Evidence of meeting #50 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was soybeans.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Oh, no, that's not what I'm suggesting. I just mean a farmer—
12:50 p.m.
Chair, Canadian Soybean Council
There's no real issue on it.
I think as far as growers go, we complement each other. There's no doubt about it. The fact is that we export a fair number of IP-type of soybeans. There's a complement to the GM grower too, in an import basis situation. We run on an import basis situation here in Canada because a lot of our export-type beans, IP beans, are shipped out, yet we still need to satisfy the livestock market in this country with soybean meal.
So we have to bring back in meal. So there is that import basis situation. That's hard to quantify what that number is, but it's certainly of intrinsic value to all growers, not just the guy who's getting the premium. It's to all growers, whether you're growing GM, non-GM, whatever, because basically we've got to bring beans back in, or meal back in, to satisfy the market that we're moving beans out.
I think everybody gets along very well.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I would just move over to Jodi for a moment, if that's okay.
I just wanted to ask, from the organic perspective.... Having sat here on committee, and having listened to a number of presentations during our tour as well, correct me if I'm wrong, but my sense is that organic farmers feel somewhat threatened by farmers who grow GM. That's why I started my questioning in a commodity group where there is GM and non-GM.
I'm wondering if there is a real threat there. My experience has been that organic farmers take measures to ensure that there's no contamination.
There's the GM side of things, but there's a lot more to organic farming than non-GM. There are pesticides, there's water, and there's feed. There are a whole bunch of things that make something organic. Yet organic farmers take the necessary precautions to ensure that there's no contamination of their organic product. Those same measures would protect against contamination of a GM-type product.
I don't understand why the threat is considered to be more from GM than it is from just non-organic sources.
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Organic Council of Ontario
Because internationally, every single organic certification system prohibits the use of GMOs in their production system. You can't get fertilizer drift, and in terms of pesticide and herbicide use, organic producers have a buffer that they need to be responsible for on their land. They also need to provide affidavits from their neighbours, who are acknowledging that they're running their farms organically and that they have agreement from their neighbours not to spray during wind, and so on and so forth.
It's much easier to take steps to protect the organic integrity outside of the GM issues on farm. What happens is because—
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
That's the part I'm not sure why. I don't quite understand, because if you're putting in place measures with a neighbour—
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Organic Council of Ontario
Because I've got data from the GE alfalfa trials in the United States that show 11 of 15 plots were contaminated, despite the 900-metre buffer being obeyed, and some of those plots were two and a half kilometres away. So we set limits for drift, but then nature does what she does and drift occurs beyond what those limits are. So we haven't—
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Organic Council of Ontario
That's what I have off the top of my head.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Yes, it's just that alfalfa's always there. It seems to be the lightning rod for these types of discussions, but there are many other crop varieties grown—
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Organic Council of Ontario
What we have with the soybean situation, for example, is that they've created their own segregated shipping systems, so you're not going to run into a situation such as we did with flax, where the contamination may have happened in the value chain and not in the field.
Where industry is not self-regulating, the organic farmers are at greater risk for events that are beyond their control, when it comes to genetic modification, than they are in any other aspect of the production system.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I guess what I'm asking, though, is, if you take a non-GM product that is non-organic, is the same threat of contaminating the organic quantity of product there as well?
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Organic Council of Ontario
But in the IP market, like we heard, Japan's tolerance is 5% and in the EU it's zero. So if your organic crop is going to Europe and there's adventitious presence, you've lost your market.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
We're working on that, right?
Most people see that the cost of zero tolerance and the risk associated with having anything less than zero tolerance is exorbitant, and Europe probably can't afford it much longer themselves, because—
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Organic Council of Ontario
They're certainly running into issues with feed availability.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Yes. So I'm not sure the zero tolerance argument is a strong one, because I think that's going to shift. It's probably going to shift in the near term, because zero tolerance is just not sustainable.
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Organic Council of Ontario
I'm only speaking on behalf of the consumer base, which drove the creation of our industry and who say they don't want to eat genetically modified foods. Will there be a need to work with some level of tolerance? Likely so. Our sector hasn't reached consensus on that. The minute we're a little clearer on where we're coming from collectively, we'll be happy to share that upstream.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you very much.
Just one closing comment on what Pierre was talking about with regard to zero tolerance. For any of the committee members who haven't had a chance to read the blues from our tour last week, we actually heard a number of times from different witnesses that zero tolerance, as Pierre said, was not sustainable. They recommended that there has to be some kind of a happy medium in there. I thought I'd mention that.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Just on the research end, Larry, can the researchers get a handle on research, public research and private if we can, on organics, GM and non-GM? We've heard a lot on public research during our hearings, the need for it, but it would be nice to have some data of where we've been going on research.
In Charlottetown, we heard public research has increased; in the rest of the country we heard public research has decreased. So I don't know what numbers are what. I'm wondering if Frédéric can try to get a handle on those numbers over the last, say, 15 years, and include organic in that, because I think Jodi is right, there's very little public money going into research for organics.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
1 p.m.
Liberal
1 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Larry Miller
Thank you very much to our witnesses again for being here. I think, as always, these meetings are never quite long enough. There are always lots of questions, but thanks again.
At some point we will be preparing a report on our review of this, and at that time, once it's through the House, you'll be able to get a copy if you want.
We adjourn until Thursday.
