Those are a couple of very good questions.
The issue around low-level presence is the possibility of the contamination of shipments that are qualified, that are approved, by low-level presence genetic traits that are not qualified.
If I could define “low-level presence” for this discussion, it is the unintended presence of products, GM traits, that have been approved in the market that's exporting, or in another market, but have not been approved in the market that you're importing into.
Most countries have very specific sets of laws and regulations to ensure that any product that's genetically modified coming into their territory is approved beforehand, and it's approved by a science-based process that uses codex internationally accepted risk-based standards to approve a GM trait.
In the canola industry, we ensure that before a product is introduced to the Canadian farmer, that product is approved in all of our major markets through this kind of science-based process.
The challenge with low-level presence is that there's a large expansion of the number of biotech products being produced around the world by a number of different countries and for different commodities. Acreage is going up, and the number of products is going up. The challenge there is that the process for approving these products is not universal around the world, and in some markets it's very slow. Therefore, you'll end up having some products approved in some territories but not in others. It's called asynchronous approval.
We will ship only products that are approved to our major markets. The concern is that we use conveyance means, railcars, ships, and so on, that are used for all products around the world. You may have a GM trait in a vessel. The vessel is used, and then it empties that commodity. We put canola in that ship and send it over to a market, and there are traces of an unapproved trait in our canola supply.
Canola is a GM crop, but it's not just canola. It's an issue for all Canadian exports, for example, wheat and barley. If you have any kind of unapproved trait found in those kinds of vessels, in those kinds of shipments, that will disrupt trade.
It's important to make the distinction that the products we're talking about are all approved in one or two countries already using a codex-based process, a risk assessment and safety process, at 100% exposure. In every case in which we're talking about LLP, we're talking about a product that has been approved by a competent authority using codex-based regulations of safety assessment. We're not, in any of these circumstances, talking about a product that is not already approved using those standards.
There have been examples. One example would be a vessel shipping soybeans to a market. The vessel had dust in it from biotechnology corn that had not been approved in that market. There was a very low-level presence. The product had been approved under a science-based risk assessment in another country. It's unintentionally there. It's just been picked up because of dust in the air around a port. That stopped a vessel that's worth millions of dollars—some of these vessels are worth $20 million or $25 million—really, in our assessment, for no good reason. The product is not a threat to health or animal safety. It's been approved by a science-based process, and it's not intentionally in that shipment.
Another part of the story is that some countries are developing new biotechnology products, and they expect that they will be used only in their domestic territory. They're creating that biotechnology product to be used in their country only, and they're not seeking approvals from export markets, but if that product were to end up in one of our shipments, it could contaminate the shipment and cause some trade disruption.