Mexico's Rice Border

Boundaries and flows. This time the Mexico-US border, this time rice.

The news from Mexico this Wednesday are difficult to believe: from one day to the next the Mexican government found the political will and muscle to stop something that has been going on for years. Indeed something that is desired by the government, because of the vested interests represented in the presidency as well as some of the richest people in the country (i.e. the world).

The only way I can explain it to myself, without having much insider information, is that it might be actually the US rice growers who are closing the border. There is good reason to believe that a good part of the Starlink event, which was the model of contamination to which US consumers will respond, was actually initiated in Mexico, and that the contaminated taco shells and other products were backwash from the reprocessing industry at the unregulated maquiladora strip along the border, or even deeper in the Country. Rice growers would know - seed contamination is not easy to contain, especially if you pass the process through the purposefully-unregulated Mexican territory.

If this were true, the strange news could be read as an interesting result of the contradictions that seem to keep tugging at the heart of the whole biotech morass: must have control, but must also have freedom from regulations or any standard of social and biological responsibility.

THIS WEDNESDAY
14 March.
Please come prepared for a demanding argument.

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