Vida Verde fights genetically altered corn in San Miguel
By Mary Ann McFadden August 8, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Vida Verde is a group of concerned Mexican and US citizens who believe it is our fundamental right to eat safe food and protect natural seeds from extinction. We believe that this right—now more than ever—is critically threatened. Our food supply is in danger and we are called to action to educate and inform on both sides of the border.

According to Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers by Ronnie Cummins and Ben Lilliston, genetically altered grains, vegetables, and processed foods have been banned in 26 countries of the world, including all of Europe, Australia, Great Britain and Thailand. Battles are raging in the US over the labeling of such foods. Monsanto doesn’t want its unnatural products labeled, because the company knows that people don’t want this freak food on their tables. And it’s in this sneaky way that “poison corn” has entered Mexico. In 1980, Mexico banned genetically altered corn seeds, but allowed the crushed seeds to enter the country as food for animals and people. Mexicans have known that their country was importing cheap surplus corn from the US to mix with their own native corn in tortillas, but they have perhaps not known the health risks. It has been politically convenient to keep the price of tortillas low.

In Mayan cosmology, human beings are descended from corn. And today most Mexican diets are still 40 to 80 percent corn. So what happens when a ruthless US corporation, Monsanto, genetically alters the seeds of corn, corn that has been developed over thousands of years by Mexican farmers to fit every climate and condition? What will happen to the people of Mexico when a huge portion of what they eat every single day is made up of aberrant corn that has been shown to be related to increased allergies, cancerous tumors, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, leaky bowel syndrome and is suspected to be related to increased incidences of birth defects and autism?

In the US, the rates of allergies and autism have risen to frightening levels. The rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogens has medical researchers extremely alarmed. Since Monsanto’s lobbyists have pressured and corrupted the money-hungry congress into ignoring the public outcry for labeling transgenic foods, it has been difficult to measure the connection between genetically altered foods and these health disasters. Wal-Mart, now Mexico’s largest retailer, is just one of the corporations that press for low prices, regardless of the health risks to the consumer. And since the Mexican diet is largely corn, the potential for health disasters from the Frankenstein corn is enormous.

In the late nineties, Arpad Pusztai and a team of researchers at the highly regarded and prestigious Rowett Institute in Scotland studied the effect of genetically altered potatoes on rats. They found that after only 10 days the potatoes that were gene-spliced with lectin DNA damaged the vital organs and immune systems of lab rats. Interestingly, rats that were fed ordinary potatoes along with the lectin fed with an eyedropper (not gene-spliced) were unharmed. So it was not the lectin that was poisonous, but the gene-splicing process itself. The obvious conclusion was that the problem with the viral promoter used in the gene-splicing process would apply to all other genetically altered foods.

When these results made a splash in the British newspapers and other prestigious magazines, the bio-tech industry-supported scientists made such a fuss that Arpad Pusztai was fired, and funds for the study of genetically altered foods dried up. Yet scientists from all over the world have come to Pusztai’s defense and Pusztai is already a scientific hero, a genetic engineer who dared to speak the truth even though it cost him his job as a research scientist. Most of Europe responded by banning genetically altered foods.

One of the bright ideas for gene splicing came when scientists for the bio-tech industry combined BT, or Bacillus thuringiensis, a natural biopesticide, with varieties of tomatoes, potatoes, corn and cotton. Used safely by organic farmers, BT is effective against many pests and evaporates in 72 hours so the soil isn’t contaminated with the residue. But, say Cummins and Lilliston, when gene-spliced into plants, the GE crops produce a toxin that is 10–15 times more powerful than traditional BT crop sprays. “The BT toxin in GA plants does not readily decompose,” they report, “but builds up in the soil and is likely to result in ‘superpests’ completely immune to BT biopesticide sprays.” In 2002 there were reports that pigs in Iowa fed a steady diet of BT corn became infertile as a result. And in 1999, Nature magazine reported that pollen from genetically engineered BT corn crops is poisonous to Monarch butterflies. The scientists found that 44 percent of Monarch caterpillars that ate milkweed leaves (their exclus

ive food source) dusted with the pollen of BT corn died.

“The fatal date has arrived,” announced El Universal, one of Mexico’s largest newspapers, on New Year’s Day of 2008. The last trade barriers of NAFTA’s 14-year phase-in process were down. Despite massive protests in Mexico City, the genetically altered corn seed was now able to enter and be planted in Mexico’s own soil.

We have already been eating tortillas partly made with aberrant corn, but now the seeds are in the ground. The pollen from that corn may already be mixing with the ancient varieties of corn in the nearby fields. It’s in the wind. And since it’s already growing, it cannot be stopped entirely. Once GA corn is in the environment, it alters the genetic content of normal corn varieties. Once the Monsanto-owned weed sprays and pesticides are applied, these poisons enter the soil and begin to kill the soil’s natural fauna and to create super weeds and super pests that require more and more poisons.

A book authored by Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, reports that in India’s Punjab, the epicenter of the country’s high-tech agricultural “Green Revolution,” the United Nations scandalized the government when it announced that in 1995–96, over a third of farmers faced “ruin and a crisis of existence.” Patel reports that in the state of Andhra Pradesh, with a population of 75 million, there are farmer suicide rates in the thousands per year. Patel says that these farmers embraced the new GE technologies, but the price of seed kept going up, and along with the cost of pesticides and herbicides, the farmers found themselves deeper and deeper in debt, until they lost their land. Not all farmers commit suicide, however. Rather than kill themselves, some farmers have sold their kidneys to try to feed their families for another season. Across the sea in Sri Lanka, Patel notes, in a study of six rural areas, pesticide poisoning was the main cause of death.

Here in Mexico we cannot stop “poison corn” entirely. It’s here. But we can refuse to buy it and refuse to eat it. Not only can we protect our health and the health of our children, but in this way we can try to stop the greater and greater acreage of soil planted to the GA corn. We can educate ourselves about which nearby farms and farmers are still growing organic native corn species and other foods. These farmers are the heroes of the new age. The new Wal-Mart and the other large grocery chains in town will be happy to provide the profitable but unhealthy foods to the innocent people who buy them. For the sake of future generations, please pay attention. Talk it over with your neighbors and take action.

Vida Verde will attempt to keep you informed about sources of quality traditional corn, of local organic growers, and of community events that support pure and safe food. We appreciate information, comments and questions. For more information, 

check our new website at http://vidaverdesma.wordpress.com/. 

A few things to note

-CSA or Community Supported Agriculture is a fast-growing concept that provides steady income to participating local organic growers and gives consumers easy access to high-quality organic produce. One CSA farmer in San Miguel is Las Glorias del Huerto, Luis Suarez, director. They deliver every Tuesday, Wednesday, and sometimes Friday: (415) 155-9558, cell (415) 111-8198.

-One source of traditional healthy corn is UCIZONE in Oaxaca state, where members last year grew 12,000 tons of corn, but with the entry of US-subsidized corn into the local markets, it has been very difficult for the association to find buyers for their higher quality corn.