Court Overturns USDA GMO Deregulation; Mexico Calls For Constitutional Protections Against GMOs

A California court has overturned a move by the USDA in 2020 to deregulate GMO seeds that theoretically pose no environmental risks. APHIS, a division of USDA, published a proposed rule in 2008 that took 12 years to finally be implemented with the goal of fostering innovation in the agricultural sector. The plaintiffs in the case, National Family Farm Coalition, alleged that the USDA acted “arbitrarily and capriciously, and contrary to various federal statutes.”

The plaintiffs believe that APHIS effectively abandoned regulation of GMO crops, “leaving GE [genetically engineered] crop developers and agribusinesses to their own devices without adequate safety and other oversight.” The rule allowed GE crops to be exempted from regulation if they were not classified as “noxious weeds.”

The agency has until January 13, 2025, to release a statement addressing “what effect, if any, this order will have on the rule identifying additional GE organisms qualified for exemption.” Regarding GE crops that have already been granted exemption since the rule took effect in 2020, the judge wrote, “The egg has been scrambled.”

The HighWire reported about a USDA federal rule last month that provides exemptions to GE crops with up to 12 modifications. Last year, The HighWire spoke with Michael Antoniou, a professor of molecular genetics at King’s College in London, who warned about the potential impacts of GMO deregulation. “The market will be flooded with untested and unlabeled gene-edited food products with unknown short-term, let alone long-term, health and environmental consequences,” Antoniou said. “This is simply a horrifying prospect.”

The USDA court loss comes amidst a trade battle between Mexico and the United States in which the U.S. has pressured its southern neighbor to accept GMO corn as an import. Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, stated her intent to create a constitutional safeguard for non-GMO white corn. “We have an obligation to ensure that the white corn cultivated in Mexico is not genetically-modified,” Sheinbaum said. “This will be in the constitution as this is the best defense we have for biodiversity as well as for our health.”

CONAHCYT, Mexico’s National Council for Humanities, Science and Technology, wrote a new 200-page report with 1,200 references. The report concludes that GMO crops are an unacceptable health risk and ineffective.

“Today there is no scientific consensus on the safety of human or animal consumption and the releasing into the environment of GM crops,” the report states. “What there is, however, is a corpus of scientific research that has shown that transgenesis is an imprecise technology with unexpected and undesired effects; in particular, it has demonstrated the risks and harm it entails.”

The report continues, “In Mexico, the introduction of GM corn has led to the transgenic contamination of native corn varieties, with negative environmental, biocultural, social, economic and political consequences. This has been systematically demonstrated by various scientific investigations. “

The report states that GM crops have existed for 30 years and have “a history of unfulfilled benefits in the light of scientific evidence.” It says the two primary arguments for creating and adopting GM crops are increased crop production and reduced pesticide usage. It provides data and graphs to support the claim that neither of these purported benefits has been realized since farmers in the United States have utilized GM products.

Charts included show crop yields have increased since the introduction of GMO crops 30 years ago. However, the charts show that the amount of arable land has also increased at the same rate for the United States and around the world. The authors of the report conclude that “more crops are being produced, because there is more land for growing them.”

The Genetic Literacy Project is one of the most well-known GMO proponents and states that GMO crops provide a 15-40% higher yield than non-GMO counterparts. One study that is often linked in this discussion is a meta-analysis that supposedly looked at 6,000 studies, but a report from Toxin Free USA critiques the study for not being a proper meta-analysis, substantiating claims on a small number of flawed studies, and relying on studies written by authors who have conflicts of interest.

U.S. Right To Know published a report in 2022 detailing a six-figure payment the Genetic Literacy Project received from Bayer in a one-year time span from June 2020 to June 2021. The USDA claims that GMO crops increase quality, but only states that it “may” increase crop yields.

The Mexican report also provides graphs showing that pesticide and insecticide use has continued to increase despite the heavy usage of GMO crops in countries like the United States and Argentina. The report states that these agrochemicals have caused the proliferation of “superweeds” and “super pests.” The report also states that the use of GMO crops has only increased the amount of ultra-processed foods being consumed, which are high in calories, but low in nutrition.

The HighWire has reported about glyphosate residues in fast food as well as an attempt by Bayer to get federal immunity as a slew of lawsuits continue to roll in. The HighWire reported about an analysis from Friends of the Earth that found the new Roundup formulation without glyphosate is 45 times more toxic than the version containing glyphosate.

Biotech companies continue to brush off safety concerns while attempting to gain immunity and exemptions from safety trials in the United States. The Mexican report says there is no global preference by farmers or governments to plant GMO crops. Only 15% of the world’s countries plant GMO crops and only 22% import them. One hundred sixty-five countries worldwide have planted corn, but only 8.5% of those countries planted GMO corn varieties.

While the Mexican report shows countries around the world rejecting GMO crops as a standard part of the agricultural system, about 55% of harvested farmland in the United States contains GMO crops according to the USDA.