Agriculture Committee on Feb. 7th, 2011

[Prof. William A. Kerr]

I'm no expert on the drift and the size of barriers you might need, but again it seems to me that it comes back to what tolerance there is. If you say you're organic and you have zero tolerance, it puts a huge cost on somebody, so again you've got to come up with a reasonable tolerance. What is the honest health risk of having a very small presence from genetic drift? I think that's the honest question.

[Prof. Bert Vandenberg]

The types of studies you are referring to have been done historically. This is where I go back to square one: understand biology. If the plants are self-pollinated, you're going to have a different buffer zone than if they were cross-pollinated by bees. The zone for alfalfa will not be the same as the one for flax.

We've just interviewed people who seem to have a done a lot of work on this in the flax industry, and it's stimulated by the whole transgenic issue. It looks as if 40 metres would be a barrier for flax. It may be a little bit bigger for alfalfa, because you have to understand the biology of the bees and how far pollen is going to transfer. It may depend on whether you use honey bees or leafcutter bees. It's basically a science question; once that question is understood, you can come up with reasonable guidelines that will create isolations that are a compromise position for everyone.

[Brad Hanmer]

Those are very good comments. Again, it's the tolerance issue.

To give another analogy, I'm growing a Genuity Roundup Ready canola. Let's say I have a grower beside me who's using some new form of whatever, and that species ends up being a plant on my side of the fence that current herbicides can't control. I can name you a few that are minor crops. Should we also tell him that the dill or the new camomile cannot be grown in my rural municipality because he can contaminate me as much as he will be? It all goes back to tolerance, and zero is not an option.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Valeriote.

Mr. Bellavance, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I simply want to continue the discussion we started earlier on investments. We were saying that, in 2007, the private sector invested twice as much as the Canadian government in research. There is nothing to indicate that things are any different now. Even when we add up the amounts from the various levels of government, we don't reach the amounts invested by the private sector.

As university researchers, you are in the best position to tell us how this all works exactly. I suppose the approach towards research is different when the investment comes from the private sector than when it comes from the public sector. I am obviously not saying to eliminate funding from the private sector. I am not even saying that the private sector and companies will cunningly try to direct research towards a particular result that suits their needs. But, in the public perception, perhaps this is the type of question that comes up.

Since you work at a university, could you describe the process to me, right from the start? You are doing research on a given topic. The private sector provides part or most of the funding. What is the process you have to follow?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Who would like to tackle that?

[Dr. Mary Buhr]

I can address it.

When we are doing public sector research, we start with a bright idea. We write a proposal describing that idea. It's evaluated by a public body. Typically it is also evaluated by other scientists to see whether it's a sensible idea. Then we get the funding, or we don't.

A private corporation, a private company, may know our expertise and ask us to answer a question for them, or they may ask us to work with them to develop an answer for a problem they have. In those cases, you work with them to decide the budget and how much work you can do. You tell them what you want to do and what it would cost, and they tell you whether they can afford to fund the research.

Let me give you an example from my own research. I deal with a firm for artificial insemination. I started looking at molecules in the sperm membrane to see how they would affect the sperm's recognition of the egg. That's basic, fundamental, discovery-level research. There are companies that sell semen for dairy bulls or for pigs or chickens. They thought they would like to be able to protect their sperm so that they could freeze that semen and use it for inseminating their females. I worked with the companies to look at ways to adapt the information I had from my basic research to better protect the sperm for freezing and thawing and to develop freezing and thawing methods for them.

That's the difference. If I hadn't done the basic research, I couldn't have developed the application, and the corporations wouldn't have been interested, and sometimes companies aren't interested anyhow. Sometimes they want to pay you just to answer a specific question for them, such as whether a machine works or not.

You can go to corporations, and the best operations we have in Canada are those partnerships through which we work with a company in partnership with a federal agency and get extra money into the private sector that will enable them to develop new products, make them more profitable, and benefit the overall Canadian industry. In these federal-public partnerships Canada does exceptionally well--much better than the U.S., according to my U.S. colleagues.

[Prof. Bert Vandenberg]

In my case, we've never been able to attract much money from companies. Because it was a small crop--peas and lentils--nobody was prepared to invest. However, we had some forward-thinking farmers who set up an organization. They taxed themselves and put the checkoff dollars into genetics. To date they've probably spent 50% of their research money on genetics. In exchange, we gave them the commercialization rights to all the genetics. That has created a different scenario, which is maybe unique. Maybe asparagus has the same thing, but in the grain industry, this is unique on a global scale.

