What are transgenic foods?

Your T-MEC partners; The United States and Canada are not entirely in agreement since they submitted requests for consultations, as part of chapter 31 of dispute settlement within the treaty, to reach an agreement on the purchase and sale of transgenic corn. It should be noted that the US is the main supplier country of imported yellow and white corn for Mexico.

What is a transgenic food?

A transgenic or genetically modified organism (GMO) is a living being created artificially through the inversion of genes from viruses, bacteria, plants, animals or humans to a plant or animal, explains Greenpeace.

Through genetic engineering it is possible to insert certain traits of one species, animal or plant, into another.

Benefits and risks

In the case of agriculture, what is sought is to control food production, to achieve greater production and, therefore, greater profits; in addition to more nutritious foods, resistant to drought, pests and that grow faster. Likewise, these foods require less water, fertilizers and pesticides, according to the debate table on genetically modified organisms, which was prepared by the Senate of the Republic in 2015.

Among the dangers of GMOs, the Senate document points out, is an increase in antibiotic resistance, and the possibility of new toxins being produced, which can cause new allergies in consumers.

Lawsuit for corn

Mexico imports yellow corn – cattle feed – mainly from the United States, as well as from Argentina and Brazil.

The Mexican government has clarified that the ban covers only corn for human consumption, dough, and tortillas.

Before the request for consultations, the United States government asked Mexico for scientific arguments to support the ban on the import of transgenic corn.

The head of the Economy, Raquel Buenrostro, met with US legislators and maintained that everything “will be done on a scientific basis.”

In addition, in a virtual meeting with the US trade representative, Katherine Tai, Secretary Buenrostro said that the Mexican government’s decree on the importation of corn “does not have a commercial impact, since Mexico produces a lot of corn than it requires for the dough and the tortilla, while the corn that is imported from the United States, whether white or yellow, is complementary and is used for industry and animal feed”.

On its Twitter account, the SE highlighted that Mexico is the center of origin of 64 races of corn, of which 19 are endemic, which is why it seeks to increase the production of the Mexican countryside using native corn.