Searching for the “impact that GMO corn has had on Mexico” I came across this interesting article from Regeneration International.
In 2009, changes in Mexican law allowed biotech giants like Monsanto to conduct trials of GMO corn in approved regions of the country.
Two years later, in 2011, Monsanto and Syngenta asked for a permit to plant GM corn in several states in Northern Mexico. Not surprisingly, they found legal loopholes and sympathetic government officials. The imminent infiltration of GM corn in Mexico threatened Mexico’s ancient tradition of seed exchanges and seed banks. It also threatened to cross contaminate native corn crops, pollute the environment, destroy biodiversity, poison the people and bring poverty to small producers by privatizing corn production through the sale of proprietary patented seeds—just as industrial GMO crops have done in other parts of the world.
This new and imminent threat led to the creation of the 73-member Sin Maíz, No hay País Coalition which has since worked tirelessly to protect and defend Mexico’s traditional corn economy and culture. In July 2013, the coalition filed a lawsuit challenging the government’s process for permitting the planting of GM corn, on the basis that GM corn would threaten biodiversity for current and future generations.
So why is the FDA allowing GMO corn in the US, when scientists and biologists know it ruins biodiversity? Further, why would they allow it in so many products when biologists and geneticists are uncertain of the long-term biological affects on the humans and animals that consume GMO corn?
In August 2010, even the left-leaning Huffington Post was shocked that the Obama administration was appointing the former Chief of Monsanto to become the Head of the FDA. Just to connect a few dots: Monsanto is the manufacturer of RoundUp. The primary reason corn is genetically modified or GMO, is because they can make “RoundUp ready” corn, which enables farmers to spray their corn directly with RoundUp where all the weeds die, and all the soil biodiversity dies, but the GMO corn lives!
Mexico put a moratorium on GMO corn. Europe doesn’t allow GMO corn. But in the U.S. GMO corn is deemed safe. Could that have anything to do with the man who was formerly heading up the FDA’s connection to Monsanto?
The revolving door that exists between giant corporations and our highest government agencies is producing a food and drug cartel in the United States, attempting to snub out competition and make life more difficult for non-GMO local farmers and Mexican farmers (until they finally banned it in Mexico). The FDA is being used to protect the revenue for shareholders of massive agribusiness and factory farms. In our forth annual farm issue, we show consumers how they can defund agribusiness by shifting spending to local farmers, home-grown food, and non-GMO alternatives.
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