Mr. Chairman and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. My name is Corey Loessin. I am a farmer from Radisson, Saskatchewan, and I serve as a member on the Pulse Canada board. Our farm has grown peas and red lentils for more than 20 years, along with grains and oilseeds, on land that has been our family farm for more than 100 years.
Pulse Canada is the national industry association and is funded by farmers like me who grow pulse crops, lentils, peas, beans, and chickpeas across Canada. A farmer levy is collected by the provincial organizations and combined with funding from processors and exporters of pulse crops, so that farmers and the trade work together as Pulse Canada.
Canada is the world's largest producer of peas and lentils, and a leading producer of beans. Canada is the world's largest exporter of pulses. As a trade-dependent sector, the Canadian pulse industry is an advocate of trade-enabling policy and regulatory processes in Canada and at the international level. Crop protection products like herbicides and fungicides protect crops from weeds and diseases that reduce yields. These yield-enabling technologies are the key to growing enough food for the entire world on the existing land base. They are part of a sustainable food production system.
As you know, crop protection products are available to farmers only when they have been thoroughly evaluated from a human health and environmental perspective. Each crop protection product is assigned an MRL, maximum residue limit. By definition, the MRL is the maximum amount of residue that can be detected on the crop that is harvested and is an indicator of proper use of that product. Importantly to consumers, the MRL is an indicator that also shows that the food product is well below the level of concern for health or environmental safety. A science-based risk assessment system is as important to farmers as it is to the pharmaceutical industry and the health care system. Efficacy and safety are both the cornerstones of building public trust in food systems, just as they are in the health care system.
The challenge is that unharmonized assessment systems between Canada and importing countries are making it difficult for farmers like me to be sure that the grain we grow can comply with a multiplicity of different regulatory systems on MRLs. The risks are high. A shipload of grain that could be rejected could be worth $10 million to $40 million. Of note is that 90% of our peas go to three countries in the world, and about 86% of our lentils go to five countries in the world. These are critical markets. At the same time, lentils are shipped to over a hundred different countries around the world.
The risks are getting higher each year as testing gets more sensitive, into parts per trillion, and as more countries are moving toward their own custom systems. The leadership that Canada has shown in this area globally, through Health Canada's Pest Management Regulatory Agency, needs to continue. Canada's leadership in this area will need to increase to keep up with mounting challenges, and the PCP Act review needs to ensure that the act is not a future barrier to harmonization.
With me is Gord Kurbis, Pulse Canada's director of market access and trade policy, who is prepared to describe some of our key opportunity areas.