Mexico’s Food Sovereignty Remains Under Threat From Genetically Modified Corn and Pressure From Multinational Corporations
The two years of silence from the Ministry of Economy (SE), despite four rulings ordering it to activate the mechanisms of the USMCA (free trade agreement between Mexico, the United States, and Canada) against the United States for pressuring Mexico to import genetically modified corn (GMC), respond to a strictly commercial interest, said Mercedes López Martínez, common representative of the Collective Lawsuit for Corn.
During the six-year term of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, two presidential decrees were issued banning the importation of GMC. In the second decree, issued in 2023, the ban on GMC for human consumption was strengthened, establishing that it cannot be imported or planted and that, gradually, it must also not be present in the livestock industry or other food-related industrial uses. The United States responded by requesting an arbitration panel and filed a complaint against Mexico for breaching the USMCA.