Activists: Monitoring of GM Maize Falls Short in Mexico Emilio Godoy - Inter Press Service
go to original August 12, 2013

In February, thousands across Mexico demanded their government reject permits for GMO corn while Monsanto defends their patent on life in U.S. Supreme Court. (TheRealNews)

MEXICO CITY - Mexico lacks an effective system for monitoring genetically modified organisms, even though they have been regulated by law since the middle of last decade, experts say. In the case of maize, this situation has stood in the way of obtaining data that could help block commercial production, they say.

“The government monitoring should have discovered the risks, but they don’t dare acknowledge that GMOs have caused harm to health and the environment,” said Álvaro Salgado, a member of the Red en Defensa del Maíz (Network in Defence of Maize).

“That can justify the industry’s intentions,” Salgado said in an interview with IPS. “GM contamination (of conventional crops) is not accidental, it’s deliberate. There’s no need for all this monitoring – what should be done is just to block the entrance of GMOs.”

Large-scale commercial release of transgenic crops has not yet been authorized in Mexico.

But the Network says it has detected GMOs in field surveys carried out over the past decade in the northern state of Chihuahua and the southern states of Hidalgo, Veracruz and Oaxaca. Now the coalition of NGOs is focusing on analysing hybrid species to determine the specific source of contamination.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!