Infected by science: international attention focuses on Oaxaca after GM corn found in...

OAXACA, Oaxaca -- It's official: genetically altered corn has taken root in the Mexican countryside and could threaten local varieties that took more than 7,000 years to develop.

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But more than two years after it appeared mysteriously tucked into mountainside

The corn first appeared in late 2001, sparking global alarm that it could pose a threat to the Mexican corn gene pool, considered the world's largest store of natural corn strains.

Amanda Galvez, a scientist with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told researchers from around the world that, according to a government study, the presence of transgenic corn appears to have fallen off, although a lot more research is needed in order to be sure.

Galvez and other scientists were at a three-day meeting in the city of Oaxaca to discuss a draft study by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), set up under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), on the impact of transgenic corn on Mexican maize.

"The tendency is toward an apparent reduction in frequency with which transgenes are found in the communities of Oaxaca," Galvez told the symposium of global scientists on March 11.

The government study tested some 2,000 plants and showed that while 7.6% tested positive for transgene when it was first discovered in Oaxaca, that figure had fallen to about 0.11% in the second generation.

Researchers are not sure how the genetically modified (GM) corn managed to find its way into Oaxaca's most remote villages, but most bet it came from imports of U.S. corn. Some say it also may have been transported across the border by returning migrant workers, although local farmers say they bought it from government stores selling it as animal feed.

ASSESSING THE DAMAGE

Scientists at the CEC symposium agreed far more research was necessary to determine how much damage the transgenic maize could wreak on local corn varieties and on Mexico's biodiversity in general if it is not controlled now.

Local farmers agree. Aldo Gonzalez, a spokesman for Mexican indigenous farmers, told scientists at the symposium that transgenic maize continued to appear in Mexican cornfields. An angry Gonzalez waved a dried corn stalk before agriculture experts from France. Britain and the Nafta countries and said it had tested positive for three different strains of transgenic corn.

Reading from a manifesto entitled "In Defense of our Maize," Gonzalez accused the Mexican government and the global scientific community of neglecting the future of corn. "The world's center of origin and diversity of maize is now in danger," said Gonzalez.

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Mexican subsistence farmers who grow corn in backyards to feed their families are considered the champions of the nation's maize diversity. Traditional experimenters, the indigenous descendants of Mexico's original corn farmers, grow a host of corn varieties as they cater to the tastes of local cuisine, most of it corn based.

"The time has come to say, 'Enough.' We won't take it anymore," said Gonzalez. "We will not allow the damage to escalate and the risk to grow further."

Mexico, where corn tortillas are a staple of the daily diet, imports between five and six million tons of corn from the United States each year to supplement local production of about 18 million tons. Transgenic maize comprises about a third of imports, and none of that is labeled or separated from regular corn.

"If the introduction of modern varieties becomes a permanent and pervasive process, a threshold could be reached above which gene swamping from those cultivars would reduce or eliminate the genetic diversity of local land races," the CEC said in Chapter Three of the draft study.

POLLUTING THE POOL

Mexico's biological richness is valued as one of the largest in the world and it is widely recognized as the center of origin for as many as 100 crops. "An assessment of the effects of transgenic maize on natural ecosystems must recognize the considerable uncertainty in predicting the consequences of alterations to populations, species or communities upon ecosystems," Chapter Four of the draft study reads.

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The CEC report is to be presented to the governments of the United States, Canada and Mexico in June and will include recommendations about how Mexico should protect its local corn from being overrun by transgenic imports. Researchers said the final report will likely recommend measures to monitor the inflow of transgenic corn strains into Mexico and to keep it away from prized local varieties in Oaxaca, home to most of Mexico's ancient corn land races.

Other measures that scientists said they would push included a call for significant funding of GM corn research in Mexico, in open-air laboratories. A 1998 moratorium on transgenic corn experiments in Mexico is one factor that has contributed to lack of information about how those modern, engineered corns could affect the local environment.

Open-air laboratories, situated far from Mexico's corn-origin areas, could provide insight into how transgenic maize engineered to combat U.S. pests and climate, for example, would react to Mexican ecosystems in second- and third-generation strains.

Jose Sarukhan, an advisor to the CEC and a member of the joint committee over-seeing the transgene report, told media in Oaxaca that he would push for local GM experiments to develop corn strains suited to the Mexican environment.

"This could be done for example to generate types that are resistant to high contents of metals in soils," he said. "They [Mexican researchers] have the experience to do this, what we need is the funds."

Sarukhan and other scientists working on the CEC report also called for more funding of in situ corn seed banks in order to further protect local varieties. The seed banks are meant to supply local farmers who run out of specific corn variants and to protect the corn gene pool in the event of natural disasters wiping out local crops.

In the end, the authors of the CEC study said, it is up to Mexico to decide what and how much it wants to do to protect its local maize varieties. The CEC recommendations will remain secret until the report is published, and the governments can opt to stop the study from ever hitting the presses. Corn is the world's third-most planted crop. Ironically, it is also among the world's most manipulated.

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George Terrats is a Mexico City-based freelance writer.

Photos by Marco Ugarte

RELATED ARTICLE: U.S. Poultry Partially Banned

Agriculture Secretariat announces embargo designed to combat spread of bird flu from Texas

Only weeks after beef companies north of the border suffered a devastating ban on exports to Mexico because of mad cow fears, the U.S. agribusiness sector suffered another blow when Mexico on Feb. 24 implemented a similar prohibition on U.S. poultry imports to head off the possible spread of bird flu.

Although the ban on beef has since been lifted, there is still a partial embargo on the import of some poultry products, making it difficult for annual imports to grow at the expected 5% rate over last year's totals.

The Agriculture Secretariat's latest ban covered the import of live poultry, its processed products and any subproducts and was in response to the discovery of a small Texas chicken flock with an infectious form of bird flu. The embargo was applied to poultry from the entire United States, expanding upon an earlier prohibition applicable to only certain states.

Only a couple of weeks later, however, the stringent defenses were relaxed again to allow imports of mechanically deboned chicken and turkey parts, except from those 11 states where the flu has been found to exist.

Animal health experts say the strain of bird flu found in the United States is not as dangerous or infectious as the one that has killed at least 22 people in Asia and is no danger to humans. However, Mexican authorities want to thwart any possibility of infecting its economically lucrative domestic poultry population.

Mexico is a major and growing consumer of U.S. poultry exports. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the United States exported nearly US$300 million in poultry and its derivative products to Mexico last year.

Under Nafta regulations, Mexican tariffs on U.S. poultry exports fell to zero as of Jan. 1, 2003, and although Mexico exercises its option to impose emergency import tariffs under a safe-guard agreement, U.S. poultry exports to Mexico had been expected to grow comfortably over the next few years.

Gary L. Deaton is AMCHAM's director of policy analysis.

By Gary Deaton