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center for food safety
Experts Warn of Toxins in GM Corn Amid US-Mexico Trade Dispute
"The Mexican government is both wise and on solid ground in refusing to allow its people to participate in the experiment that the U.S. government is seeking to impose."
Mar 26, 2024
Friends of the Earth U.S. on Monday released a brief backing Mexico's ban on genetically modified corn for human consumption, which the green group recently submitted to a dispute settlement panel charged with considering the U.S. government's challenge to the policy.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced plans to phase out the herbicide glyphosate as well as genetically modified (GM) or genetically engineered (GE) corn in 2020. Last year he issued an updated decree making clear the ban does not apply to corn imports for livestock feed and industrial use. Still, the Biden administration objected and, after fruitless formal negotiations, requested the panel under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
"The U.S. government has not presented an 'appropriate' risk assessment to the tribunal as called for in the USMCA dispute because such an assessment has never been done in the U.S. or anywhere in the world," said agricultural economist Charles Benbrook, who wrote the brief with Kendra Klein, director of science at Friends of the Earth U.S.
"The U.S. is, in effect, asking Mexico to trust the completeness and accuracy of the initial GE corn safety assessments carried out 15 to 30 years ago by the companies working to bring GE corn events to market."
The group's 13-page brief lays out health concerns related to GM corn and glyphosate, and the shortcomings of U.S. analyses and policies. It also stresses the stakes of the panel's decision, highlighting that "corn is the caloric backbone of the Mexican food supply, accounting, on average, for 50% of the calories and protein in the Mexican diet."
Blasting the Biden administration's case statement to the panel as "seriously deficient," Klein said Monday that "it lacks basic information about the toxins expressed in contemporary GMO corn varieties and their levels. The U.S. submission also ignores dozens of studies linking the insecticidal toxins and glyphosate residues found in GMO corn to adverse impacts on public health."
The brief explains that "since the commercial introduction of GE corn in 1996 and event-specific approvals in the 1990s and 2000s, dramatic changes have occurred in corn production systems. There has been an approximate fourfold increase in the number of toxins and pesticides applied on the average hectare of contemporary GE industrial corn compared to the early 1990s. Unfortunately, this upward trend is bound to continue, and may accelerate."
The U.S. statement's assurances about risks from Bacillus thuringiensis or vegetative insecticidal protein (Bt/VIP) residues "are not based on data and science," the brief warns.
"The U.S. is, in effect, asking Mexico to trust the completeness and accuracy of the initial GE corn safety assessments carried out 15 to 30 years ago by the companies working to bring GE corn events to market," the document says. "The Mexican government is both wise and on solid ground in refusing to allow its people to participate in the experiment that the U.S. government is seeking to impose on Mexico."
"The absence of any systematic monitoring of human exposure levels to Bt/VIP toxins and herbicides from consumption of corn-based foods is regrettable," the brief adds. "It is also unfortunate that the U.S. government rejected the Mexican proposal to jointly design and carry out a modern battery of studies able to overcome gaps in knowledge regarding GE corn impacts."
"The U.S. government's case against Mexico has no more scientific merit than its sham GMO regulatory regime, and should be rejected by the USMCA dispute resolution panel."
Friends of the Earth isn't the only U.S.-based group formally supporting the Mexican government in the USMCA process. The Center for Food Safety sent a 10-page submission by science director Bill Freese, an expert on biotech regulation, to the panel on March 15. His analysis addresses U.S. regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMO) along with the risks of GM corn and glyphosate.
"GMO regulation in the U.S. was crafted by Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, and is a critical part of our government's promotion of the biotechnology industry," Freese said last week, referring to the company known for the glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup. "The aim is to quell concerns and promote acceptance of GMOs, domestically and abroad, rather than critically evaluate potential toxicity or allergenicity."
His submission notes that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration "does not require a GE plant developer to do anything prior to marketing its GE crop or food derived from it. Instead, FDA operates what it calls a voluntary consultation program that is designed to enhance consumer confidence and speed GE crops to market."
