Mexicos regering skal tage stilling til multinationale firmaers forslag om at så gensplejset majs på 2,4 millioner hektar – international organisation for småbønder advarer om, at det vil forværre forholdene for småbønder, forurene og udgøre en trussel mod helbredet for millioner.
MEXICO CITY, November 20, 2012. In the next few days, the multinationals Monsanto, DuPont and Dow are expecting a positive response from the Mexican Government to sow 2.4 million hectares of GM maize in Mexico, a surface area equivalent to that of El Salvador, writes La Via Campesina on their homepage Thursday.
The situation is extremely alarming since Mexico is the world’s centre of maize diversity, with thousands of varieties in the fields of peasant and indigenous communities.
Maize is currently one of the world’s three main food staples, so the contamination of Mexican maize by dangerous GMOs is a threat to the entire planet.
There are thousands of local varieties of maize in Mexico’s peasant communities, each one the product of different climates, soils, ecosystems and cultures.
From Mexico, maize spread across the world, becoming one of the most important foodstuffs for many other peoples, especially in Southern Africa, Asia and all of Latin America.
In recent decades, however, industry and the multinationals have also shown considerable interest in maize. They have developed hybrid varieties, dependent on pesticides and other inputs, which peasants must purchase.
They have also developed GM maize varieties which today cover 51 million hectares across the globe.
“The situation is a matter of grave concern, since the Mexican Government is favouring the multinationals at the cost of peasant wellbeing and our health”, said Alberto Gomez, of Via Campesina Mexico.
“For the past twenty years, the Mexican Government has been jeopardizing our food sovereignty by opening agriculture to free trade, flooding us with cheap, low quality maize and leaving thousands of peasants in poverty. Now they want to poison us with GM maize. We won’t allow it,” he continued.
Studies published recently in France show that GM maize could seriously damage health. These risks have not been properly assessed. In the French studies, rats which ate this maize suffered high incidences of cancer, with damage to their vital organs.
In Mexico they want to sow, among others, the same variety of GM maize as that in the French studies, known as “NK 603”.
Læs mere her: http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/biodiversity-and-genetic-resources-mainmenu-37/1342-gmos-in-mexico-a-crime-against-peasant-and-indigenous-maize-a-crime-against-humanity
Begynd ved: “GM crops are, moreover, a violation of peasant rights…”