When the issue of herbicide tolerance came in, transgenics was a difficult thing for our traders. We started on transgenics, but we stopped because of this difficulty. We did it for about three years. We were able to do it, but instead we went in favour of something that was basically mutation-based. We knew that a variation existed for herbicide tolerance in the natural population, so we were able to develop herbicide-tolerant lentils. In that case, we came to an arrangement with the corporation, so now we, together with the farmers and the corporation, are partners in this. In fact, we receive royalties, but not on seed. We receive them on herbicide use.

There are many creative ways to do things if you understand biology and have willing partners.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Would you comment, Mr. Lemieux?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

As you know, this meeting is public. Canadians can follow what we're discussing here today. For the benefit of the wider audience, I'd like to engage in a little discussion about the difference between GMO and non-GMO and what would fall under the biotechnology sector.

Professor Vandenberg, you mentioned that if you take a gene or a trait from outside the plant and put it in, this would fall under the GM category, because you're taking something foreign to the plant and injecting it to have better characteristics. If you study a plant's genetic matter and its genes and you see traits that would be worth enhancing, developing, or isolating, that would not be GM. That would be taking what's inherent in the plant and maximizing it to achieve the result you want. Is that a fair description? Do you want to comment on that further?

[Prof. Bert Vandenberg]

Yes. If we understand where the gene is, we can then go through the natural process of hybridizing. Without hybridizing, none of us would be here. In that case, what it allows us to do genomically is just to track the fate of the genes. For a very low cost, we can find out which progeny of the genetic strains we want to select. We can find out which ones are carrying the genes we want.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Right.

Again for the benefit of the wider audience that is not in the room today, I'd like to ask another question. I don't direct it at anyone, because if I ask one person, someone else might have a better example.

Can you give the public an example or two of a GM product that they might be using today? They might not even be aware that it's a GM product, and therefore you know the risk is very low because they're already consuming it and you see it has been well integrated into the consumer marketplace to their benefit. As well, could you perhaps give an example or two of a biotechnology type of product that's not GM and that the consumer is benefiting from, and that again is well integrated into the marketplace?

I'll just open the floor.

[Brad Hanmer]

Well, the best example is canola, if I may go back again to the canola industry.

There are three different types of herbicide tolerance, we'll call it, within the systems. The one, as Mr. Vandenberg said, is using a mutagenesis-type system, and the other two are using the traditional insertion of the gene into that plant. The two genes that are inserted into the plant are based on a cell's ability to metabolize ammonia. That's how it was discovered: in rinsing out the vats of a winery, they saw the mould wouldn't die, so they took it to the lab to find out why ammonia wouldn't kill it and they put it into the plant.

The other one was in a water purifier. They found out that it didn't do a very good job of purifying water, but in fact killed anything that photosynthesized. I grow those three types of canola on my farm. If you crush them into oil and put the oil in a canola oil jar and take it from the Loblaws or whatever to a lab, you would not be able to tell one bit of difference as to which one came from which one. Both are bringing in a new event, but it's within the plant. You would not tell any—

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay. That's great example of a GM product widely accepted, canola oil. Consumers buy it in the store and have no issue with it.

[Brad Hanmer]

As well, if you had an organic oil or a totally conventional oil from Europe in that same bottle and took it to the lab, you would not be able to tell which one is which. They are all canola oil.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Right, so that's a great example.

Now how about some biotechnology examples that are not GM in their nature that the consumer is benefiting from? Do you have any examples there?

[Prof. Bert Vandenberg]

Go ahead. There are vaccines.

[Dr. Andrew Potter]

Most pharmaceutical compounds today are examples of genetically engineered products that they will not only ingest, but inject.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Do you have some concrete examples?

[Dr. Andrew Potter]

Any vaccine given to either an animal or a human today is a biotech product.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Right. That's going to be part of our visit this afternoon to VIDO-InterVac.

[Dr. Andrew Potter]

You'll see more of that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Are there any other comments?

Go ahead, Mr. Kerr.

[Prof. William A. Kerr]

I might have the number wrong, but I think that GM soy, in North America anyway, is found in about 40% of processed foods that you buy. Soy is prevalent in any kind of processed food that you buy, and there are no problems.