Transgenic Maize in Mexico - Two Updates

1. Contaminated Communities Respond

The Mexican government’s announcement in September 2001 that transgenic sequences had contaminated traditional corn (maize) varieties in isolated mountain communities in Oaxaca surprised the world. Because of the value of these traditional varieties for agricultural breeding programs, and indeed for all present and future consumers of maize, in 1998 the Mexican government placed a countrywide moratorium on the growing of transgenic maize. That transgenes could contaminate traditional varieties even during a planting moratorium was shocking.

The transgenic contamination was first discovered months before the September announcement when indigenous communities in Oaxaca wanted to certify their maize as sustainably produced, a distinction they had already been allowed for the wood harvested from their forests. To the surprise of the communities, their organically produced traditional varieties tested positive for transgenic sequences. After this discovery, University of California at Berkeley researchers David Quist and Ignacio Chapela started scientific studies on the contaminated maize. The researchers also informed the Mexican environmental ministry, which began its own investigation.

Indigenous communities throughout the state of Oaxaca are troubled by the findings. They have worked as stewards of maize diversity for millennia, and they understand the importance of this work to the rest of the world. To find their traditional varieties contaminated without their knowledge is disturbing enough. Even more alarming to the community members are the unknown health effects of the transgenic corn on their children and their children's children.

The communities also express concern about the effects of the transgenic maize on biological diversity in general. The contaminating transgene is likely to be the Bt gene, which codes for an insecticidal toxin. Preliminary reports from Mexico confirm that the Bt gene is present and expressing protein in some of the contaminated samples. This transgene is well known for its impact on Monarchs and other butterfly and moth (lepidopteran) species. Scientists in Switzerland have also detailed the impacts of Bt-maize on the natural enemies of pests that eat the transgenic crop. Because of the myriad of ecosystems in Mexico in which the contaminated maize might be found, the potential ecological impacts are impossible to predict.

The indigenous communities, working with an environmental law firm in Mexico, drafted a legal request to the North American Free Trade Agreement Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NAFTA-CEC), and filed it with the CEC in April 2002. The CEC was established by an environmental side agreement adopted at the time of the NAFTA agreement. The Commission has broad responsibilities (but limited enforcement power) to ensure that environmental laws are enforced in the three NAFTA countries. The legal request from the Oaxacan communities asks the CEC to investigate the impacts of maize contamination in three general areas:

• Impacts on maize diversity
• Impacts on broad biological diversity
• Economic impacts of loss of markets

Controversy continues to surround the scientific documentation of the contamination by Quist and Chapela in Nature magazine. Both scientific and personal attacks against the scientists began almost immediately after the initial publication of the results in November 2001. Internet criticism of them and their work was coordinated by the pro-biotech website AgBioWorld, and its associated scientists. Nature magazine was heavily lobbied against the original publication both before and after publication, and at the beginning of April, the magazine published two letters that were critical of one of the conclusions made by Quist and Chapela.

Notably, no one took issue with the most important finding: that contaminating transgenic sequences were found in the traditional varieties of maize in Oaxaca. Instead, the scientific criticism concerned the second of Quist and Chapela's findings: that the transgenic sequences were inserted in various parts of the maize genome, and that they were fragmented and appeared to be mobile. However, even those controversial conclusions may not have been the real reason for the critical letters. The majority of the authors of the two critical letters have been involved in a longstanding feud with Chapela and Quist. The other authors are their graduate students. All are from UC Berkeley or have a connection to Berkeley.

There may be two historical reasons for the criticisms that made their way onto Nature’s Letters page: Chapela was chair of the UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources’ executive committee at the time that its Department of Plant Biology was negotiating the infamous deal with Novartis, whereby UC Berkeley sold first rights of access to all results of departmental research for five years to this transnational corporation, in exchange for $25 million. Chapela was quite critical of the deal, and as chair of the college’s executive committee, he conducted a survey of faculty opinions on the contract. As a result, he was not popular with the proponents of the UC Berkeley-Novartis partnership — including some authors of the Nature letters.

The second reason: around the time of the deal, there was a crop pull (a direct action in which activists pull up and destroy genetically engineered plants) by local activists of genetically engineered corn, which belonged to a student working in the lab of one of the major proponents of the deal. At the time, someone accused Quist of being the crop puller, though those charges were never substantiated.

Who were the letter writers? One letter has two authors. The first, Matthew Metz, was a graduate student at Berkeley at the time of the Novartis deal and a vocal proponent of genetic engineering and is currently a scientist associated with AgBioWorld. The other author is a scientist in Switzerland, seemingly unconnected to the UC Berkeley controversy. However, he works in the current laboratory of Wilhelm Gruissem, who was chair of the UC Berkeley Department of Plant Biology at the time of the Novartis deal, and some say was the behind-the-scenes architect of the entire project.

The other letter had several authors: a UC Berkeley faculty member who was a major proponent of the Novartis deal and the first recipient of a grant from the Novartis money; his graduate student-the one whose corn was trashed by the croppers; the director of the Plant Gene Expression Center, another proponent whose corn was also trashed according to some reports; and a few other graduate students.

Conclusion

The observation that transgenic sequences were found in traditional Mexican maize varieties remains virtually uncontested. In fact, the Mexican National Institute of Ecology will soon publish its results confirming the contamination and documenting an even wider geographical involvement than Quist and Chapela did. Yet, two key questions about the contaminated Mexican maize remain unanswered; these questions are sure to define the future scientific and political debates on the issue. What can be done now that Mexico's corn is contaminated? And, will the companies responsible for this genetic pollution be held responsible?

Doreen Stabinsky, PhD, is a Professor of Environmental Politics at College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, Maine), Science Advisor for Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International, and a CRG board member. Her research focuses on the international politics of genetic engineering in forums such as the Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety, the World Trade Organization, and the Food and Agriculture Organization.