With Help From NAFTA 2.0, US Strikes Brutal Blow Against Mexican Food Sovereignty, Health and Global Biodiversity

“Both the USMCA and this ruling issued by the trade dispute panel are designed primarily to protect the interests of transnational corporations.”

Note to readers: This is a particularly depressing story for Christmas Eve, for which I apologise, but it is, I believe, an important one that is presumably garnering little coverage in the US and Canada.

As we warned would happen a few weeks ago, Mexico has lost the dispute settlement panel brought by the US and Canada over its attempt to ban imports of genetically modified corn for direct human consumption. On Friday (December 20), the arbitration panel ruled in favour of the United States, asserting that Mexico’s 2023 decree banning the use of genetically modified (GM) white corn for human consumption violated the terms of the trade agreement.

It wasn’t even a close run thing: the panel’s three judges agreed with the US on all seven counts in the case. The panel has given Mexico 45 days to realign its policies with the ruling. Failure to do so could result in stiff penalties, including sanctions.

As we’ve noted before, this case may be an important battle for Big Ag lobbies and biotech companies but it is an existential one for Mexico, for whom corn is the cornerstone not only of its cuisine and diet but also its culture.

The dispute panel argues that Mexico’s provisions against GMO corn cannot be applied as they are not based on an adequate risk assessment, scientific evidence or relevant international standards. This is despite the mountains of evidence from peer-reviewed literature the Mexican government provided showing ample cause for concern about the risks of consuming GM corn and the residues of the herbicide glyphosate — most commonly known as Roundup — that often come with it.

By contrast, as Timothy A Wise, author of Eating Tomorrow and senior adviser at the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, documented in a recent piece for TruthDig, “when Mexico challenged the US to show that its GM corn is safe to eat in the far greater quantities and forms that Mexicans consume it, it received no response”:

“As a Reuters headline put it in March: ‘Mexico waiting on US proof that GM corn is safe for its people.’ No such proof was forthcoming as the U.S. government flailed in its attempts to counter the hundreds of studies Mexico identified that showed risk. A U.S. filing claiming to rebut the evidence did no such thing.”

As Wise put it, “the emperor has no science.” But that hasn’t prevented it from winning on every count!

US Celebrations

Washington is thrilled with the outcome. The US trade representative, Katherine Tai, said  the panel’s decision reaffirms long-standing concerns of the United States about Mexico’s biotechnology policies and their detrimental impact on U.S. agricultural exports. US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, claimed that Mexico’s measures contradict decades of evidence demonstrating the safety of agricultural biotechnology, backed by science- and risk-based regulatory review systems.

This, of course, will be news to all the 165,000 people who have filed lawsuits against Bayer for cancers caused by glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide whose use goes hand-in-hand with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready GMO corn. Bayer has already set aside a whopping $16 billion to cover the costs of litigation, and there are still many more lawsuits pending. Its shares continue to slide, having already lost roughly 80% of their value since 2018, when they made the disastrous decision to buy Monsanto for $60 billion.

Glyphosate is banned or has been restricted in 18 countries, as well as in several cities in Spain, Argentina and New Zealand, in 80 percent of the regions of Canada and even in three US cities, as an editorial in La Jornada notes. Yet according to the panel, there are no issues. In most countries, including Mexico, Roundup is still the most widely used herbicide. Worse still, a recent study by Friends of the Earth suggests that the chemicals used in Bayer’s new Roundup formulations were significantly more toxic to humans experiencing chronic exposure than glyphosate-based Roundup.

In reaching its decision, the trade panel also appears to have completely ignored the environmental damage caused by widespread, persistent use of GMO crops. From La Jornada:

[A]ll GMOs are planted in huge monoculture fields because that is the only way to make patented seeds profitable. This has devastating consequences for the environment: as the name implies, monocultures involve the complete destruction of biodiversity in an area to install a single plant species. Also, this overcrowding of plants of the same type creates perfect conditions for the spread of pests, which is why GMOs require extensive use of pesticides and herbicides that wipe out flora and fauna, represent a risk to human health and, when they seep into the water tables or are discharged into bodies of surface water, can devastate entire ecosystems.

The potential health risks posed by GM corn — painstakingly documented by the hundreds of peer-reviewed studies cited in Mexico’s defence, including indications of serious kidney and liver ailments in adolescents after even low-level exposures to glyphosate — are magnified in Mexico, where the national diet revolves around minimally processed white corn, in particular tortillas. Cornmeal provides more than 60% of the average Mexican’s daily calories and protein, which is around 10 times the US average, putting Mexicans at 10 times the risk.

