Mexican Judge Departs From Script, Turns Monsanto’s Mexican Dream Into Legal Nightmare
Mexican Judge Departs From Script, Turns Monsanto’s Mexican Dream Into Legal Nightmare
by Don Quijones • September 1, 2014
By Don Quijones, freelance writer, translator in Barcelona, Spain, but currently in Mexico. Raging Bull-Shit is his modest attempt to challenge the wishful thinking and scrub away the lathers of soft soap peddled by political and business leaders and their loyal mainstream media. This article is a Wolf Street exclusive.
The U.S. agribusiness giant Monsanto is long accustomed to getting its own way. Through a combination of back-channel lobbying, opaque political funding and revolving-door politics, the multinational agrochemical and biotechnology corporation has subverted, corrupted and infiltrated the elected governments of countries around the world, from the smallest and poorest to the biggest and richest.
However, if recent events in Europe and Latin America are any indication, the tide may well be subtly turning against the interests of Monsanto and its fellow GMO oligopolies and in the favor of independent food growers and consumers. Despite their tireless lobbying efforts in Brussels, the “Big Six” (Monsanto, Du Pont Pioneer, Syngenta, Vilmorin, Winfield and KWS) continue to hit a brick wall of resistance in many of Europe’s biggest markets, including Germany and France. As I reported in April this year, popular resistance is on the rise across Latin America, as indigenous and peasant communities rise up against government legislation that would apply brutally rigid intellectual copyright laws to the crop seeds they are able to grow.
The latest country to put a spanner in the works is Mexico. This past week the country’s Federal Court voted to uphold Judge Marroquín Zaleta’s 2013 ruling to suspend the granting of licenses for GMO field trials sought by Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, Pionner-Dupont and Mexico’s SEMARNAT (Environment and Natural Resources Ministry). Zaleta’s ruling was in response to a suit brought by a collective of 53 scientists and 22 civil rights organizations and NGOs.
In defending his ruling, Zaleta cited the potential risks to the environment posed by GMO corn. If the biotech industry got its way, he argued, more than 7000 years of indigenous maize cultivation in Mexico would be endangered, with the country’s 60 varieties of corn directly threatened by cross-pollination from transgenic strands. Monsanto’s response was as swift as it was brutal: not only did it – and its lackeys in the Mexican government – appeal Zaleta’s ruling, it also demanded his removal from the bench on the grounds that he had already stated his opinion on the case before sentencing.
However, Monsanto’s bullying tactics failed to impress the Mexican judges. On August 15, the court convened to review Zaleta’s alleged bias ruled against the U.S. corporation’s legal suit. Also spurned by the Mexican courts was the world’s third largest GMO seed manufacturer, Syngenta, whose reapplication for a license to run test trials of its maize crops was rejected this week by the Federal Court. .....................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://wolfstreet.com/2014/09/01/mexican-judge-departs-from-script-turns-monsantos-mexican-dream-into-legal-nightmare/
= new reply since forum marked as read
I'm not saying GMO has no value or should be thrown out. I'm... actually not quite sure how to phrase my thoughts on that, honestly, so allow me to break it down.
1) I feel that profit motive is as corruptive here as it is in pharmaceuticals. That the "gold rush" nature of organism / gene patenting is the most sure way to realize the very things anti-GMO voices talk about. A mad rush to profit usually doesn't involve a lot of research and failsafes, the idea is just to crank it out as fast as you can and see what sticks in the market.
2) That in mind, I feel that such approaches need to be discouraged - primarily by removing and forbidding further patents from genes and organisms. Given the very nature of biology, these patents should have been invalidated after a generation anyway but our patent offices apparently can't tell between wheat and a toaster.
3) GMO does have value - I wanted to mention golden rice in my prior post, as an example, but i felt i was already getting disjointed and rambling in it. With that in mind, there still ought to be support for research and development, though purely within a scientific, rather than industrial purview. There are gains to be had, but I feel they ought to be solidly researched, developed, and sounded out. Not just to get the potential "kinks" out, but also just to polish the product and make sure it consistently does what it's supposed to do.
4) The seed stock should then be distributed - either as gratis, or for a nominal stipend. Very importantly, these seeds must be fertile - let people control their own damn food, breed and improve it as they wish, preserve and trade and extend and do all the things we've been doing this whole damn time.
Basically i prefer a steady, if somewhat slow, well-researched approach that lacks a profit motive and aims towards improvement of the human condition. Perhaps I'm something of a dreamer. 
My point about having "good enough" agricultural options, is simply to illustrate there's really not any overwhelming hurry to justify slapdash, Yukon gold-rush treatment of the technology. What's there may not be ideal, I'll certainly grant - living off sorghum mash for my entire adult life doesn't sound at all appealing - but it does suffice for the time being while research and development is conducted on improving what we already have. That's what i was saying, not some "good enough, let's not bother trying to improve!" but rather, "it'll do while we improve"
just overturned a law we the People passed to hold Monsanto types accountable for their poisonous sprays and buffer zones around schools and hospitals.
FUCK OFF Monsanto Toxic Raging Bullshit.
So far the Big Island has held off their creepy crawling environmental poison.
