Agriculture Committee on Feb. 17th, 2011

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I will be only 10 more seconds.

The second key initiative is that there is an organic science cluster, which is focused on organics. They received $6.5 million in federal funding to help with research and development.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Would you submit that?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I will submit it, but it's good for the public to hear this too, to be able to read it in the blues or read it in the minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Easter, seven minutes.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I know this will come out of my time, but if we are going to get into those points of order, I could go back to any witness and be critical of a lack of government funding.

I know Mr. Lemieux is trying to put it on the record that there is government funding there, and that's fine. But if we get into that kind of game, we'll never get anything done.

Mr. Taylor, you mentioned that there is no independent testing. Mr. Black mentioned that there is no long-term testing by independent researchers.

I went back and looked at the rBGH hearings that we held in 1994, which is also an issue having to do with genetic modification. I want to submit that we're talking about biotechnology here, not exclusively GM. One thing we learned on our tour last week is that genetic modification, genetic engineering, is really a small part of the whole biotechnology industry. There are lot of good things happening with biotech in organic and regular breeding. And there is the GM aspect. One is not exclusively the other. That's what I'm saying.

In any event, what would you propose should be done there? I don't disagree with you that governments tend to look at the research of the companies. The data is peer-reviewed and analyzed by Health Canada and others. What would you suggest? Should there be a separate, independent research institute? Should it be within one country? Should it be global? What would you suggest?

[Arnold Taylor]

I referred to the Millstone study. I have a couple of copies, if anybody wants to see them later. I spent some time in the sixties in the pharmaceutical industry. They're much the same companies, but they have different guidelines. They talk about food intake or pharmaceutical intake. They talk about acceptable daily intakes. Under the system we have now, there are substantive equivalents. None of that work is done, so you have no way of knowing whether GMOs are acceptable. Just about every day, there is some study in the world that says there are liver problems or other kinds of problems. It's GM soy that comes from Brazil or from Russia or somewhere.

It's never been done, because we've accepted this pseudo-science as being science, and it's like spin. It's a myth that all this testing has been done. It has never been done, and we're eating these things. There is a giant experiment. You mentioned thalidomide. At the time that I was in that industry, the regulator in the U.S., the FDA, didn't allow thalidomide in the U.S. Those deformed babies stopped at their border. It was in England, Europe, and Canada. I have relatives that have arms this long because of thalidomide. I hope it never happens, but sooner or later there is going to be a smoking gun, some combination of events of GMOs and chemicals that's going to end up...and you're going to have a hell of a time cleaning it up. I don't know how.

It's your responsibility to figure out how this can be done. If the government has to fund it, fine. Right now, you're just accepting the industry's tests as far as they go. Even that is pretty proprietary. You can't even access them.

[Larry Black]

Thank you, Mr. Easter.

I think there is an organization called the Union of Concerned Scientists. There has been some research done. Separate research has been done. I would recommend that you contact some of these researchers who have done some preliminary work. You may want to explore it a little further, because the more information you have, the better.

Some of the risks that they see coming up include elevated toxins, elevated allergies. They've done tests on mice and rats that have had an exclusive GMO corn diet. After three generations, they've come up with premature death and sterility. These are some of the things they've found. We're taking about some serious consequences here, and if you haven't done any independent research, then you're subject to whatever comes down the road. Ten to twenty years from now is going to be too late.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Let's see if we can find that.

I have a question to A&L Canada Lab Incorporated.

Can you explain molecular technology to me a little further, and what it can do? I'm intrigued by the concept that if you have dead spots in your soil you may be able to improve it. Can you explain that a little further to me?

And Larry, on your point, I do want to make sure we have it on the record. Are you suggesting this committee ask for a moratorium on GM alfalfa as one of its recommendations?

[Larry Black]

That's correct. In fact, the crop has not been released for public use at this point in time.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

That's fine. I just want to make sure I'm clear on that.

George or Greg.

[George Lazarovits]

To give you an example, in the Pacific Northwest, Jim Cook's group identified that a very serious disease of wheat, called Take-All, could be controlled by consecutive cropping of wheat, rather than a rotation cropping. After 50 years of research, this group discovered that the primary mechanism for this is the build-up of a specific group of bacteria called pseudomonas. These bacteria produce an antibiotic that actually controls the pathogen, even though it's present in the soil in high quantities.

What you see, as a result, is now these bacteria have been fully sequenced, the genes controlling the antibiotics are well understood, and you can actually detect presence of the genes in soil by using polymerase chain reaction assays. These are measuring DNA pieces of DNA in soil.

People who are measuring the DNA in soil in wheat fields are looking for rotations that keep populations at high levels, thereby suppressing the disease. All the technology for keeping this disease away from the production systems is now based on soil health, which is keeping these organisms at high levels.

You now have a rational basis for making a decision as to what crop you put in after your wheat to make sure the next time you plant wheat you don't get this disease. There are certain crops that knock those good guys down and there are other ones that raise them up. People are now using a DNA test to say this is good for us or this is not good for us.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Larry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

We'll now move to Mr. Bellavance, for seven minutes.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Good morning. Thank you for your testimonies. I'll start with you, Mr. Black.

