GMO contamination in Mexico-s cradle of corn

[WhiteTara]

http://current.com/items/89621166/gmo_contamination_in_mexico_s_cradle_of_corn.htm
Raise the alarm for Mexican corn-s biosecurity: a molecular study conducted by Mexican, American and Dutch researchers demonstrates the presence of genes from genetically modified organisms (GMO) among the varieties of traditional corn cultivated in the remote regions of Oaxaca State in the southern part of the country, even though the Mexican government has always maintained a moratorium on the use of transgenic seed.

The results of this study incite the experts to demand much more restrictive protective measures. Old time agriculture as practiced in Mexico - where wind-blown pollination of corn is the norm and where peasants are in the habit of exchanging their seed - seems to aggravate the risk of rapid GMO contamination.

An article that details their conclusions should be published in the next edition of the review, Molecular Ecology. It was written by Elena Alvarez-Buylla of the Institute for Ecology of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM), with the collaboration of a dozen other scientists.

Their work could relaunch the controversy that was unleashed in 2001 by a highly controversial article in the magazine, Nature, the authors of which, biologists David Quist and Ignacio Chapela from the University of California at Berkeley, revealed that criollos (traditional) corn from the Oaxaca region - one of the cradles of that cereal - were contaminated by Roundup Ready (RR) and Bt genes, property of the American company Monsanto.

more and scary
Really, this must stop. We are destroying our food. And I sure hope those guys can eat money, cause no food is no food and they'll die with the rest of us.

[bullimiami]

1. so now does monanto come in and enforce the patent they have on the genes?

[Warpy]

2. It's my understanding that the next generation is sterile

and GMO contaminated corn held over for seed will simply not germinate the following year. That means decreasing crops and yields year to year as windblown GMO pollen blows in.

That was how Monsanto expected to keep the world's poor coming back for more seed every year.

Subsistence farmers are simply going to have to separate out their seed crops and hand pollinate while protecting the silk from being pollinated by the wind blown pollen from who knows where.

[WhiteTara]

3. oh great. we are really dumb

as a species.

[Warpy]

4. Oh, we'll eat. It's just going to get more scarce

and a hell of a lot more expensive.

Now you know why we granola types were so upset about this stuff.

[HamdenRice]

5. This is the worst possible environmental news

The world relies on "land race" crops to create new and better hybrids. These land race crops and their precious genes are stored at the major "crop research" institutes, like the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, and the maize institute which is in Mexico. The potato institute is in the Andes.

It is absolutely vital that the core areas of land race gene pools remain unpolluted as world agricultural heritage sites.