Peasant groups, Congress members and academics of Puebla wrote the suit that was formally filed before the Federal Attorney General’s Office.

The plaintiff’s lawyer, Rene Sanchez Galindo, told Boca de Polen news agency in an interview broadcasted by ALER, that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food said that the biggest problem “is neither production nor the development of biotechnology, but the problem of land appropriation”.

“There is food in the world, but it is concentrated in few hands. Monsanto is in Mexico because it is the land of corn, as corn has been cultivated here for 8 or 10 thousand years, even before Mexico existed as a nation. Also because it is a very important commodity”.

In the case of Puebla, the lawyer said that Monsanto has taken over a variety of native corn that has been cultivated there for 9,000 years, to which the plaintiffs claim is “a federal crime against the national heritage”.

Besides this specific case, it is estimated that Monsanto controls the genetic information of another 14 species of corn cultivated in Mexico. If the seed corporation patents these products, millions of Mexican peasants would immediately have to pay royalties to the corporation for the use of seeds, La Jornada de Oriente newspaper reported.

In statements to the newspaper, researcher of the Autonomous University of Puebla (UAP) Miguel Damián Huato, said the business and final goal of the transnational corporation is to commercialize Mexican corn grains around the world. He recalled that over 70% of corn production in Mexico is under Monsanto’s control.

Photo: ecoosfera.com