GM Crops in Latin America

First the good news, Peru announced that they will be labeling foods that contain genetically modified ingredients. To the extent that countries are going to allow GM crops, labeling foods that contain them is definitely a good call. On the other hand, Latin America is literally full of GM crops, as the chart below shows (click for larger view), 9 of the top 18 biotech producers are in Latin America:



Or for those visual learners:



Most of these GM crops are soybeans, which means these farmers are literally Monsanto's (more aptly called Monsatan) bitches. For background on Monsanto, I'd suggest the excellent documentary "The World According to Monsanto". Basically this company is as close to evil incarnate as it comes.

One country where they are realizing some of the horrible effects of GM crops is Argentina. Argentine scientists recently published a study that found Monsanto's "Round-Up" to have negative health effects (surprise, surprise). For background on that, and more on GM crops in Argentina, this piece from CIP's Americas Program is pretty good.

So while we should be patting Peru on the back for labeling foods with GM crops in it, the bigger issue is the take over of GM crops throughout Latin America.

(images from the ISAAA 2009 GM crop report)