NYC-WTC_000152373

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Genetic Modification Taints Corn in MexicQ^- can move from one place to an­ By CAROL KAESUK YOON other,” said Dr. Norman C. Eli­ strand, evolutionary biologist at In a finding that has taken re­ University of California at River; searchers by surprise and alarmed side. He said the real worry was environmentalists, the Mexican that other foreign genes — Uke' government has discovered that pharmaceutical-producing genes some of the country’s native com being developed in crops — could varieties have been contaminated also find their way quickly and un­ with genetically engineered DNA. noticed into distant food sources. The contaminated seeds were Genetically engineered com; collected from a region considered known as Bt com because it pro­ to be the world’s center of diversity duces the insecticide known as Bt; for com — exactly the kind of re­ has been in use by farmers in the pository of genetic variation that United States since 1996. environmentalists and many scien­ Mexico’s Ministry of the Envi­ tists had hoped to protect from ronment and Natural Resources contamination. The result was un­ made the announcement on Sept. 18 expected because genetically modi­ that contaminated com had been fied com, the presumed source of found in 15 different localities. The the foreign genes, has not been ap­ aimouncement credited Dr. Cha- proved for commercial planting in pela with the initiai discovery but Mexico. described only the results from Scientists expressed concern government-led research. Neither that .the foreign genes could act to Dr. Ghapela’s team nor-the Mexi­ reduce genetic diversity in the can teams’ work has yet been pub­ country’s native com varieties and lished. in the wild progenitor of domesti­ Scientists assume the native com cated com, known as teosinte. If became contaminated through in­ any of the foreign genes are very terbreeding with Bt com, but how advantageous, plants carrying Bt com may have come to be plant­ those genes could begin to domi­ ed in Mexico remains a matter of nate the population. In such cases speculation. While not approved for genetic variation will be lost as the planting, biotech com is legally im­ diversity of plants not carrying the into Mexico for use in food.' foreign genes decreases or disap­ ported Greenpeace, calling the contamina­ pears. Whether that will happen or has happened remains unknown. tion a form of genetic pollution, is In addition to being one of the calling on Mexico to ban all import. world’s most important crops, com tation of genetically modified com. is viewed with a near religious rev­ The Mexican government has not erence in Mexico, with seeds of disclosed exactly what genes were native varieties passed down from found. Exequiel Ezcurra, the direc­ generation to generation. Until tor of the National Institute of EcoV now, scientists said researchers ogy, which worked on the study, did had assumed that these varieties, not respond to requests for an inter­ some of which are grown only by view. But Dr. Chapela, who is famil­ subsistence farmers in remote iar with the Mexican work, said the areas, were pristine. researchers had identified the pres­ “These are the extremes, the ence of DNA sequences from the places where you would really not cauliflower mosaic vims. This expect to find contamination,” said DNA is used nearly universally hi Dr. Ignacio Chapela, a microbial genetically engineered plants and ecologist at the University of Cali­ does not produce Bt insecticide. fornia at Berkeley, saying the re­ As a result, it is still unclear sults are an indication of wide­ whether any of the contaminated spread contamination. “The only com has the ability to produce the reason they found it there is be­ Bt insecticide. cause that’s the only place they’ve Scientists may eventually be able looked.” to quantify the biological effects of Scientists said the results also the contamination, but some say indicated that crop genes might be the cultural cost in a country where able to spread across geographic com is a symbol of the Mexican areas and varieties more quickly people may be harder to measure. than researchers had guessed. “The people are com,” said Dr. “It shows in today’s modem Chapela, who is Mexican, “and the world how rapidly genetic material com is the people.”

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