"When governmental review is optional; and even when it's conducted, starts and ends with the regulated company's safety assurance—what's the point?" Freese asked. "Clearly, it's the PR value of a governmental rubber stamp."
"The Mexican government's prohibition of GM corn for tortillas and other masa corn products is fully justified," he asserted. "The U.S. government's case against Mexico has no more scientific merit than its sham GMO regulatory regime, and should be rejected by the USMCA dispute resolution panel."
In a Common Dreams opinion piece last week, Ernesto Hernández-López, a law professor at Chapman University in California, pointed out that Mexico's recent submission to the panel also "offers scientific proof and lots of it," including "over 150 scientific studies, referred to in peer-review journals, systemic research reviews, and more."
"Mexico incorporates perspectives from toxicology, pediatrics, plant biology, hematology, epidemiology, public health, and data mining, to name a few," he wrote. "This clearly and loudly responds to American persistence. The practical result: American leaders cannot claim there is no science supporting the decree. They may disagree with or dislike the findings, but there is proof."
The Biden administration's effort to quash the Mexican policy notably comes despite the lack of impact on trade. While implementing its ban last year, "Mexico also made its largest corn purchase from the U.S., 15.3 million metric tons," National Geographicreported last month.
Kenneth Smith Ramos, former Mexican chief negotiator for the USMCA, told the outlet that "right now, it may not have a big economic impact because what Mexico is using to produce flour, cornmeal, and tortillas is a very small percentage of their overall imports; but that does not mean the U.S. is not concerned with this being the tip of the iceberg."
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Federal Dicamba Ruling Called 'Vital Victory for Farmers and the Environment'
"The court today resoundingly reaffirmed what we have always maintained: The EPA's and Monsanto's claims of dicamba's safety were irresponsible and unlawful," said one plaintiff.
Feb 06, 2024
In what one plaintiff called "a sweeping victory for family farmers and dozens of endangered plants and animals," a federal court in Arizona on Tuesday rescinded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2020 approval of the highly volatile herbicide dicamba for use on certain genetically engineered crops.
In a 47-page ruling, U.S. District Judge David C. Bury found that the EPA failed to comply with public notice and comment requirements under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), legislation passed in 1947 to protect agricultural workers, consumers, and the environment.
"This is a vital victory for farmers and the environment," said George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety (CFS), a plaintiff in the case. "Time and time again, the evidence has shown that dicamba cannot be used without causing massive and unprecedented harm to farms as well as endangering plants and pollinators."
"The court today resoundingly reaffirmed what we have always maintained: The EPA's and Monsanto's claims of dicamba's safety were irresponsible and unlawful," Kimbrell added.
Dicamba has damaged millions of acres of U.S. cropland since the EPA, during the Trump administration, dubiously approved its use on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans developed by Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018.
The EPA subsequently identified spray drift as the main environmental risk for dicamba due to its potential to contaminate nontargeted crops, declaring that since 2016 "there has been a substantial increase in the overall number of reported nontarget plant incidents."
As CFS explained on Tuesday:
In today's decision, the court canceled dicamba's over-the-top use, holding that EPA violated FIFRA's public input requirement prior to the approval. This violation is "very serious," according to the court, especially because the 9th Circuit previously held EPA failed to consider serious risks of over-the-top dicamba in issuing the prior registration. The court outlined the massive damage to stakeholders that were deprived of their opportunity to comment, such as growers that do not use over-the-top dicamba and suffered significant financial losses and states that repeatedly reported landscape-level damage yet, in the same 2020 decision, lost the ability to impose restrictions greater than those imposed by the federal government without formal legislative and/or rulemaking processes. As a result, the court found "the EPA is unlikely to issue the same registrations" again after taking these stakeholders' concerns into account.
"We are grateful that the court held the EPA and Monsanto accountable for the massive damage from dicamba to farmers, farmworkers, and the environment, and halted its use," Lisa Griffith of the National Family Farm Coalition—another plaintiff in the case—said in a statement Tuesday. "The pesticide system that Monsanto sells should not be sprayed as it cannot be sprayed safely."
