FRIDAY, AUGUST 9
PROGRAM # 8669 12:00 PM PT
Mexico Edition.
With the signing of the trade agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada, (T-MEC), foreign companies dedicated to transgenic agribusiness will be able to appropriate the 64 varieties of native corn that is grown in Mexico, researchers and critics warned. They explained that six years after the judicial protection that prevented the planting of transgenic corn in the north of the country, now the T-MEC threatens the genetic diversity of Mexican corn and cotton, because the Mexican government agreed to go from the UPOC-78 standard, which prohibits patents, to UPOC-91, which releases them. They also pointed out that the transnational corporations are trying to appropriate the Olotón corn, originally from the northern highlands of Oaxaca, whose characteristic of trapping nitrogen helps fight global warming. In other news, environmentalists launch the “Burning Garbage Kills” campaign. They reject the benefits of plastics recycling and protest against the government project to install, with financing from the Inter-American Development Bank, garbage incinerators in the municipalities of the country. Martha Elena Ramírez hosts Voz Pública from Mexico City.
Guests: Dr. Mercedes López Martínez, director of the Association of Organic Consumers, representative of the plaintiff group against genetically modified corn, Mexico City; Dr. Alejandro Espinosa Calderón, president of the Union of Scientists Committed to the Society, member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, Mexico City; Miguel Rivas, doctor of biology, director of the Oceans Campaign of Greenpeace, Mexico; Marisa Jacott, Common Borders AC, Mexico City.
Photo; Turismo Ciudad de México/Facebook
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