MEXICO CITY (CN) — Mexico’s president on Friday responded to the formation of a dispute resolution panel by the U.S. Trade Representative over the country’s restriction of genetically modified corn by saying the negotiations will benefit citizens of both countries.
“It’s very important, because it’s not just a Mexico issue, it’s an issue that will help consumers in the United States, and the whole world,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during his morning press conference in Mexico City.
The U.S. Trade Representative announced Thursday the creation of a dispute settlement panel under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in response to restrictions Mexico placed on GM corn for tortilla dough in February.
“Through the USMCA dispute panel, we seek to resolve our concerns and help ensure consumers can continue to access safe and affordable food and agricultural products,” U.S. Trade Ambassador Katherine Tai said in the statement, adding that the Mexican market is “critical” to U.S. corn farmers.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that “Mexico’s approach to biotechnology is not based on science and runs counter to decades’ worth of evidence demonstrating its safety and the rigorous, science-based regulatory review system that ensures it poses no harm to human health and the environment.”
Claiming to have proof to the contrary, López Obrador proposed the creation of a binational research group to “know for certain if GM corn causes harm to human health or not.”
Scientific consensus has already come to the conclusion that it certainly does not, but the issue has been debated for decades, to the point where researchers queried by Courthouse News expressed being tired of talking about it.
“From a scientific vantage point, this is totally a non-issue,” said Henry Miller, a doctor with the American Council on Science and Health in an email exchange.
While the term “genetic modification” may seem like a new, scary scientific concept, Miller said, the practice “is a millennia-old seamless continuum of techniques” that include selective breeding and cross hybridization.
“The only distinction is that the molecular techniques are more precise and predictable,” he said, adding that he does not like the term “GMO,” or genetically modified organism, “because it implies that they are somehow a distinct category of genetic modification.”
More than 90% of the corn, cotton, canola, soy and sugar beets cultivated in the U.S. have been so-called GMOs, Miller said. These products have resulted in trillions of servings of food, yet not one case of harm has been connected to them.
A group of activists and researchers refuted U.S. claims of GM corn’s safety in a recent webinar, alleging they are part of a broader conspiracy to cover up scientific evidence to the contrary.
“There is a ton of misinformation in particular in Mexico,” said Wayne Parrott, a professor of crop and soil sciences at the University of Georgia.
The nature of international trade serves as incontrovertible proof that this conspiracy does not exist, Parrott said. In addition to safety studies in countries of origin, most often the United States, importing countries also do their own reviews.
Over 60 countries import genetically modified crops from the United States, all of which perform their own reviews of safety data. Some countries, such as China, do not accept data from other countries and prefer to generate their own data.
“The only way you could possibly be buying off scientists is if you bought them off in 60 countries ranging from the U.S. all the way to China, Europe, Australia, Korea, Japan,” Parrot said. “I just don’t see that happening.”
Antonio Turrent Fernández, a researcher with Mexico’s National Institute for Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research who opposes GM corn, said he indeed believes in this “gigantic” conspiracy.
“Studies that do not coincide with the industry’s general beliefs are always going to be attacked,” he said in a phone interview.
Turrent, who participated in the aforementioned webinar, cited a controversial 2012 study that was retracted out of concerns over the experiment’s methodology. It was later republished in a different journal, but subsequent experiments have been unable to replicate its findings.
“There’s nothing there,” said Parrott, referring to the retracted study.
He cited a 2014 UC Davis study that found no health problems in livestock fed with GMO products. That study examined over 100 billion animals over the course of nearly three decades.
Turrent told Courthouse News that he will participate in a new study in Mexico which will include the French molecular biologist Gilles-Éric Séralini, the researcher behind the retracted 2012 study.
Throughout his term, López Obrador has proven to be an inscrutable head of state whose motives are difficult to pin down. His complete U-turn on the militarization of Mexico started by his predecessors is perhaps the most salient example of this.
While maize is one of the strongest symbols of cultural identity in Mexico and could have easily been chosen by the president as potent tool to bolster his populist image, there is a caucus within his administration that is convinced of GM corn’s harmfulness to human health.
And the president is likely convinced of it, as well, according to Martha Bárcena, a former Mexican ambassador to the United States.
“I think that the president and a small group of his advisers are convinced that GM corn does cause harm,” she said in a phone interview, calling this group a “radical” segment of the López Obrador administration that is behind this opposition.
This Inter-sectorial Group on Health, Diet, Environment and Competitiveness (GISAMAC) includes Deputy Health Secretary Hugo López-Gatell, Economy Secretary Raquel Buenrostro, Deputy Agricultural Secretary Víctor Suárez and head of the National Council on Humanities, Science and Technology Elena Álvarez-Buylla, among others.
These members of the GISAMAC did not respond to a request for comment.
Bárcena said that the U.S. Trade Representative’s decision to form the panel surprised academics and specialists who almost unanimously believed that the Biden administration would draw out the pre-arbitration consultations indefinitely.
The U.S. has also been in dispute settlement consultations with Mexico over López Obrador’s energy policy. The corn issue has political significance in the United States, Bárcena said.
“In the case of the corn belt — Kansas, Illinois, Iowa — they are going to be fundamental to the 2024 elections,” she said.
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