Genetic Pollution

Sorry to be mostly just doing cut and pastes today.  I’ve been tied up with other things and have had to neglect this site for a time.

Via Truth Out and Triple Crisis:

To listen to the current debates over the controversial requests by Monsanto and other biotech giants to grow genetically modified (GM) maize in Mexico, you’d think the danger to the country’s rich biodiversity in maize was hypothetical. It is anything but.

Studies have found the presence of transgenes in native maize in nearly half of Mexico’s states. A study of maize diversity within the confines of Mexico’s sprawling capital city revealed transgenic maize in 70 percent of the samples from the area of Xochimilco and 49 percent of those from Tlalpan.

Mexico is the “center of origin” where maize was first domesticated from its wild ancestor, teocinte. The country is arguably the last place you’d want to risk the possibility that its wide array of native seeds might be undermined by what indigenous people have called “genetic pollution” from GM maize.

(read the entire article, “Mexico and Monsanto: Taking Precaution in the Face of Genetic Contamination,” Timothy A. Wise, here or here.