Agriculture Committee on Dec. 1st, 2009

[Dr. Rickey Yada]

Thank you, Mr. Valeriote.

On the whole question of whether we can have an absolute zero and ensure absolute safety, I would be remiss if I were to say yes. No one can ever guarantee absolute safety, but with the current science, as Dr. Ellis has indicated, there are new technologies allowing for traceability. I would still argue that Canada has one of the safest food systems in the world. I would say that the fact that we've adopted this technology in certain sectors would be a good thing, and that we've done the necessary homework on the environment, health, and safety.

With regard to the consumers, I'll be absolutely candid about the consumer issues. As a consumer myself, I fear some of the unknowns in the future. The current science would say yes, there is an adequate safety net for these products right now, but will my future health be impacted? I don't know.

I don't know.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Before I ask my next question, is there anyone else?

[Dr. Brian Ellis]

I would just comment that there's no published evidence so far of negative health effects from the current generation of GM crops. There is certainly a series of studies out there about environmental changes that have occurred as a result of large-scale GM crop deployment. Just to be the devil's advocate on that, there were large-scale changes that accompanied the widespread use of pesticides and fertilizers too, so this is part of the ongoing manipulation of the environment that humans have indulged in for thousands of years.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

While I was in Rome, I attended an alternate conference at the same time, a conference of NGOs and farmers who were smallholders. One of their concerns expressed was about a control and a monopoly, really, of seed by--I hate to say it--Monsanto and other large companies...controlling the sale, controlling the use, etc.

Is that a legitimate concern? If it is, how do we manage that as a government?

[Dr. Brian Ellis]

[Inaudible--Editor]...touching that one.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Michel Arnold]

I will be very honest with you. At Option Consommateurs, we do not claim to be experts in GMOs. However, I feel that what is important for earning the trust of the public, of our fellow citizens, is for the process to be as transparent as possible.

In Canada, we can commit to being as transparent as possible in studying GMOs. Whatever technology brings, we must provide the public with all the information. Then they can make the choice whether or not to use products containing GMOs.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

But why the hesitancy to answer my question? You guys chuckled. Who wants to answer that one?

[Dr. Brian Ellis]

Well, I mean, it's a political question; it has nothing to do with science. I'm a scientist. Do you as a government want to take on Monsanto? By and large, I think it's a tough battle. They have more lawyers than they have scientists--

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Dr. Brian Ellis]

--and I mean literally.

So yes, it's not an easy answer. Is it a problem? At the present time it is a problem, but part of it's also a perception problem. There are countries in the world that do not want to touch this technology because they see the corporate lock on the technology and they don't want to get tied up in that. So yes, it is an issue.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Okay.

Do I still have time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

No, you don't. We'll now move on to Mr. Bellavance.

Five minutes, please.

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

Thank you for your testimony.

Mr. Arnold, you mentioned polls. This is not the first time that there have been polls. As long ago as 1999, when I was an assistant with the Bloc Québécois, we introduced a bill on the mandatory labelling of GMOs. Of course, we did not come up with a bill like that overnight. There were public and stakeholder consultations. Even back then, there was the same concern for transparency and for making sure consumers could know exactly what was on their plates. Recently, we took up the cause again, with another bill that was unfortunately not passed. That does not mean that we will not try again.

I have some questions about labelling. This is a voluntary program that the government agreed to put in place and that is currently in force. If I recall correctly, that was under the Paul Martin government in 2004. The voluntary code allows a tolerance of 5% for GMOs that does not have to be on the label. This is the same policy that we have today.

As an organization, have you reviewed that policy in the five years since? It need not have been an exhaustive study. I imagine that you are able to tell us if the policy is effective or if there is a place for such a policy. Or are you here again today to tell us that we need to be transparent, because, in fact, with a policy like this that is not at all binding on the industry, nothing has changed?

[Michel Arnold]

Unfortunately, our experience with voluntary codes is not a happy one. In the financial services area, for example, there are a number of voluntary codes. Unfortunately, voluntary codes are, as their name implies, voluntary. They include little or nothing in the way of enforcement measures, so people comply only if they want to comply. Sometimes, that creates much more confusion than anything else, because, often, the people who should be applying the codes have no idea that they exist.

I will let François answer your question on labelling GMOs, because he has more practical experience in the area.

[François Décary-Gilardeau]

I have the voluntary code here. It contains a number of issues and problems that have been severely criticized. They are what made us decide to vote against the code in its present form. Of course, the tolerance level of 5% was a problem. In Europe, they have a tolerance of 0.9%. There are various tolerances, but they are often in the region of 1%.

In my view, one of the most insidious things about this code is that it comes with obligations. I mentioned that in my presentation. If you want to make any mention of GMOs in a product, you have to follow the voluntary code. So then, there are steps in place that are not compatible with it. For example, it even became an obstacle for flour organizations and producers in Quebec. They wanted to tell consumers clearly, to the best of their understanding, that their products did not contain GMOs. But they were not allowed to do so because their logo, their trademark, did not conform to the code.

