Ecobreves – MEXICO: Transgenic Maize Report Feeds Doubts

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MEXICO CITY, Aug 22 2005 (IPS) - Activists received with skepticism a scientific report released this month with great fanfare that assures that no trace of transgenic maize was found in a specific area of Mexico, a country where the presence of genetically modified corn has been recorded since 2001. “There's something strange going on here, because behind the study, whose results could be legitimate, there seem to be transnational and local business interests,” said Silvia Ribeiro, spokeswoman in Latin America for the Canada-based non-governmental ETC Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration.

The study, published in the U.S. journal of the Academy of Sciences, was edited by Barbara Schaal, who works in a laboratory of the University of Washington, sponsored by the transgenic seed production company Monsanto, Ribeiro said in a Tierramérica interview.

The authorities' fanfare surrounding the release of the report generated some suspicion, because other reports published by government agencies indicating that genetically modified maize does indeed exist in different areas of Mexico, have been kept quiet and hardly publicized.

According to José Tron, of the National Chamber of Industrialized Maize, the new study “levels the road for the commercial planting of transgenic corn.”