First of all, thank you, gentlemen, for taking time out of your busy schedules to come to Ottawa. We really appreciate it. To be honest, we're not going to be able to give this issue what it deserves in the time we've allotted you or those people we heard from on Tuesday. Nevertheless, we have to take a shot at it.
I went to Rome about two weeks ago, to the FAO conference on poverty and malnutrition in developing countries. We all know that by 2050 we're going to have over three billion more people on this planet and we're going to have to increase our food production by over 70%. We already have over a billion people who are starving.
With what I read and what I could consume at the time, I came to the conclusion that if we're going to solve the problem of world hunger, GMOs are going to have to be part of that solution. That's what I concluded. And it has to be in a very balanced way, not the extreme, on either side.
But one thing that concerned me, apart from the issue of safety—which I hope I can get to in a second question—was based on this article I read:
According to Monsanto, it takes at least 10 years and between $100-$150 million to introduce new genetically modified trait into plant varieties.
This is in contrast to conventional, commercial breeders who rarely spend more than $1 million to breed a plant variety. (DNA marker assisted breeding technologies can speed the pace of conventional breeding.) In short, for every new biotech variety, conventional breeders can introduce between 100 and 150 standard varieties—in less time.
I don't know if this is true or not.
Despite this, the world's largest seed companies are working almost exclusively on GM seeds.
I'll ask this question to Dr. Surgeoner. One of the concerns I have is the exploitation of third world countries by these large companies. I think you have to admit that a lot of people are afraid of the big companies taking over, which Devlin Kuyek mentioned. Can you address that? Can you ease the concerns of people in any way? If you can't, are there things that government should do to prevent that from happening?