{"id":6456,"date":"2015-03-13T05:46:41","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T10:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6456"},"modified":"2015-03-13T05:46:41","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T10:46:41","slug":"in-global-food-war-monsanto-trips-over-mexican-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6456","title":{"rendered":"In Global Food War, Monsanto Trips Over Mexican Judge"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/03\/12\/global-food-wars-monsanto-friends-battle-mexican-judge\/\" target=\"_blank\">In Global Food War, Monsanto Trips Over Mexican Judge<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>The global food wars are heating up. As I\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2014\/09\/01\/mexican-judge-departs-from-script-turns-monsantos-mexican-dream-into-legal-nightmare\/\">reported last September<\/a>, Mexico is on the frontline of one of the most important global battles \u2013 the battle for the control and ownership of seed stocks.<\/p>\n<p>In 2013 a collective of 53 scientists and 22 civil rights organizations and NGOs brought a lawsuit against some of the biggest players in the biotech industry. To everyone\u2019s surprise the presiding judge in the case \u2013 a man by the name of Jaime Manuel Marroqu\u00edn Zaleta \u2013 ruled in the litigants\u2019 favor, suspending the granting of licenses for GMO field trials sought by Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, Pionner-Dupont, and Mexico\u2019s Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (Semarnat).<\/p>\n<p>In defending his ruling, Zaleta cited the potential risks to the environment posed by GM corn. If the biotech industry got its way, he argued, more than 7000 years of indigenous maize cultivation in Mexico could be endangered, with the country\u2019s 60 varieties of corn directly threatened by cross-pollination from transgenic strands.<\/p>\n<p>In a world in which Monsanto is long-accustomed to pushing its weight and getting its own way, especially in Washington, Zaleta\u2019s ruling represents a rare snub. Because of the ruling\u2019s judicial nature, Mexico\u2019s unashamedly pro-GMO government has little choice but to grudgingly respect Zaleta\u2019s decision, writes\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jornada.unam.mx\/2015\/01\/22\/opinion\/020a2pol\">Antonio Torrent Fern\u00e1ndez<\/a>, the president of Mexico\u2019s Union of Scientists Committed to Society (ACCS), one of the organizations that brought the original lawsuit against Monsanto &amp; Co:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Global Food War, Monsanto Trips Over Mexican Judge The global food wars are heating up. As I\u00a0reported last September, Mexico is on the frontline of one of the most important global battles \u2013 the battle for the control and ownership of seed stocks. In 2013 a collective of 53 scientists and 22 civil rights [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[4134,319,4130,4132,372,4133,517,4131,1058,4135],"class_list":["post-6456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-cross-pollination","tag-food","tag-genetically-modified-organism","tag-gm-corn","tag-gmo","tag-maize","tag-mexico","tag-monsanto","tag-seed","tag-transgenic-strands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6457,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6456\/revisions\/6457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}