.com/04ConsumerEducation/null.html A guy who uses people’s desire to believe in conspiracy theories to sell stuff of dubious nutritional value with, at best, overinflated benefits? That Gary Null?
“The animals on the GM diet suffered mammary tumors, as well as severe liver and kidney damage. The researchers said 50 percent of males and 70 percent of females died prematurely, compared with only 30 percent and 20 percent in the control group.”
http://naturalnews.com/037249_gmo_study_cancer_tumors_organ_damage.html
http://dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2205509/Cancer-row-GM-foods-French-study-claims-did-THIS-rats–cause-organ-damage-early-death-humans.html
They also developed anomalies such as hair growing out of their mouths. The stuff does make me sick {gm corn and soy}. It gives me bad acid reflux and a stuffy nose like an allergy — I don’t think it is a good idea to incorporate protien into our bodies which have been modified to continually produce the bacillus thuringiensis toxin which is causing ulceration of the digestive tract and who knows what other as yet unknown groups of genes have been triggered and what that might do. It is unusual to be able to just turn on or off a certain trait without all kinds of other things being expressed in the combination.
The average lifespan of those lab rats is 2 years and 80% of rats develop tumors and other oddities under normal conditions…
You can always find a quack who will publish the results you’re looking for. You figure out the truth by looking at large numbers of studies. There’s a solid body of evidence indicating that there are no health effects related to GMO consumption.
Well, duhh. Never mind that they are *lab rats* being stuck full of stuff to see if they will get cancer, or not — The numbers are posted for those bumpy ones vs a *control group* of the same type of rat — nice try, troll.
Everyday. Everything we eat is somehow genetically modified.
mexico isnt the only one
http://gizadeathstar.com/2012/11/kenya-joins-the-growing-list-of-countries-banning-gmo-foods-and-crops/
it isnt a matter of getting sick… it is a matter of corporate control, lock in, and profiteering .
be afraid.. be very afraid
I can’t say if splicing mosquito genes with corn is exactly a bad thing. After all, we humans can safely consume either one without too much side effect. But who really wants to? And isn’t that the real issue here? Not being given a CHOICE?!
Or could it be that choice has been taken away by a greedy, corrupt monolithic giant known as Monsanto?!
Try reading the following and see if you don’t agree that Monsanto (not necessarily the science) needs to away:
http://march-against-monsanto.com/2013/10/why-i-am-against-monsanto.html
There! I’ve led you donkey’s to water…
“”The law states that the contaminated crops, no matter how the contamination occurs (pollination, wind, etc.), becomes property of Monsanto. Monsanto has done this to over 400 small farms, putting many of them out of business (Source). Monsanto is taking advantage of their invasive GM crops as a way of eliminating competition.
Yep. Somehow they are so coddled that what they are getting away with is like busting into your living room, shitting on your coffee table, then calling the cops and having you arrested and your house confiscated because that is obviously their patented shit on your table.
When Marijuana is legal…and it soon will be everywhere except Utah (prudes) and Ohio (Dummies).
Imagine the stuff Monsanto and Dole will dream up for us.
Micro brewers are cross mingling all kinds of genetically modified crops with outstanding results. Cheers! GMO
We combined this beautiful strain, Blue Rush, with trichinella worms and shark chub spirochetes — Now, you calmly dismember momma just like we always said cannabis would make you do.
Well, I read the link ad some links from that page as well. Though I agree with the anti-Monsanto line for the most part, this looks to be pretty biased reporting.
The farmer at the link is also reported as someone who creates new varieties of canola in his research. That sounds like GMO food through hybridization. Perhaps he was stealing Monsanto product as well as part of his research, perhaps not.
There is another link from that page to a farmer named Bowman who bought seed at a grain elevator, and Monsanto sued him because some of that seed was their product. The problem is, the farmer planted the seed he bought, then sprayed with Roundup, and then kept the remaining plants and used those seeds. Now, it looks to me like he deliberately weeded out the Monsanto seeds from his purchase for later use.
“That sounds like GMO food through hybridization.” /// WTF???
