Report on transgenics in Mexican corn is disputed

The first tests to reveal artificially modified DNA in Mexican corn have been attacked in the magazine Nature, which reported the original findings and now has published a paper disputing them. The original study by Ignacio Chapela and David Quist, biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, sparked serious concern among environmentalists when it was published in Nature last November. (See “GM Strains Found in Mexican Corn Plantings”—EcoAméricas October 2001.) It also prompted calls for a ban on corn imports from the United States. According to Chapela and Quist, transgenes from genetically modified corn from the United States were present in grains taken from 13 of 22 fields in the southwestern state of Oaxaca, despite Mexico’s ban on the sowing of transgenic maize. The... [Log in to read more]

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