Mexico’s XII District Court has overturned a 2013 ruling that prevented biotech companies, including Monsanto and Syngenta, planting genetically modified (GM) maize in Mexico.

The legal battles over the existing ban on the planting of transgenic maize in Mexico continue to unfold with a string of four important court victories by anti-GMO activists. On February 28, 2015, the collective of social movement organizations known as Acción Colectiva del Maíz announced that they had secured four more favorable court decisions involving amparo (shelter) corporate challenges seeking to end the GMO corn ban in Mexico.

Mexico is desperately trying to avoid a bioterrorism takeover by Big GMO, which is insistent upon ushering in genetically modified (GM) maize to replace the dozens of native corn varieties already grown throughout the country.

Corn was first domesticated in Mexico and quickly spread throughout the Americas, beginning in about 2,500 B.C. Over the centuries, around 20,000 or more different varieties emerged as ears of corn were transported around the world.

A number of countries around the world have now completely banned GM food and the pesticides that go with them, or have severe restrictions against them. This comes after the world has experienced a massive resistance against Monsanto and other biotech giants that manufacture GMOs and pesticides.

Evidence convinced judge of threat posed to honey production in Yucatán – but firm will almost certainly appeal against ruling.

A small group of beekeepers in Mexico has inflicted a blow on biotech giant Monsanto, which has halted the company’s ambitions to plant thousands of hectares of soybeans genetically modified to resist the company’s pesticide Roundup.

A district judge in the state of Yucatán last month overturned a permit issued to Monsanto by Mexico’s agriculture ministry, Sagarpa, and environmental protection agency, Semarnat, in June 2012 that allowed commercial planting of Roundup-ready soybeans.

The permit authorised Monsanto to plant its seeds in seven states, over more than 253,000 hectares (625,000 acres), despite protests from thousands of Mayan farmers and beekeepers, Greenpeace, the Mexican National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity, the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas and the National Institute of Ecology.

In withdrawing the permit, the judge was convinced by the scientific evidence presented about the threats posed by GM soy crops to honey production in the Yucatán peninsula, which includes Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatán states. Co-existence between honey production and GM soybeans is not possible, the judge ruled.

The Mexican scientific community has been torn apart by a legal battle over transgenic maize (corn). Almost a year after activists challenged scientists’ right to plant experimental genetically modified (GM) varieties of the crop that is a staple and symbol of Mexico, maize research is still being stymied by a legal stalemate.

I'd come to Mexico to investigate the ongoing controversy over the proposed introduction of genetically modified (GM) maize into the birthplace of this important global food crop. The issue was hot, because last October a Mexican judge had issued an injunction halting all experimental and commercial planting of GM maize, a process that was well underway in six northern states. The ruling cited the need for precaution to ensure that Mexico's rich diversity of maize varieties were protected from inadvertent "gene flow" from GM maize.

The entire country of Mexico should be declared a “center of origin” for maize, with no permitted GM cultivation. (.....) Studies have found the presence of transgenes in native maize in nearly half of Mexico’s states. A study of maize diversity within the confines of Mexico’s sprawling capital city revealed transgenic maize in 70 percent of the samples from the area of Xochimilco and 49 percent of those from Tlalpan.

Mexico is the “center of origin” where maize was first domesticated from its wild ancestor, teocinte. The country is arguably the last place you’d want to risk the possibility that its wide array of native seeds might be undermined by what indigenous people have called “genetic pollution” from GM maize. (.....) ”If the seeds of maize are sold or exchanged, the contamination will grow exponentially,” he warned. “That is the point of no return.”