Mexico City.- The Monsanto company withdrew on Tuesday from the lawsuit against the 2020 presidential decree that seeks to dispense with glyphosate and transgenic corn for human consumption in Mexico, the National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies (Conahcyt) reported yesterday.
The National Council of Humanities, Sciences and Technologies (Conahcyt) assured that it will continue to advance in compliance with the decree and in full coordination with the rest of the instances of the Federal Public Administration, until transgenic corn and glyphosate are removed from the food of Mexican families.
In a statement, the organization recalled that the publication of the presidential decree for the restriction of these two products resulted in an avalanche of requests for protection promoted by various companies dedicated to the commercialization of agrotoxins or other agricultural inputs, such as grains and seeds, and organizations that represent these same companies or conventional producers, in favor of the interests of transnational companies and giants of the industrial agriculture oligopoly.
He explained that there were more than 30 amparo trials, through which they sought to have the decree declared unconstitutional and rendered void. However, the vast majority of these trials have already been concluded with resolutions that did not favor companies and civil associations.
“This led to the 2020 presidential decree remaining in force, until it was repealed by a new one in 2023 that reaffirms what was established in the previous one and adds the instruction to gradually replace transgenic corn for animal consumption and industrial use for human consumption,” he noted.
He added that one of the judicial processes against the 2020 decree, active until last Tuesday, was the one originated with the main lawsuit and the adhesive resources of the companies Semillas y Agroproductos Monsanto and Monsanto Comercial, subsidiaries of the transnational Bayer, which, in In 2018, it completed the purchase of the pesticide and transgenic biotechnology giant, Monsanto Company.
“In the litigation, Conahcyt was identified as one of the responsible authorities, so this institution offered nearly 250 documentaries that exhibited the scientific and legal evidence that supports the arguments set forth in the various justified reports and promotions, in defense of the presidential decree,” he said.
In July 2022, Judge Francisco Rebolledo Peña ruled in favor of Monsanto with a controversial, contradictory and partial ruling that omitted fundamental elements for the protection of human rights and ignored the evidence provided by the authorities. The sentence was appealed by Semarnat, the Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks (Cofepris) and Conahcyt, who continued to advance in full compliance with the decree.
He noted that Monsanto has had to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in punitive damages and settlements in more than 100,000 lawsuits in the United States in which glyphosate was linked to the development of cancer, as well as multimillion-dollar fines for misleading advertising.
“Conahcyt continues to support humanistic, scientific, technological and innovative research to investigate the presence of transgenes and glyphosate in grains, seeds and corn flour, which will allow determining possible routes of dispersion, as well as other substantive and fundamental actions that contribute to guaranteeing the human right of the people of Mexico to healthy food,” the organization concluded.
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