Perhaps the most nonsensical part of this whole process is that Mexico’s 2023 corn ban has so far had a barely perceptible impact on US exports of corn to Mexico. The reason for this is simple: Mexico’s 2023 ban, which replaced a much tougher earlier ban, only applies to the use of GM white corn for human consumption and does not restrict imports of GM yellow corn for animal feed or industrial uses, which account for almost the entirety of US corn imports from the US.

In fact, both last year and so far this year Mexico’s imports of yellow corn from the US have continued to grow despite the ban. As Wise notes, “at a time when the US president-elect is threatening to levy massive tariffs on Mexican products, a blatant violation of the North American trade agreement, it is outrageous that a trade tribunal ruled in favour of the U.S. complaint against Mexico’s limited restrictions on genetically modified corn, which barely affect U.S. exporters.”

To all intents and purposes, NAFTA 2.0 appears to be consolidating what NAFTA 1.0 set in motion: the near-total dependence of Mexico on US producers for its most basic staple crops, including corn, beans and rice. When NAFTA was signed in 1994, Mexico imported $5 billion worth of agricultural products. By 2023 that figure had increased almost sixfold, to $29 billion.

The reason for this was simple, as Wise explains in the interview below with the Real News Network: while the US and Canada continued to heavily subsidise agricultural producers, Mexico’s neoliberal government cancelled its farm subsidies, making it impossible for the country’s small and medium producers to compete with producers from Canada and United States.

Fast-forward to today, the Biden administration’s decision to launch the trade dispute appear to have been driven by two main goals: to nip in the bud any threat to the US’ corn and biotech sectors as well as set an example for other countries. Imagine what would have happened if Mexico had imposed the ban and was able to gradually ween itself off GM corn by buying the grain from elsewhere and expanding its domestic production?

What kind of example would that have set for other countries, particularly those in Latin America that are among the world’s biggest buyers of GM seeds?

If allowed to proceed, it would have eventually harmed the financial interests not only of the four companies that control 85% of the corn seed market but also the few giant farms that dominate the US’ corn sector. More important still, it would have set a very dangerous precedent. By launching this dispute settlement and winning it, the US and Canada have sent a clear message to governments worldwide: think twice before adopting measures to protect public health and the environment, if those measures threaten in any way the economic interests of a major exporter with whom you have signed a “free trade” agreement.

Mexico’s Response

It will be interesting to see how Mexico’s government responds to this latest setback. All eyes will also be on the collective of grassroots organisations that have struggled for almost two decades to safeguard Mexico’s rich native maize varieties. It is thanks to them, and a few brave, incorruptible Mexican judges, that Mexico has so far been able to prevent the mass cultivation of GMO corn in Mexico.

In 2007, a mass social movement emerged bringing together more than 300 peasant organisations, environmentalists, human rights defenders, small and medium-scale producers, consumers, academics, women’s groups and chefs. They gathered under one unifying slogan: “Sin maíz, no hay país” (without maize, there is no country). Their mission was (and still is) to preserve Mexico’s native maize varieties as well as avert legislation that would apply brutally rigid intellectual copyright laws to the crop seeds they are able to grow.

In 2013, a collective of 53 scientists and 22 civil rights organisations and NGOs brought a suit against the GMO giants. And won. In September of that year, Judge Jaime Eduardo Verdugo issued a precautionary injunction on all further permits of GM crops, citing “the risk of imminent harm to the environment.” Shortly after that, another brave judge, Marroquín Zaleta, suspended the granting of licenses for GMO field trials sought by Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, Pionner-Dupont and Mexico’s SEMARNAT (Environment and Natural Resources Ministry).

Like Verdugo, Zaleta cited the potential risks to the environment posed by GMO corn. If the biotech industry got its way, he argued, more than 7000 years of indigenous maize cultivation in Mexico would be endangered, with the country’s 60 varieties of corn directly threatened by cross-pollination from transgenic strands.

