The News Staff
November 2, 2001
By Reed Lindsay

MEXICO CITY - In closed-door meetings with agribusiness executives, the Agriculture Secretariat (Sagarpa) is working to legalize the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops, Greenpeace Mexico announced on Thursday.

The meetings were convoked by Sagarpa to discuss the creation of a measure that would set the rules by which GM agricultural products could be grown and sold on a large scale.

Currently, genetically engineered crops are limited to a handful of "pilot projects" involving the cultivation of soybeans and cotton.

According to Greenpeace legal counsel Maria Colin, Sagarpa is rushing to open up the nation's agriculture sector to GM products before Congress has a chance to pass legislation that could either set strict limits on their production, importation and commercialization, or prohibit them outright.

"Right now there is a giant gap in the law in the area of genetically modified products," said Colin at a Mexico City news conference. "Before thinking about technical regulations in benefit of the largest agribusiness companies, we have to establish a legal framework that ensures the nation's biosecurity."

Earlier this month, Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) Dep. Francisco Patiqo Cardona introduced an initiative that aims to regulate genetically engineered products, but it likely will take months for a bill to make its way through Congress.

After attending the first few monthly Sagarpa-organized meetings - which began in May - Colin said she and another Greenpeace representative stopped going for fear their presence would be used to legitimize the eventual legalization of genetically engineered crops.

According to Colin, of the less than 20 people who attended the meetings, six or seven were representatives from agribusiness, including Pulsar Internacional, Monsanto and AgroBIO, a non-profit front for industry behemoths such as Syngenta, Aventis, Dupont and Monsanto.

The remaining participants included the two Greenpeace representatives and various government officials. Campesinos, independent experts and other non-government organizations were not present.

Sagarpa officials did not return phone calls on Thursday.

Meanwhile, now more than one month after the government announced the discovery of genetically engineered corn being grown illegally in the state of Oaxaca, President Vicente Fox's administration has yet to make public how it will respond.

Officials from the Interagency Commission on Biosecurity and Genetically Modified Organisms (Cibiogem), which is evaluating the extent and gravity of the discovery, are not talking to the media.