PANNA: Dr. Ignacio Chapela on Controversy, Corn and What's Really at Stake in Mexico

In our December 2001 issue, we reported that transgenic corn was found in Oaxaca, Mexico by researchers David Quist and Ignacio Chapela. Dr. Chapela is a microbial ecologist at the University of California at Berkeley and member of the PAN North America Board of Directors. The news is especially troubling because it means that GE corn strains now occupy the center of diversity for the world's maize. It also indicates, as you will read below, that the behavior of the introduced DNA is unpredictable and uncontrolled.

The scientific journal Nature first published the Quist/Chapela study in November 2001 after rigorous peer review. But in April the journal did an about-face, running an editorial and two letters that were extremely critical of the study's conclusions. The controversy was fueled by a barrage of emails to a science oriented listserv that were later traced to a public relations firm tied to Monsanto (see An Organized Attack?).

The GPC found that Dr. Chapela had weathered the media storm with a remarkably even temper. He was much more concerned with the long term risks of GE crops and the plight of small farmers in Mexico. However we think it is important to note that Dr. Chapela's petition for tenure is pending at UC Berkeley, and that when the conclusions are uncomfortable, scientific inquiry has been known to have a price. We hope, in this instance, that the price will be paid by Monsanto, not Dr. Chapela.

GPC: The controversy around your study has confused the findings. Is transgenic corn growing in Mexico?

Ignacio Chapela: The reality of contamination of Mexican corn has never been challenged. The group trying to discredit the study said that it was a "no brainer." What they were challenging was our secondary statement, which was based on a separate finding that doesn't have anything to do with the fact of contamination per se. They argued with our technical process -- the inverse PCR method (Polymerase Chain Reaction) -- that we used to analyze where the transgenic DNA was located within the genome of the corn in Mexico. Our experiments revealed that the transgenic DNA is turning up in unpredictable places. That is the finding that is open to interpretation.

Here's a metaphor to explain what the controversy is all about. Let's say you're looking for a planet. You have methods to find out whether there is a planet out there, and other methods to describe the surface of the planet. You take a telescope which is one method. Let's assume the telescope has just been discovered a few years before (which is the case with the method we used to analyze the DNA). You train your telescope, and you take a picture. The picture is really grainy, and you interpret it. You say, "What I see looks like a valley, a river and forests."

What these people who are challenging the study are saying is: "It's not true, it's a grainy picture and what they see as a valley is really a crater, and that forest is really a lake bed. Therefore they're wrong, and the report of the existence of this planet is also wrong." So you have different interpretations of the same photograph, but those interpretations do not disprove the fact that the planet is actually there.

It's not surprising that equally legitimate interpretations exist, given the fact that this was the first attempt to describe where the transgenic DNA is located. But the different interpretations have been exaggerated, to make it look as though there is no legitimacy to the study as a whole, and to deny the reality of the contamination.

GPC: Have others confirmed your findings of contamination?

IC: The Mexican government set out a series of four or five independent studies over a year-long period, and every time they've looked, they have come up with the same results. Contamination is there; it's widespread, much more widespread that the numbers we provided. If you look in the valleys, areas of industrial agriculture, you find more, closer to the roads you find more. No matter how they look at it, they continue to confirm our results.

GPC: Is anyone else following up on the discovery?

IC: The CEC (Commission on Environmental Cooperation), the environmental branch of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is going to look at the question of contamination. The CEC was created to look at environmental problems associated with free trade, in response to concerns that NAFTA would have negative environmental impacts. CEC has looked mostly at chemical pollution problems, and there has been some remedial action that has been somewhat effective, but CEC is open to all kinds of influence.

Several NGOs, driven by Greenpeace and Estudios Rurales y Asesoría and others made a formal request for an examination of contamination that CEC could not overlook. I think it's important to keep their feet to the fire, and make sure that the panel that the CEC puts together is comprised of people who are not open to influence from the industry.

GPC: If the Mexican government banned the commercial cultivation of GE corn in 1998, why is GE corn so widespread?

IC: Mexico has a schizophrenic relationship to corn. On the one hand, it is the most sacred place for corn, but on the other, it is the place that people go to experiment. Biotech companies have experimental fields all over the country.