People have suggested using buffer zones, in other words protected areas between GMO crops and non-GMO crops, a measure that has often been advocated to avoid cross-pollination. In your testimony, you said that you spoke with the people at Monsanto, and they recommend a certain distance, 0.8 kilometres. But you told us that you realized that pollen from GMOs can spread over greater distances than that and go fairly far. You mentioned 16 kilometres, carried by wind or by bees.

Do you have examples that could enlighten the committee on this type of contamination. I'm not talking necessarily about Monsanto. It could be with any other producer of GMO seeds where someone has noticed that fields that are very far away have been contaminated.

[Larry Black]

Thank you.

I don't have specific examples about GMO alfalfa because that has not been released into the general public at this point. But I was told by a beekeeper that they do have a minimum of a two-mile radius, which is four miles in diameter. They travel that far when they're collecting pollen. I've heard other examples that are quite higher than that.

I was talking to a forage specialist, and I mentioned my concern about these test plots out there. One of them was about 40 miles from my place, so I was quite concerned. I was talking to the forage specialist about getting this moratorium I had mentioned in my presentation—this was after I talked to Ms. Jordan—and he brought it to my attention that the pollen can take alfalfa pollen ten miles. That was a forage specialist who works with the department of agriculture in Manitoba.

Those are not my numbers; I'm telling you their numbers. If you need further research to confirm, then by all means go ahead and do that. I'm just relaying the information I've found out.

[Arnold Taylor]

Can I make a comment on that?

What happens is, of course, Monsanto and these companies do test plots, which would be a field sometimes not much bigger than this room. It's a lot different from a 300-acre field of canola or alfalfa. And you have a principle of what they call pollen load. There is a huge amount of pollen released by things like corn and alfalfa, less so with soybeans. Each crop is different, but there are studies in Australia, which I can't quote but I could find, where canola, under the pollen load conditions of a large field, will drift in the wind up to 15 miles, let alone weeds and everything else.

But there is more than just pollen. Contamination is in the transportation system. It's in the wind. Canola is a tumbling weed. It's the mustard family. That's how it propagates its seed. It flies across the land as a big bush. And alfalfa has a different system. Wheat is self-pollinating, but corn also drifts a long way. So each crop is different, and a buffer zone is only part of the answer. The whole system is the contamination issue.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

The example that has received the most media attention is surely that of Mr. Schmeiser, in Saskatchewan, whose field was contaminated. The Supreme Court of Canada decided that he was the guilty party. Since I have already said that I am not a Supreme Court judge, I cannot go back to that. But it's still a fact, a reality. Cross-pollination exists, and contamination happens. So I believe that the regulations should be tighter, particularly when it comes to buffer zones. You're right to say that it's not the only solution.

For example, in Dakota, in the United States, dissemination has taken place along the roads, and people have figured out that, when seeds are transported by road—it was rapeseed in this case—they can end up in nature. So we have fields that will subsequently contaminate others. Perhaps it's time to tighten the regulations on this.

Ms. Blay-Palmer, you hit the nail on the head when you said that we need to take into account the various factors involved in GMOs. There is public health and the environment, of course, but you also added the protection of export markets. That was the reason why our colleague, Mr. Atamanenko, presented a bill to make up for that or to add another facet to this file.

I would like your opinion on this. What type of regulations should we put in place to fill in the cracks?

[Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer]

That's a great question. Thank you for asking it.

It's a question that's complex to answer because genetically modified organisms have the potential to have such a huge impact. It touches on all different aspects of life in Canada.

We're looking at the farming system as a whole. We're looking at biodiversity, ecological diversity, scales of farming, economic impact, intellectual property. Off the top of my head, to address this, it's a big, challenging question.

I think what you're doing here helps to get at that. You have to pick it apart in reference to sustainability. In order to answer this question properly, you have to make sure that you're thinking about the economic dimensions as well as the environmental implications of biodiversity and the effects we're having on things like the suite of seeds that farmers have access to.

What seems to be happening now is that genetically engineered traits are getting stacked on top of other seeds. Those seeds are becoming owned by corporations. In days gone by, our government did a lot of research into agriculture and created varieties that were publicly available to our farmers. That's not the case so much anymore.

When I did my Master's research, I looked at the availability of soybean seeds to farmers. In the 1970s, soybean seeds were 90% held by public research facilities in Canada. They had been developed by researchers here in Ottawa. By the 1990s, the case was completely reversed, with 90% of the seeds owned by private interests.

I think we need to go back to a situation where we have more publicly developed seeds. Those seeds should be developed with the needs of our farmers and our food system as the top priority. That's where we need to be headed with this conversation. We need to be privileging those things.

It's important to foster innovation. It's important to foster biotechnology and all of those different technologies, but we need to be doing it in a way that serves all Canadians' needs and not just the narrow needs of agricultural biotechnology companies. I think that right now it's going to be difficult to tease those things apart.

With respect to the comment that was made about the amount of funding in the last five years to organic agriculture and the innovation centre, that's a total of $7 million, if I recall correctly. But compared with the amount of money that the Canadian government has put into agricultural research and biotechnology, there is no comparison. That number pales in comparison. It's apples and oranges, the case you're making.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You're well over. I thought you were finished.

[Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer]

I didn't know I had a time limit. You opened a Pandora's box. I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Each member has approximately seven minutes.

[Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer]

Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'm very flexible.

[Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer]

I beg your pardon.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

It's okay. You'll probably get a chance to continue on that, Ms. Blay-Palmer.

Mr. Atamanenko.