U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Friday that a Mexican plan to ban imports of genetically modified (GMO) corn would apply to grain used for human food products, not livestock feed, based on recent talks he had with Mexican Agriculture Secretary Victor Villalobos Arambula.
Reuters reports Vilsack said limiting the ban to food products makes a big difference to U.S. farmers, who have long relied on Mexico as a top export market.
Last year, Mexican feed companies used about 11.1 million tonnes of imported corn, the vast majority of it sourced from U.S. farmers, which represented nearly 70% of the sector’s total corn purchases for the year, according to data from national feed association CONAFAB.