Ecobreves – MEXICO: Transgenic Maize Knocking at the Door

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

MEXICO CITY, Aug 26 2006 (IPS) - Environmentalists, scientists and small farmers in Mexico are on alert after the government announced that it is ready to authorize experimental fields of genetically modified maize. The groups say it would be illegal and irresponsible. Officials from the Agriculture Secretariat declared in mid-August that it is highly probable that before the end of President Vicente Fox's term in office, in December, experimental cultivation of transgenic corn will be given the green light, thus attending to requests made for the last several years by companies like the transnational agribusiness giant Monsanto.

If it does so, “the government will be committing an illegal act and will face a strong opposition movement,” Areli Carreón, coordinator of Greenpeace-Mexico's genetic engineering campaign, told Tierramérica.

Cultivation of genetically engineered maize has been banned in Mexico since the 1990s in order to protect local varieties, which are the product of traditional methods of cross pollination begun some 9,000 years ago in what is now Mexico.