We'll begin, and I understand I have between five and seven minutes. Because of that, I will just hit the highlights of my presentation. You have all been provided with a copy.
I am president of Ontario Agri-Food Technologies. I answer to a board of directors, five of whom come from the farm associations, two from universities, and three from industry. I should also say, though, that I am chairman of the board of Performance Plants, which is a biotechnology company that is taking technology out of Queen's University and has been in business since 1997.
You asked a number of questions. First of all, I'll go right to the key answer.
Where does our organization believe we are relative to the regulatory process on genetically engineered crops? I would concur with the grains innovation roundtable, held in western Canada: “The current [assessment] structure is delivering science-based”—and I think science-based is the key word—“decisions on a timely basis, enabled by an ever-increasing level of coordination among the participating regulatory agencies.”
At the end of the day, we have had regulations since about 1995. I want to emphasize that in Canada we do not regulate genetic engineering per se; we regulate novelty. In my opinion, that's the way we should operate. It's recognized around the world as the best science-based process. You have to regulate the product, not how you got there. We have what we call plants with novel traits, foods with novel traits, and they go through a regulatory process. In my presentation I outline the entire regulatory process, but I think it's important for you to understand what I mean: that we regulate product and not process.
For example, omega-3 milk had to go through a regulatory process because it had a novel trait: we as humans had not had milk with omega-3 in it. I would just give you an example, too, from traditional plant breeding. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada developed a new durum wheat that had three times the gluten level in it and proudly announced that we have three times the gluten level. The Italians love it for nice thin pasta. My point here is that it doesn't matter how you get there. Gluten is the celiac trigger for most celiacs in Canada, of which we have 165. That same headline could have said, “Ag Canada scientists increase gluten trigger by 300%”, and that would have been accurate as well. We have to regulate the product, not how we got there. That's what we do in Canada, and I think it's the right approach. We have multiple agencies—Health Canada, Environment Canada, and a whole procedural basis on which we go through regulation. To get any product on the market today is probably about a $10 million process from discovery right through to regulatory approval.
I would indicate that there is an understanding among the major companies that they will not release product for commercial use unless it has been okayed in the United States, Japan, and Canada. It doesn't necessarily have to be okayed in Europe; those are the three areas.
The poll data requirements are based on environment or food and feed, and it's flexible. For example, if you're talking about omega-3 milk, you wouldn't have to look at environmental issues, in my opinion or in regulatory opinion, but you'd have to see whether it had any untoward impact on health.
The point I make here is that we have a system in place; it has been there since 1995. In our jurisdiction, Ontario, about 80% of our soybeans are now genetically engineered; over 50% of our corn is genetically engineered; and indeed, about 90% of canola is genetically engineered. Canola did not exist as a crop per se until 1982; it was rapeseed. I hope you on the ag committee know what canola stands for: canola stands for “Canadian oil, low acid”. We bred out through traditional ways the erucic acid.
Another way to show this is that we can create herbicide tolerance in crops three different ways: one is by genetic engineering; one is by a process called mutagenesis, in which you mutate plants until you find a mutation that provides that particular herbicide resistance, as an example; or we can outcross from other species.
The impact of that herbicide tolerance is by the product, not whether we use mutagenesis or not, because it's the product that is put out into the environment and that's the way the system works. I do want to emphasize it's multi-agency, but over the ten years that we have all worked together--and I want to emphasize in full transparency that all the studies are put forward--you can go to a room to see them, those kinds of things.
The last thing you asked me to address is what types of products are coming down the line. The first wave has been about what I will call biocontrols or controlling pests, so herbicide tolerance, insect resistance, those kinds of things. The next wave of products, and you can go to Ontario's outdoor farm show to see them from a number of companies, is environmental resistance, drought resistance, salt resistance, frost resistance, heat resistance--tolerance is what we call it. The next wave after that are the consumer traits. There are now in test plots omega-3 soybeans, as an example. We are changing the oil profiles of product to reduce the transfatty acids so that, through technology, we are now getting soybeans with the same oil profile as olive oil.
If you look at the waves, then it's been what I'll call controlling pests, reducing the negative impact of the environment and now more enhanced consumer traits, usually for health, but also possibly for industrial purposes as well.
In conclusion, and I just received this last night, so it's not in your package.... It's an AgCanada survey of farmers asking what kind of new technology would they be willing to take up. There are seven technologies. The number one choice of 90% of farmers would be growing genetically modified crops across Canada, and this is the AgCanada survey that was just done.
I think that's very important. I do agree with consumers that we have to talk and there needs to be more education, but I really caution when people say 80% of consumers want it on the label. If you go and blindly ask consumers and you don't give them a question such as “are you concerned about this”, only about 1% to 6%, so top-of-mind, will say food safety, diseases, pathogens, for obvious reasons that you've obviously gone through--things like hormones, pesticide residues, those kinds of things--but genetic engineering per se is down less than 10% and getting smaller all the time.
I think we all agree we need strong regulatory process. It is working. To our knowledge, there has not been a single case of human problems associated with this, and I do document a number of cases where we've reduced fossil fuels, for example. We've allowed for no till on two million acres in Ontario, which has greatly reduced soil erosion. Those kinds of things have happened as well.
Thank you.