Okay.
I'm Arnold Taylor. I'm past president of the Canadian Organic Growers. I got out of that job a couple of months ago. I'm an organic farmer from Saskatchewan, and I work with my son and daughter-in-law. We have 3,500 acres, certified organic, and 100 certified organic beef cows.
As president of the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate in 2001 and 2002, I oversaw the organization's effort to launch a class action lawsuit on behalf of all Saskatchewan-based organic farmers against Monsanto and Bayer CropScience for economic and agronomic damages caused by their GE canola. Our organization was seeking compensation for the loss of organic canola, which was at a premium and is a high-value crop that was important in our crop rotations, which is a main method for weed control in organic systems, which prohibit synthetic herbicides.
In the mid-1990s, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency approved GE canola for confined release. I emphasize that. It was confined release and it was initially segregating GE and non-GE varieties in an effort to ensure safe marketability. Shortly thereafter, CFIA carelessly allowed unconfined environmental release, and GE canola cross-pollinated across the landscape and contaminated the germplasm of other non-GE and organic canola cultivars.
Studies indicate that virtually all canola in Canada has been contaminated with GE traits, and at that time, only six years into the production, the certified seed stocks were contaminated as high as 7%. This has adversely affected organic farmers and their markets. Globally organic standards, including Canadian ones, prohibit the use of GE as a method, and this has put our industry on a collision course with the introduction of GE technologies.
Ultimately, our proposed class action suit was rejected, largely because it was difficult to establish who was responsible for the damage caused by cross-pollination of GE crops and organic cultivars.
That is why Parliament must enact some appropriate measures to ensure that new GE crops do not adversely affect farmers and their markets. Had appropriate measures been in place prior to the release of GE canola, farmers and their markets, and Canadian agriculture as a whole, would have been spared much hardship and financial loss.
Enacting appropriate legislation to protect the rights of non-adopters of GE technology is long overdue in Canada. Currently our national regulatory system is deeply flawed and is arguably designed to benefit corporations that develop GE crops at the expense of organic farmers, non-adopters, and consumers as a whole. Market impact must be included in the overall assessment of this technology.
Indeed, history has shown us the dangers associated with a regulatory system that is solely science-based, and we now know that the current system is too narrow to properly evaluate the multitude of potentially adverse socio-economic impacts associated with this technology.
One of the flaws within the current regulatory system is that a number of federal departments oversee the regulation of GE crops in Canada. Although the CFIA plays the lead role, CFIA does a paper review of GE crops based on data submitted by the technology developer, peer-reviewed literature, and expert advice, but with no independent testing on the GE crops themselves because they're deemed substantially equivalent to non-GE varieties.
Regulatory approaches like the CFIA's, which are based on substantial equivalence, have been widely criticized as being pseudo-scientific because they presume GE crops' safety without any scientific basis and are largely based on industry data alone.
I'd like to read you just a short quote from a Dr. Millstone from Sussex University in England, talking about substantive equivalence. He calls it an anti-scientific test. He says:
Substantial equivalence is a pseudo-scientific concept because it is a commercial and political judgement masquerading as if it were scientific. It is, moreover, inherently anti-scientific because it was created primarily to provide an excuse for not requiring biochemical or toxicological tests. It therefore serves to discourage and inhibit potentially informative scientific research.
After the commercial release of GE canola, Canadian experts now agree that this pre-release risk assessment failed to anticipate hazards associated with contamination, weed problems, and market harm. Indeed, a review of the Canadian experience with GE crops concludes that very little research has been carried out on the socio-economic impacts associated with this technology and that the Canadian regulatory system disregards the idea that GE crops will have well-known local and international market impacts as irresponsible and embarrassing.
We need to introduce a mechanism to assess and safeguard against adverse market harm caused by GE crops. I'm going to touch a little bit on GE wheat and flax. The proposed introduction of GE wheat is a perfect example of how the so-called science-based regulatory approach, which excludes such socio-economic factors as market harm, can put Canadian farmers and the agriculture industry as a whole at risk.
Between 2002 and 2004, Monsanto was pushing to introduce the world's first herbicide-tolerant variety of GE wheat. However, there was widespread opposition from consumers and Canadian export markets. Over 80% of the Canadian Wheat Board's buyers said they would not purchase GE wheat because of consumer concern over the crop, as Canada's so-called science-based regulations had no way to include this potential threat to export sales, valued between $4 billion and $6 billion annually.
Ultimately, due to the strong consumer and environmental backlash, Monsanto deferred the release of GE wheat, but it now appears that there is renewed interest to bring this crop to market, despite ongoing consumer and farmer resistance. GE wheat exposed the crisis in Canada's biotechnology regulations and almost cost Canadian agriculture billions of dollars in lost revenue.
With GE flax, our organic markets were also adversely affected by the variety GE Triffid flax, which was never commercially released in Canada but ended up contaminating seed supply and shutting down our markets in 35 countries worldwide. Flax is one of our highest-value crops, and as a result of confirmation of the contamination, our prices have fallen by 32%. Now, we have to test our crops, both at harvest and at seeding time, to maintain organic certification. This example demonstrates how GE crops can contaminate seed, conventional, and organic crops, causing risk and financial losses for farmers while adversely affecting the marketability of these crops.
Dr. Ian Mauro testified before this committee earlier. I encourage you to inform yourselves about Dr. Mauro's work, because he can tell you about a science-based way to assess market harm.
I have some final thoughts. I have spent most of the past ten years of my life fighting in the courts to protect organic farmers and my farm from GE crops. I should not have had to do this, as my government should have introduced adequate regulations to ensure that organic farmers are not adversely affected by the introduction of GE crops. We have lost the ability to grow canola. We could have lost flax because of the introduction of GE varieties. We could also lose our ability to grow wheat because of the introduction of GE varieties.
Now the industry is trying to introduce GE alfalfa. Arguably, the threat to organic alfalfa is the most significant yet, because it is a soil builder that fixes nitrogen and other essential nutrients. Were it to be contaminated with GE traits, this might destroy our way of farming entirely. GE alfalfa is not needed in agriculture, as it really offers no benefits for conventional or organic farmers and really is only designed to sell herbicides. As these new varieties are introduced, they basically remove that same crop from organic systems, which is detrimental, because we rely on this biodiversity in our crop rotations to ensure healthy and productive soil and crops.
Furthermore, as GE crops out-cross into organic systems, they destroy our ability to market our crops. Ironically, consumers the world over are demanding organic foods, and it's a fast-growing sector in the agriculture industry. Yet our opportunities for growth and farm-level prosperity have been adversely affected by the irresponsible manner in which GE technology has been introduced without proper regulation into the marketplace.
I encourage you to inform yourselves on the severe risks associated with leaving the current regulatory system regarding GE crops as it is. It is inadequate, it is causing harm to farmers in the food system, and Canada's reputation for offering exceptional food safety has been tarnished by experimenting with GE crops.
I encourage you to correct this. Appropriate legislation or appropriate measures need to be enacted to correct the mistakes of the past. It will also help to ensure that organic agriculture will continue to thrive, offering present and future generations the opportunity to access safe and healthy food that requires less in the way of inputs.
Increasingly, the importance of organic agriculture in creating a sustainable future for global society is being recognized, and it must be protected.
Thank you.