Tuesday's decision in Arizona follows a July 2022 ruling by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis that found Monsanto and BASF were liable for damage to a Missouri peach farmer's groves caused by dicamba.
A 2021 EPA report revealed that high-ranking Trump administration officials intentionally excluded scientific evidence of dicamba-related hazards, including the risk of widespread drift damage, before reapproving the dangerous chemical. A separate EPA report described the widespread harm to farmers and the environment caused by dicamba during the 2020 growing season.
"Every summer since the approval of dicamba, our farm has suffered significant damage to a wide range of vegetable crops," said Rob Faux, a farmer and communications manager at the advocacy group Pesticide Action Network, a case plaintiff. "Today's decision provides much-needed and overdue protection for farmers and the environment."
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'Groundbreaking' Legal Action Demands EPA Finally Ban Glyphosate
"EPA lacks a legal human health assessment of glyphosate to support its current use," said a lawyer for the Center for Food Safety.
Dec 13, 2023
Citing research from the U.S. government's own National Institutes of Health, a coalition of environmental and farmworkers groups said Wednesday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is out of excuses for continuing to allow the use of the herbicide glyphosate, which has been linked to cancer in people who are exposed to it.
The Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a petition with the EPA on behalf of Beyond Pesticides and four farmworkers groups, including Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, saying glyphosate's registration in the U.S. is illegal.
The petition was filed a week after cancer scientists at the NIH published a study in Environmental Health Perspectives, which found that male farmers had "markers of genotoxicity" when they reported high levels of glyphosate use.
The study is only the latest to link glyphosate, the active ingredient in the widely used weedkiller Roundup, with cancer and other health issues. The World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer warned in 2015 that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans," and Roundup manufacturer Monsanto—now owned by Bayer—was ordered to pay more than $2.3 billion by juries in 2018 and 2019 for failing to warn the public about the product's risks.
"Farmworker women and their families have experienced the damaging health effects of pesticides for far too long," said Mily Treviño-Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas. "EPA must protect the nation's farmworkers and our environment by immediately suspending and canceling all glyphosate registrations."
Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit struck down the EPA's claim that glyphosate is safe.
Despite the mounting evidence of the harmful effects of glyphosate, said CFS on Wednesday, "EPA has declined to act."
"EPA lacks a legal human health assessment of glyphosate to support its current use," the group said.
Pegga Mosavi, an attorney at CFS, said the petition provides the Biden administration with "a blueprint... to do what the law and science require and finally cancel glyphosate's registration."
"There is a wealth of scientific evidence demonstrating that glyphosate endangers public health, and poses cancer risks to farmers and other Roundup users," said Mosavi. "Glyphosate formulations are also an environmental hazard and have driven an epidemic of resistant weeds that plague farmers. After last year's court decision, EPA has no legal legs to stand on. EPA must take action now."
Environmental Health Perspectives also published an opinion article by health researchers who found the NIH study should be considered in glyphosate safety evaluations.
"There is really compelling new science out there," Bill Freese, science director at CFS, toldThe Guardian. "It's becoming increasingly untenable for the agency to deny the cancer hazard."
The group said the EPA should suspend the use of glyphosate—which is already banned for household use in France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and for public use in Germany—until its registration can be canceled or the agency can prove the herbicide meets required safety standards under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).
"In accordance with FIFRA, EPA can register a pesticide only upon determining that it will cause no unreasonable adverse effects on the environment when used in accordance with widespread and commonly recognized practice," reads the executive summary of the petition. "Glyphosate remains registered despite no demonstration by EPA that it can meet the required FIFRA safety standard for this herbicide's currently approved uses. In other words, glyphosate as it's currently used has no legal safety assessment on record."
Freese noted that in the past, the EPA acknowledged glyphosate's adverse effects on the liver, kidneys, reproductive system, and its link to cancer.
"But as Monsanto sought ever wider uses for its blockbuster herbicide," said Freese, EPA consigned those incriminating studies to regulatory oblivion, thus facilitating greater use, even as independent scientists confirmed the harms EPA now denies."
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