There are two things to that. Clearly, one of the things that's held back research in the organic sector is that there's really nothing to commercialize. No input is going to come out of that. There are no pesticide or herbicide regimes. So recovering the dollars that went into the original research in a private-friendly investment environment for research isn't possible.
So unless that research is being done at the farm level, we're not seeing the kinds of productivity results we'd like to from new technologies such as, for example, the dimple tiller. We have a process whereby we have essentially no-till agriculture, because we use a tiller that breaks the weeds when they're emerging above the crop you want. It breaks the weeds, and it creates a cover crop.
But that research isn't being conducted using public dollars; it's being done by farmers with universities. So it's a huge problem for us, because it means there are seed varieties we're not exploring, and there are technologies we're not exploring that could benefit both the organic sector and the broader agricultural sector.
In terms of the science generally, last week we heard Derek Penner, the president of Monsanto Canada, say that his company believes in transparency and sound science. But Greenpeace and researchers in France had to sue Monsanto over a ten-year period to release what was supposed to be public data, which was the basis for the original Bt corn approvals. When the scientists got their hands on the data and ran a comparative study, they found that Monsanto didn't even follow its own study protocols. it missed by a 40% factor a chance for a medium-to-major health impact.
So this is the basis of our sound science. And I think it's a concern as well that we've left the safety science in the hands of the same folks who have an interest in commercializing a product. That is a huge regulatory oversight. We're not saying don't innovate and don't research and don't allow the companies to commercialize, but without disengaged research that's third-party and that has no benefit to the commercialization, we run the risk of having problems.
I'll use the example of rBGH for that. If Shiv Chopra, who was a whistleblower in Health Canada who ended up losing his job and his career over it, hadn't stood up and said there's something wrong with this science, we'd be drinking rBGH right now.