On your first question about the 51%, the debate comes down to content versus value. The members of this committee have heard from a number of agriculture producer groups that think it should be content. A lot of folks spend a lot of time and money building state-of-the-art, clean factories. We comply with 442 pieces of legislation, federally. The people who spend that amount of money making sure the product ends up safe and healthy probably think it should be based on value.
When you talk to consumers and say it's based on the value of the product, they shake their heads and think it's hard to believe. Perhaps this is due to a failing of government and my industry to educate the consumer about value. That's debatable. But from our perspective, it should stay on value. You might want to raise the number, but there should be something that allows processors to tell the story of the value they add.
Secondly, on your point about GMO labelling, there are two things. My understanding is that the government's organic labelling standards are going to come into force in November of this year, approximately six months from now. This will allow consumers to decide if they want to buy GMO food or not, even though there is no health or safety reason for their choice.
The GMO labelling standard that you referred to was, I believe, put in place in 2004. That was a General Standards Board process that took a long time. I would ask the question and reverse the onus.
Professor Hobbs talked about market forces. He said there would be a benefit to processors to put “Made in Canada” on a product, because the market would somehow buy that. I would throw the question back at you: if consumers are clamouring to know how to avoid GMOs, why is there such a small uptake among processors for that voluntary label? We're certainly not hearing that this is a major issue for producers. As for GMOs, I think most of the members of this committee realize that Canadian farmers are massively adopting the technology. It's pervasive in production of our staple commodities as well as in the grocery store. So we would oppose efforts to raise that.
We agree with Professor Hobbs' assertion that labelling should reflect health and safety rather than things that could frighten the consumer.
Finally, should we be promoting agriculture? That's not representing farmers. Our sector's opinion is not as important on this point, but obviously we support Canadian agriculture. We buy 43% of the production.
With respect to our efforts to try to grow, innovate, and pass values through the value chain, over the last couple of years we've been working with farmers to try to get the next APF, agricultural policy framework. We have tried to make some investments in some of the areas that Anne mentioned, like the uses of health claims. We want to communicate to consumers that the product contains barley and that barley can lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, or that oats that will lower your risk of cancer.
Those are things that we can't do in Canada as much as in the United States. I would definitely say we are working with the whole value chain, and we would like to see farmers do well in Canada, 100%.
