Mexico Paves the Way for 132 GMO Products teleSURtv.net
go to original December 7, 2014

Mexico has approved the sale and consumption of 132 GMO products. (Reuters)

The Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) in Mexico approved the sale and consumption of 132 genetically modified products (GMOs) last week – half of them being corn – as well as cotton, soy and other crops, paving the way for a formal approval by the Mexican government.

While Alejandro Monteagudo Cuevas, the executive director of AgroBio Mexico, a federation of companies commercializing GMO products, welcomed the decision, La Jornada called it “a transgenic stab.” So far, trading GMO products has been suspended thanks to a collective action with anti-GMO groups arguing that GMOs represent a danger to the environment, as well as for the biodiversity of native corn.

“The future of the national seed … in the face of the challenges of climate change, strongly depends on preserving Mexican varieties … which still provide a substantial part of the national production. The release of GMO corn threatens it in multiple ways,” warned Elena Alvarez-Buylla, researcher at the Environment Institute of the Autonomous University of Mexico.

GMO seeds, which the U.S. agro-industry started to develop en masse in the 1990s does not only involve risks for biodiversity, but also threaten the autonomy of local farmers, who end up buying their seeds from major GMO traders like Monsato, Syngenta, Bayer, Piooner or Dow Agroscience, Alvarez-Buylla argued.

In September the Mexican government also announced that it will start using 12 pesticides that are prohibited in the rest of the world because they are harmful.

See the original at teleSURtv.net

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