“Sounds like” you don’t think so good.
Define GMO: “….organisms that have had specific changes introduced into their DNA using the methods of genetic engineering. …”
Define genetic engineering: “….have had foreign genes (genes from other plants or animals) inserted into their genetic codes.”
Define Hybridization: “In biology and specifically, genetics, the term hybrid has several meanings, all referring to the offspring of sexual reproduction.”
…….all to the point: gmo is human forced that will not arise in nature whereas hybrids are “arranged” by man or by nature with being able to survive to birth/reproduction being a HUGE safety check that is not present in human forced combinations. Hybrids arise by CLOSELY related species NOT across phylum, kingdom and even domain.
AKA==not the same thing AT ALL.
AKA==the same critical false equivalency the slowest among us bring to all discussions.
Silly Hoomans.
Click from that wikipedia article you are quoting, and you see a link to gm crops, with a description of gene modification in nature or traditional agriculture, going back to 1875.
Yea, not the same thing, because the real point is that people want to attack the big corporations. If you switched the methods being used, the attack would be on the natural hybridization.
Lyin’ Mike substituting the monkey on his back for any legitimate argument says:
Yea, not the same thing, because the real point is that people want to attack the big corporations. // BS. THE ISSUE IS GMO. Try to focus rather than vomiting your dogma onto everyone else.
If you switched the methods being used, the attack would be on the natural hybridization. /// Not true. Big Corps did natural hybridization for 50 years to the Cheers of the Masses for the Green Revolution it brought us. THE ISSUE IS GMO. Try to focus rather than spread your lies.
It’s usually when people don’t recognize the difference between ‘transgenic’ and ‘hybrid’ that I just tell them to enjoy the tumors and the bad bowels and move along with a parting shot that I still wish I and my plants didn’t have to be poisoned by his stupid fucking FuckUp every time a fog comes up.
Its a far tangent you trying to bring in gay issues. Lets stick to the subject at hand? otoh==if Lyin’ Mike is talking about a tangelo wrapped in a banana skin, then transwhatwasit is pretty close.
Tim, I got 1875 from Wikipedia. They would never be wrong, right?
Without a link, I assume you are Lyin’. The odds are still 50% even when you DO have a link. That always cracks me up.
“Where’s that economic hit-man when you need him?” /// Interesting construct there. The hit-man being sent in to enforce US Gubment interests when foreigners go too far astray?
Hmmmmm…..the book was about World Bank and US Big Finanacial interests. Has ADM and Monsanto horned their way into this high vaunted group? Maybe so, but I think you have the “dynamics” of the issue here backwards unless you think Monsanto raping the world with its GMO/UN Treaty enforced trading laws is the higher interest?
Regardless, interesting subject. The ONLY justification for the exclusivity given to such GMO should be limited to them recovering their investment/research/development costs. Not an ongoing forever profit stream.
SAY!!!—why would ANYONE even characterize Monsanto/ADM as “American centric orgs to begin with??
Pros and Cons to all we do. When the balance tips, so should the policies attendant thereto.
The only ADM commercials are during Sunday morning talk shows. Hmmmm. The only shows that politicos watch.
Ever read a magazine?
Rarely,
But old congressmen do.
Oh. My. Fucking. God. — Now I’ve got crude, insensative, bigoted, whatever jokes of Hellen Keller with a gun clip running around inside my shut-in brain.
I think the only advantage that Monsanto’s GM corn has, is to the company itself. The GMO corn was designed to “take over” other corn crops, and allow Monsanto to claim that whatever ends up growing across crop boundaries, and land borders, is theirs too. So they can legally demand royalties, of farmer growing Monsanto’s corn, that wasn’t contract for. But Monsanto wasn’t responsible for its corn’s ability to contaminate other crops, on its own. Other than that, the GMO corn probably has little else going for it.
The judge can make any call he wants. GM genes were detected in plants in indigenous corn crops in Mexico a decade or more ago as far out in the sticks as the people looking could get. Corn pollen is spread by the wind and the genes are going to get around. You can’t prevent it.