Thank you.
I just want to pick up on the health, safety, and environmental observation in reference to some earlier discussion—I think maybe Mr. Valeriote raised it—about where there's common ground. We have some opposing views, but I think there's a lot of common ground around here and around your table.
First and foremost, we all want to make sure that technologies, whether they're pharmaceutical drugs or GMO crops, are used properly, responsibly, and they do not put at risk the health of the public or the environment. I think there's a pile of common ground there.
I think additionally there's a pile of common ground that if this stuff is going to be sold to farmers that it needs to work, that it's efficacious, and it's not some kind of snake oil, if you like. It has to work.
With the corn, the soybeans, the canola, the uptake by farmers has been phenomenal. It was probably considered revolutionary technology in the late twenties, when corn hybrid technology came to the marketplace. It had a huge adoption rate, and this has probably even exceeded that.
And there are some new traits we talked about that are coming in those sectors. I mean, I'm from western Canada and I still farm out there. Notwithstanding that we had a huge flood out there this year that wiped out ten million acres, I farm in the bottom of the middle of the Palliser Triangle. Most years, I'll tell you, I would love to have drought-tolerant crops; we're usually so dry the trees are chasing the dogs. Drought is usually our problem there, so that technology in Canada and elsewhere in the world can bring a huge benefit.
When you talk about common ground, once again, if climate change is coming at us—and farmers deal with climate every day, it's called weather—then to some degree, not totally, this technology is very much part of the answer for how we're going to deal with climate change on a go-forward basis.
For those of you who were at our conference a couple of weeks ago, you would have heard Dr. Skole, from the University of Michigan. He said our understanding of climate change is that if you're a wheat farmer in western Canada there are two tools you're going to need: farm practices and genomics. Those were the two tools that he pointed out are pivotal.
One final comment in terms of the common ground and safety and the environment and the rest of it. Lucy referenced the work she had done at CBAC, through one of the member organizations there. They spent two years studying biotech food. This is one of the conclusions of that CBAC committee report:
We conclude that no scientific evidence exists to suggest that GM plants and foods currently in the market pose any greater health or environmental risk than other foods.
In fact, they went on to say that arguably they “have undergone greater regulatory scrutiny than their conventional counterparts”.
I just wanted to pick up that point.
In terms of other products, Janice, did you want to...?