Mexico Bans GM Corn Cultivation in Constitution

I wrote the following extended analysis of Mexico’s unprecedented constitutional amendment banning the cultivation of genetically modified corn. The amendment protects Mexico’s rich store of native corn from the kinds of flawed reasoning exhibited by the three-member trade panel that ruled in favor of a U.S. complaint against Mexico’s GM corn restrictions. As I write here, “At every opportunity to assess such evidence, the tribunal shrank from responsibility, In so doing, the panel failed to resolve any of the important scientific questions raised by the case.”

No doubt the U.S. government and the biotech industry hope the trade ruling will serve as a precedent, deterring other governments from more robust regulation of GMOs and their associated pesticides. The scientific evidence Mexico presented on the risks to human health and the environment remain uncontested, as Stacy Malkan and I summarized in an analysis of Mexico’s Scientific Dossier on those risks.

Note that this will appear in Spanish on the Mexican outlet Contralinea, and an abbreviated version was published by InterPress Service.