The other reason is trade. Mexico has had a long term policy to basically get rid of campesinos, to get rid of a whole way of life, based on small scale, family and community agriculture, because it's not competitive in international markets. The policy has been to remove people from the land, to train them to assemble VWs or tennis shoes, work that brings in hard currency.

The government has put in place all kinds of disincentives for local agriculture and incentives for opening the country to imports. In the year 2000, five to six million tons of corn entered Mexico from the U.S., out of which 30% to 40% was transgenic but was not segregated or labeled. That very same year Mexico had exactly the same amount of domestic corn rotting away, unused. It was being imported under the label of grain, under the assumption that grain is different than seed. In the U.S. that differentiation exists, but in the rest of world, you eat what you plant and you plant what you eat.

The corn that comes into Mexico gets distributed through welfare food systems around the country. It is subsidized from beginning to end by U.S. taxpayer dollars. Incredible amounts of money goes into the production of this grain that receives subsidized water, soil, machinery and oil, is subsidized in international markets, and subsidized again in Mexico through distribution. It just floods the country.

When you talk to a farmer in Oaxaca, they say, "It costs six pesos to grow seed; I can buy it for four." The farmer is paying out of his or her pocket to plant his or her own seed. Whereas the seed which has traveled many thousands of miles from the U.S. is 20% cheaper than the seed you can produce yourself. This is a recipe for disaster.

For the people I talk to in Oaxaca, this problem is not new. They are welcoming the controversy because it's drawing attention to what they have been saying for decades; "This is connected to the campaign to get us off of the land, and to stop us from growing our own food."

GPC: What is the risk with the introduction of GE corn? What's at stake?

IC: I think the stakes are really high -- they could not be higher. The greatest risk is again for those people who are not here and do not have a voice. What I mean is the consequences are very serious for future generations, for indigenous people, for non-humans, for those that we tend to keep on the margins. What we're risking is their future, which, like it or not, is intricately connected with ours.

Very simply in terms of direct impact, the sustainability of our food supply is at stake; we're playing with the diversity of the genetic heritage which people in places like Oaxaca have maintained for 10,000 years. If we lose it, we open ourselves to serious agricultural failure in the future. It's probably not going to be our generation, but future generations will find themselves without the resources they will need to confront the challenges that come their way. I also fully expect that the transformations that we're doing to the DNA of this planet are going to find their way into the human genome sooner or later. In that sense our descendants are going to be confronted with this. We can expect that what we're doing in corn will come back our way, either directly through genomic transformation or indirectly through the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, through viral mediated transformation of bacteria, insects or other organisms, or through horizontal gene transfer. To me, those are the most important consequences.

There are also specific consequences that are limited now because they haven't yet been deployed on large tracts of land. Corporations are about to introduce, with exactly the same lack of control, spermicidial corn, plastic producing corn, pharmaceutical producing corn. These crops could have very direct impacts on people who are eating the food and living nearby.

GPC: What do you think can be done about this?

IC: I have a feeling that we should be able to stop it at this point. The risk is too great and the benefit isn't there. There is no added benefit for anybody, not for the farmer, not for the consumer, not even for the companies; they are running in the red all the time. Why are we doing this? At what cost, and what risk? People say "But the genie is out of the bottle; there is nothing that you can do." But there is a whole history of technologies that did not get developed because they were not viable or were too dangerous. More importantly, we must remember that we are not talking about one single "genie." Biotechnology promises to release many thousands of novel organisms in the future that we cannot imagine today. In that sense, there are very many "genies" in very many bottles. These bottles are still closed, and I think they should remain so.

References: "Transgenic DNA introgressed into traditional maize landraces in Oaxaca, Mexico," David Quist & Ignacio H. Chapela, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720-3110, USA; Nature, Volume 4141, November 29, 2001, pp. 541-543, http://www.nature.com; Correspondence, Nature, Vol 4171, June 27, 2002, p. 897, http://www.nature.com; "The Fake Persuaders," George Monbiot, The Guardian, May 29, 2002, http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13236.

Background articles: "Kernels of Truth", Kara Platoni, East Bay Express, May 29, 2002, http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2002-05-29/feature.html/1/index.html, "Mexican Maze Maize Madness, Part 1 and Part 2," Anna Salleh, ABC Science Online, (Austrailian Broadcasting Company) July 4, 2002, YPERLINK http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/mexicanmaize/.