PARIS – The U.N.'s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said Friday that three pesticides, including the popular weedkiller Roundup, were "probably" carcinogenic and two others, which have already been outlawed or restricted, were "possibly" so.
Since genetically modified crops first came to Costa Rica in 1991, the locations of farms have been kept under wraps. But a new ruling from Costa Rica's Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court will now require that type of information to be made public.
In a ruling Thursday lauded by Costa Rica's anti-GMO activists, the country's Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, or Sala IV, struck down the government's regulatory framework on genetically modified organisms, declaring the process of approval for GMO projects unconstitutional.
Awaiting a decision on legal reforms from the courts, anti-GMO activists in Costa Rica have taken the fight over transgenic crops to a grassroots level. The latest symbolic victory for those opposed to genetically modified organisms happened on July 25, when President Luis Guillermo Solís signed a decree naming native corn as cultural heritage, a designation managed by the Culture Ministry.
When Indian activist Vandana Shiva began her speech at the University of Costa Rica’s agronomy auditorium Tuesday, you could still hear the drums and claps of hundreds outside waiting to get in.
