New rules published recently in the Official Gazette of the Federation maintain the prohibition of genetically modified corn (GMO) corn for human consumption in Mexico, but eliminate a 2024 deadline for phasing out biotech corn for animal feed and industrial food production.
In an economy ministry press release, the federal government said it would continue to explore substitutes for GMO yellow corn used as animal feed. “Working groups will be set up with the national and international private sector to achieve an orderly transition,” the missive said.
However, the 2024 deadline banning all corn for human consumption is still in effect. The federal government ordered the nation’s health regulator Cofepris to “carry out scientific research on the possible impacts of genetically modified corn on people’s health.” It said the studies will be carried out “with health agencies of other countries.”
“If you have to decide between health and commerce we opt for health,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said recently on this country’s GMO policy, noting that insufficient scientific research has been carried out on the impact of engineered corn on Mexico’s many native varieties of corn.
López Obrador’s 2020 decree setting the 2024 deadline for passing out GMO corn in Mexico had become a thorny issue between the United States and Mexico, with the Biden administration becoming increasingly concerned could that it could blow up into a full-scale trade dispute and result in a serious breakdown in the bilateral relationship.
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