Food Tank
Bayer/Monsanto suffered another in a long string of setbacks in its battle to grow genetically modified (GM) corn in Mexico when the country’s highest court on October 13 refused to overturn a precautionary injunction restricting the cultivation of GM corn. In its unanimous decision, the court agreed with the citizen petitioners who sought the injunction in 2013 that cultivation of GM corn poses a credible threat to Mexico’s rich store of native corn biodiversity through uncontrolled cross-pollination.
The Demanda Colectiva, the citizen group that brought the original lawsuit, in a statement said that the unanimous decision strongly supports “the collective rights of peasant and indigenous communities and of the consumers of corn.”
The chemical and seed companies who sought to overturn the injunction, including Bayer-Monsanto, Syngenta, and Corteva (formerly Dow and DuPont), criticized the decision, saying that GM organisms (GMOs) “have not produced a single case of threat or risk to the environment.”
Seed companies on a losing streak
With the Supreme Court decision, the companies added to a losing streak that has included more than 100 rejected appeals seeking to overturn the GM corn injunction. Their biggest loss, however, may have been the withdrawal of support from the Mexican government.