Can we still trust our food?

‘Without corn, there is no country’ is the slogan of a Mexican advertising campaign aimed at banning genetically modified (GM) corn, intended for human consumption, from the United States. Although Mexico is the birthplace of maize, with almost 60 varieties preserved since it was domesticated 10,000 years ago, this sacred seed is now under serious threat from the introduction of transgenic maize from the United States. Initially intended mainly for livestock farming under the Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1994), it has gradually entered the food industry chain, where it is used to produce low-cost food.

However, the Mexican government now plans to ban the use of GM maize for human consumption from 2024. This decision was not to the liking of the United States, where it was denounced as a violation of free trade agreements. In response, with scientific literature to support their case, the Mexican authorities stressed that genetically modified maize is a danger to the health of their citizens.

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Dialogues économiques is a digital magazine published by the Aix-Marseille School of Economics (AMU, CNRS, EHESS, Centrale Méditerranée) A bridge between academic research and society, Dialogues économiques provides all citizens with the keys to economic reasoning. Articles are published every two weeks.

Researchers Osea Giuntella, Matthias Rieger and Lorenzo Rotunno have previously documented the extent to which Mexico opening up to the global market - and in particular the increase in imports of US products - has changed the eating habits of Mexicans, and increased obesity among women by up to 20%. The nutritional balance of Mexicans has also been influenced by food innovations, such as GMOs.

Since the 1990s, the number of such innovations has multiplied as markets have become more open to globalisation. The two go hand in hand: innovations are profitable only if they are developed on a large scale: the size of the market must be large enough to recoup the associated production costs. While poor eating habits can be linked to the rise in international trade and imports of industrial products, they are also influenced by the increase in new agri-food technologies. This hypothesis forms the basis of an analysis performed by economics researchers Anne-Célia Disdier, Fabrice Etilé and Lorenzo Rotunno on the impact of these innovations on the nutritional habits of people living in 67 countries (38 high-income countries and 29 middle-income countries), between 1970 and 2010.

A proliferation of patents in the food industry

The number of registered patents is a sound indicator of increasing innovation in the food industry. Over the total period from 1970 to 2010, the authors calculated a 138% increase in food patents for high-income countries, and the increase was as high as 246% for middle-income countries. According to AgroMédia, between 200 and 250 patents a year  are filed by the agri-food industry. In addition, the number of patents relating exclusively to ultra-processed foods increased over the period, accounting for 40% of the total number of patents.