Today, despite the panel resolution in favour of the US and Canada and Mexico’s growing dependence on US-grown GM corn, the struggle to protect Mexico’s maize remains undimmed. Mily Treviño-Sauceda, Executive Director of the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, said:

“The Alianza Nacional de Campesinas strongly condemns the panel’s decision in favour of the United States. Mexico’s policies to ban the use of genetically modified (GM) corn and glyphosate were enacted to protect biodiversity, cultural heritage and the rights of Indigenous people. This decision will continue to adversely impact the quality and nutritional value of food reaching Mexican households. This is just another step in the direction of consolidating agricultural power to the US agro-industrial complex that we will continue to challenge until we see real change for the benefit of the public and our health.”

The organisation Sin Maíz No Hay País issued a three-page statement that included the following passages:

We affirm that “Both the USMCA and this ruling issued by the trade dispute panel are designed primarily to protect the interests of transnational corporations, rather than
prioritising the rights of the Mexican population or environmental sustainability. In
this context, the dispute has raised issues of global concern, including the risks that
genetically modified foods pose to human and environmental health.

For this reason, the Mexican government invited the US to carry out a joint risk assessment
that would cover the needs of both populations, which the US refused to do because it
considered it unnecessary. The dispute also reveals the risks posed by basic foodstuffs being
part of trade agreements and being treated as a commodity and not as a basic good for humanity…

The Panel comprises three experts in international trade and legal aspects related to commercial processes. They are not scientists, nor specialists in public health or the environment. Their work is limited to resolving the administrative dispute presented by the United States against Mexico, without considering the possible impacts of genetically modified corn on the country’s health, biodiversity or environment. It should be remembered that Mexico, in addition to being a centre of origin and constant diversification of corn, has this cereal as the basis of its diet and culture…

Although the Panel did not rule in Mexico’s favour, the country has reaffirmed its commitment to protect public health and the environment from the risks associated with
transgenic corn. This issue remains a priority on the national agenda… It should also be noted that while the Mexican government presented a comprehensive selection of scientific articles, reviewed by peers, the United States presented research funded by the industry itself and even advertising pamphlets.

On the other hand, accusations that the decree hinders free trade are unfounded, since corn imports have grown in recent years, consisting primarily of grain intended for animal consumption. This was recently made clear with this year’s corn import figures.

In fact, over the past two years Mexico has overtaken China to become the largest buyer of US grains — not just corn but also wheat, soybeans, rice and beans. In 2023, the value of Mexico’s grain imports from the US increased 4 percent, to $7.65 million dollars. Data from the Agri-Food and Fisheries Information Service indicate that year Mexico bought from abroad (mainly from its direct neighbour to the north) 32.69 million tons of corn, wheat, sorghum, soybeans, beans and rice, an unprecedented figure. That’s roughly half of all the grains Mexico consumes.

On the campaign trail in 2018, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who imposed the ban on GMO corn, described that dependence, particularly in relation to corn, as an aberration:

“We buy over 14 million tonnes of corn. (…) This is a contradiction, an aberration. Corn originally comes from Mexico and it now turns out that Mexico is one of the biggest importers of corn in the world. This cannot go on.”

Today, despite AMLO’s best intentions, Mexico imports more US-grown grains than ever before. As some in Mexico’s farming sector have been complaining, rather than investing in the countryside, AMLO removed many of the farm support programs in place.

The irony is that Mexico is more dependent on US corn than ever before. During my protracted stays in Mexico, I am seeing more, rather than less, yellow corn tortillas on sale in tortellerias, grocery stores and supermarkets. The same goes for tamales, tostadas, corn oil, honey… US-grown GM corn is taking over.

Trying to reverse this trend is going to be an uphill struggle, especially following the panel’s decision. AMLO’s successor, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, responded to that decision on Saturday by pledging to work with Congress to pass a constitutional reform prohibiting the cultivation of genetically modified corn in national territory with the aim of protecting the country’s biodiversity. But that is a big step down from AMLO’s original ban on GM corn for human consumption. Plus, GM corn cultivation is, to all intents and purposes, banned already. 

To her credit, one of Sheinbaum’s first acts as president was to launch the National Food Sovereignty Program, which aims to boost production levels in the Mexican countryside, as well as bring sustainable and healthy food at affordable prices to Mexican families. The program aims to provide increased financial support for small and medium-sized farmers as well as bolster the production of non-GMO seeds. But it will take oodles of time and money, and even then Mexican farmers will struggle to compete with the US’ heavily subsidised producers.

Meanwhile, Sheinbaum’s regular dictum that Mexico is “a free, sovereign, independent nation” is looking increasingly empty. If her government cannot legislate to protect the public from imports of toxic food, what else will it be powerless to stop?