Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, everyone, for being here.
I would like to start with either Michelle or Jim.
I read through your presentation earlier. I'm going to nitpick with words, but don't take offence to it, because you're not the only ones who do this; it comes from all over the place. When folks talk about “science-based” and “non-science-based”, the words get thrown into the conversation but never actually get defined.
Let me just quote from one of your presentations: “If approval systems in foreign and domestic markets deviate from science-based processes...”. So the first thing that comes to mind is, which science-based processes are you actually alluding to? There's nothing footnoted.
You're not the only ones who do this, by the way. It happens all the time. People just say it's science-based, and where they're actually saying something about someone else who doesn't agree with them, they say it's non-science-based.
That's all well and good to have an opinion, but, to be honest, if you actually want to convince me about the non-science or science of something, then footnote it for me. Tell me exactly where it's coming from, let me know what it is you're actually alluding to, which regulations, for instance, you're alluding to that are actually science-based, and where the study was done.
I say this just as a way of trying to make me understand where these things come from. And you're not alone. You just happen to be here today and I happen to be filling in for Alex, so I get to say that today. You could have been someone else. I'd be saying the same thing to them.. Quite frankly, if you wrote this paper at the university level, your professor would simply hand it back to you and ask, “Where exactly did you get that from, and what are you alluding to?”
I'm not suggesting, Jim, that you don't have a wealth of experience of doing things, but biotechnology, as Mr. Easter pointed out earlier, covers a gamut of things, and folks have actually been doing it for a long, long time. Long before they actually knew what a gene looked like, folks were actually doing biotechnology. They just didn't know it was called biotechnology. It was grafting or splicing or blending seeds, and trying to find things that were producing in a better way. We've got better tools to do it today. The issue now becomes, did the better tools give us a better product?
As an electrician, I can buy better screwdrivers. Does it make me a better electrician? Some would debate whether I was ever a good electrician, but that's neither here nor there.
Let me ask you this. You talk about what's called a low-level protocol, in the sense of how you keep it at a certain level, and you're looking at 5%. What if your market that you're trying to sell that to says to you that it does not want 5%? What do you do? What if it says it wants less, and you can't meet it? Or can you meet it? Maybe it's a two-part question.