On the one hand, no company has voluntarily indicated that its products contain GMOs. On the other hand, those companies that wanted to show that their products did not contain any were not able to do so. That is the extent to which the code is rigid and inflexible. You can easily criticize the code from a number of perspectives.

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

You mentioned tolerance levels. At the moment, a little more than 40 countries have mandatory policies on the labelling of GMOs. I assume that everyone agrees that there must be some tolerance.

Mr. Décary-Gilardeau, you mentioned some countries. If I remember correctly, the level is 0.9% in Europe and 1% in New Zealand.

Do you have reports from those countries that show how the tolerance levels allow them to produce the desired effects? Do you know whether consumers really know what they are eating and whether agricultural producers are unduly penalized by those standards? Even if you are very strict and set the tolerance level at 0%, it is difficult to ensure that a product is completely harmless, as Mr. Yada said.

Does your organization feel that the tolerance level is adequate? Is 1% acceptable?

[François Décary-Gilardeau]

Perfectly. You mentioned New Zealand. There is Australia too. Both are under the same jurisdiction. New Zealand is one of the world's largest producers of GMOs. There is no inherent contradiction. It is just that labelling is mandatory there.

We could easily make labelling mandatory in Canada too, even though we continued to produce them. Perhaps consumption habits would change, but the two things are not incompatible. You can see that in New Zealand, which produces GMOs.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Bellavance.

Mr. Atamanenko, you have five minutes.

[Alex Atamanenko, NDP, British Columbia Southern Interior, BC]

Thanks to all of you for being here. I don't think we've really had a very thorough debate on the effect of GM foods in Canada, and I think it's time this happened. Hopefully this committee will initiate that and this will be part of that whole process.

For the information of committee members, there is a meeting this evening at seven o'clock at Saint Paul University dealing with SmartStax corn, entitled “Canada's lack of assessment for Monsanto's SmartStax GM corn”, if anybody's interested.

It seems to me there are arguments for and against. I could summarize it with a paragraph from an article by a fellow by the name of Don Lotter. It's called “The Genetic Engineering of Food and the Failure of Science”. He says:

A major conflict over this issue has developed. On one side are scientists, universities and corporations who have invested nearly 25 years and tens of billions of dollars in the genetic engineering of crop plants. On the other side is a flood of evidence that the process of food plant transgenics (genetic engineering) is deeply and fatally flawed and has been resting on a theoretical foundation that has crumbled away as the science of genetics reinvents itself.

One of the points he's making is that there's a whole idea of genomic disruption. There are genetic and protein integrity problems arising from crop transgenics. If I try to get it down to my level of understanding, this means there are health problems. There are studies that have been found throughout the world. For example, in the 1990s, one of Europe's genetic engineers found that genetic engineering of potatoes caused health problems in rats. I met with Professor Séralini from France a couple of years ago, who said that he had done studies that showed liver problems in animals. Often, GE foods were released in the environment within four months of testing, and we didn't really know the effects.

I'll stop there, but it seems to me that we haven't really used the precautionary principle in looking at the health aspects. Could I ask you to comment on this?

[Dr. Brian Ellis]

I think it's fair to say that the precautionary principle has not been the mainstay of the regulatory system.

I would also say that I have not seen any credible scientific reports—I mean reproduced in other labs and confirmed—of health effects, even at the laboratory level. Those are scattered reports and they have not been reproduced, to the best of my knowledge. I'm not necessarily defending the technology, but I will defend the science.

Just to turn the coin the other way, there were a couple of papers in recent years showing that when genomes are disrupted by inserting a transgene, there are definitely changes in the transcription--in other words, the readout of genes--from the rest of the organism, and they are stable changes. This is part of what I was referring to when I said there is better science today than what we had ten years ago. We could be doing a better job of monitoring what's going on in those plants. I don't think that necessarily translates into health issues, but it does send a flag up that says putting this gene in is not as simple as the industry sometimes likes to portray it, that we know exactly where it goes, we know exactly what it does, end of story. That's not the way organisms behave when they get a new gene. I think there are some issues that could be addressed better, yes.

[Michel Arnold]

Clearly, we are advocating the precautionary principle in Canada. In the case you mention, it was not applied. With GMOs, there are certainly economic and political issues, but, at the end of the day, the most important thing is to find out the effects on human and animal health. We cannot always base ourselves on foreseeable effects. Whether GMOs are approved or not, we really have to have independent scientific studies done, so that their claims can be verified. That, for us, is the precautionary principle.

[François Décary-Gilardeau]

We do not claim to be health experts. As the gentleman mentioned, perception is often very close to reality, even with science behind it. I am sure of that.

The fact that Canadians are so afraid of GMOs perhaps shows that more research should be done and more information should be made available. It is not right that analysts, people who carefully follow the area, should have an enormous amount of difficulty understanding the approval process. My colleagues in other organizations also say that we have to constantly look for explanations and information. The processes are cumbersome and complex, which makes people distrust them. They distrust the science. This is a matter of trust. Trust will return if we are transparent, and unambiguously so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Atamanenko.

Now we'll go to Mr. Shipley, for five minutes.