By Devon G. Peña, Ph.D. – Environmental and Food Justice, 12 May 2017

038n1soc-1

Imagen de una protesta en el Centro de la Ciudad de México contra la trasnacional Monsanto. Photo by Pablo Ramos.

Source

Moderator’s Note: We have been waiting for news on this important case, the latest, and perhaps the last, in a ten-year campaign by Monsanto and its allies to impose transgenic maize products on Mexico. Due process in Mexico is a tangled and lengthy juridical process and Monsanto has exploited the ‘amparo’ rights clause of the Mexican Constitution to prolong and intensify its attacks on Indigenous and peasant farmers. These are the farmers who sustain the living seed libraries of the vital Mesoamerican Vavilov Center of Origin and Diversification of corn among more than three dozen other native crops that literally feed the world.

This attack continued through the means of repeated challenges to successful court decisions and rulings verifying the legality of the ban on genetically engineered corn, soy, and other transgenic crops. The underlying rationale of the anti-GMO movement in Mexico has always been premised on the principle of the right of Indigenous and peasant farmers to protect Mexico’s unique status as the center of origin and diversification of maize and its wild relatives and intermediaries (e.g., Zea diploperennis). The benefits of this fact are said to outweigh those associated with free trade and commercialization of GMOs which come with serious environmental, socioeconomic, and cultural impacts.

In the latest ruling, issued earlier today, Mexico’s Supreme Court refused to review an appeals court decision from 2013, which in effect will allow the appeals court to verify the suspension of permits for the planting of GE corn grain and uphold the enforcement of the ban throughout the country. The original decision included a declaration that the benefits of GMO corn remain unproven.

I am posting my translation of a report on the ruling written by Angélica Enciso and Gustavo Castillo for the Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, who broke the story earlier this morning. This is a major substantive victory for the anti-GMO movement in Mexico with huge implications globally. Efforts like this will continue to spread across the globe, including, I hope, north of the border into the centers of origin and diversification of our beloved Turtle Island Corn Belt in the USA.

SCJN rejects Monsanto ammunition on transgenic maize

THE APPEALS COURT HAD RULED THAT THE BENEFITS OF THESE PRODUCTS ARE UNCERTAIN

Angélica Enciso and Gustavo Castillo

Newspaper La Jornada

Friday, May 12, 2017, p. 38

The first chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) refused to review or analyze an amparo promoted by the company Monsanto, with which the multinational intended that the maximum court of the country pronounce on the final status of the issuance of commercial permits for the sowing of transgenic maize.

In this way, the decision to resolve this trial involving the companies Monsanto, Dow, Pioneer and Dupont, as well as the secretariats of the Environment and Agriculture, and on the other hand, the civil society and academic organizations that are opposed to the marketing of transgenic maize, will have to be resolved by the first collegiate court in civil matters.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

NEWS TAG: CORN

 

This post is also available in: Spanish