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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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I'm Sorry, Corporate Profit Outweighs The Right to Choose
What right does our government, our research institutions, or a group of multi-national corporations have to tell anyone what they must eat, what chemicals they must use, and that their culture and environment are of little concern?
Mar 10, 2023
Corporate money has always corrupted the political process in order to create laws and trade agreements that protect corporate profits at the expense of not just American citizens, but citizens of the world.
We can find, perhaps, no better case in point than Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Developed over the decades by seed and chemical companies Monsanto, Calgene, Dow, DuPont, Bayer and others, Genetically Modified (GM) corn, soy, cotton and canola were touted as the solution to world hunger, the key to increased farm profitability, lower pesticide use, and a better environment.
It all sounded good, but none of it was true. The real truth was—and this was never mentioned—that these commodity crops were designed to produce vast corporate profit as they helped usher in a wave of corporate consolidation, loss of small farms, declining rural economies, and a foisting of untested GM food on unknowing consumers.
While these GM crops dominate the fields of North America, the seed and chemical companies saw the world as their target for even more profit. Their grants to university researchers, lobbying pressure and campaign contributions to state and federal legislators made GM the so-called face of "progressive" and profitable farming.
Crop yields did go up with increased application of fertilizer and pesticides, while farm crop prices went down. Farmers got bigger to survive, planted more acres, and saw the GM bandwagon as the only way—produce more cheap grain for a growing world market. A market that would feed the growing confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that, hand in hand with the GM mono-cultures, were driving small farmers, not just in America, but around the world off their land.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) pushed GM corn into the Mexican market, underselling Mexican farmers. Because they lost their way of life, many moved to low-wage factory work in the maquiladoras or across the border into the U.S., looking for work in the fields, CAFOs, and processing plants of the North.
Not only were the livelihoods of Mexican farmers ruined by the dumping of GM grain, but the areas of origin of corn were also put at risk of pollen contamination from the GM imports. Growing corn is a part of Mexico's culture. Domesticated 8,700 years ago it is sacred and a staple of the everyday diet. Mexicans didn't want our GM corn, but in an economy pushed towards depression by NAFTA, people were forced to rely on what was available and affordable.
And NAFTA wasn't the end of it. Today under a new (free but not fair) trade agreement, the USMAC, the U.S. aims to force Mexico to not only accept GM corn, but also to overturn their ban on the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate), a probable carcinogen. Mexico wants neither, they want to grow their own non-GM corn and to import only non-GM corn to meet domestic demand. Glyphosate also threatens biodiversity, not just of their native corn, but of pollinators—the bees, butterflies, and birds that winter in Mexico—so why would they want either?
Yet under USMAC, the Biden administration, through the US Trade Representative, said they would take all steps to enforce U.S. rights. The rights of the U.S. and the rights of Mexico will, in all likelihood, come down to the trade tribunals and the bullying of the U.S. government and its unending support of U.S. corporations and agricultural trade groups. The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), note that allowing the ban to move forward (or in simple language, allowing Mexico to protect their farmers, their environment, and their culture) would be catastrophic to America's corn producers, but their real concern lies not with a potential drop in U.S. farm income, but rather a reduction of corporate profit.
America's corn producers can grow the non-GM corn Mexico would like to buy and they would be paid a premium to do so. But the power of the seed and pesticide corporations, the multi-national grain companies, and industry trade groups like NGCA make growing and marketing of non-GM corn more difficult. Growers of non-GM corn must bear the entire burden of preventing any contamination and U.S. farmers in general are trapped in a system of GM mono-cultures and CAFOs that are immensely profitable for agri-business while the growers produce commodities at prices so low their very survival depends on taxpayer-funded subsidy payments.
What right do we have to force our excess production on the people of Mexico who don't want it? What right does our government, our research institutions, or a group of multi-national corporations have to tell anyone what they must eat, what chemicals they must use, and that their culture and environment are of little concern? Short answer, Mexico has every right under USMAC to reject GM corn from the United States.
Yet—as has been the case for over 30 years—sorry, but corporate profit outweighs anyone's right to choose and the U.S. government will do whatever it takes to keep corporate profits flowing.
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Amidst Public Health and Economic Crises, Trump Pushes GMO Crops in Wildlife Refuges
"Only the Trump administration would aggressively promote the use of crops genetically engineered for pesticide tolerance on wildlife refuges."
Mar 20, 2020
As the U.S. faces an unemployment crisis, economic meltdown, and a public health emergency with the coronavirus, the Trump administration moved quietly on Friday to further threaten dozens of endangered species in the southeastern United States by proposing the planting of genetically engineered crops on wild public lands.
The administration proposal this week aims to allow the planting of GE seeds in the 44,000 acres of farmland within the Southeastern Region of the national wildlife refuge system--a reversal of existing policy.
The move would increase the use of glyphosate and other pesticides that have been linked to harmful effects on bees, butterflies, and other pollinators necessary to humans' food supply, as well as other species that live in the wildlife refuges.
"It's a no-brainer that this kind of pesticide-intensive agriculture shouldn't be allowed on public lands that are critical to wildlife conservation and preservation of the unique ecosystems of the southeastern U.S," said Hannah Connor, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.
\u201c"Only the Trump administration would aggressively promote the use of crops genetically engineered for pesticide tolerance on wildlife refuges." - The Center's Hannah Connor on the Trump administration's approval of GE crops on national wildlife refuges https://t.co/4kIWBNaOiG\u201d— Center for Biological Diversity (@Center for Biological Diversity) 1584732980
The new proposal comes two years after President Donald Trump reversed the Obama administration's 2014 order to phase out the use of genetically engineered crops in wildlife preserves. If approved, the decision could result in the escalation of pesticide use in up to 131 refuges in 10 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, comprising about four million acres.
"Permitting genetically engineered crops and neonicotinoid pesticides on the refuges threatens one of the few places that pollinators and protected species should be able to find shelter from the onslaught of toxic pesticides threatening their existence," said Sylvia Wu, an attorney at the Center for Food Safety, one of the groups which pushed the Obama administration to ban the crops.
Critics said Trump's move would worsen the threats already faced by the region's wildlife, including pollution and habitat destruction.
"We are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis," said Ben Prater, Southeast program director at Defenders of Wildlife. "Industrial agriculture with genetically engineered crops has no place on national wildlife refuges dedicated to conservation of our most vulnerable species, including pollinators like hummingbirds, bumblebees and monarch butterflies."
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