The hearing, to be held on Tuesday and Wednesday in Guadalajara, will be one of the most important activities at the meeting of civil society organizations called “GMOs steal our future”. The organizations will also carry out a peasant trial against GMOs.

“There are at least 1.4 billion people who grow their own food and also feed the rest of human kind” Herrera said. “At the end of the day, what they are saying is that coexistence is not that important, when we know that it is extremely serious and that contamination is bound to happen”, he said.

All types of free exchanges, saving seeds to obtain our own food later, “the basis of autonomy and self-government”, could be potentially punished if there are seeds certified by agribusiness companies. The foundations of food which have been protected for thousands of years could be criminalized.

“In the case of indigenous peasant communities, especially those close to the Network in Defense of Corn, there has been a process of raising awareness”, said Herrera and he added: “The indigenous vision is different from the vision of the commercial farmer, because for the indigenous people it is a matter of life”.

The Network in Defense of Corn was created by the end of 2001 and gathers several Mexican communities. “Some are peasant communities, others are farmers´ networks, organic and sustainable farmers”, he said. “Indigenous communities are the centre”.

* Real World Radio (http://www.realworldradio.fm/) and Biodiversidad, sustento y culturas (http://www.biodiversidadla.org/).

Photo: http://www.unorca.org.mx/