Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I thank the guests for coming today.
In The Globe and Mail today there's a whole issue on hunger. It seems that when you read all the different articles now, economics is second and food is first--how we're going to produce food, and how much we should produce. When you look at the whole science part of it, as MPs we're on an agriculture committee thinking about farmers and food production, but we also represent the constituents out there, and they're very concerned about food.
I think we have a problem with consumers getting a mixed message. The underdeveloped countries are only worried about starvation. Our constituents are more worried about food safety. I find the problem, no matter how much work we do here, which you say is science-based, is that we get these findings out of Europe. I don't know how true they are, and some of you can comment on that. They're giving GMO foods to mice, and this is happening. All this stuff is going on. We can laugh about it and shrug it off, but decision-making is sometimes not based on practicality and logic; it's based on emotion. The decision-making that happened in Europe was mostly emotional, but they made those decisions.
I'd like to have some comments on the so-called science that's out there and being portrayed. We try to steer away from the GMO topic, but it's the elephant in the room all the time. If we don't deal with it properly, it's going to hinder all the other things we're doing, so I'd like to have some comments about those studies that are coming forth in Europe, and the monster food, the GMOs. What can we tell our constituents about that part of it?