Agriculture Committee on March 5th, 2013

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I know that Canada is pushing worldwide to come up with something in terms of low-level presence. I'd just like to hear your comments on that.

[Patty Townsend]

We're very happy that Canada is playing this leadership role. Relying so heavily on the export market, particularly in our grain industry, we believe that you can't go out and tell other countries that it's inevitable that there might be a low-level presence of a product you haven't approved in your country, so they should be looking at a low-level presence policy. It's not really right to do that if you don't do that in your own country.

We're saying that while the system we do have in place in Canada works well, where if it's detected you do a risk assessment and then you have flexibility to determine how to bring it back into compliance, it would work very well for a domestic...and given our regulatory system and the relationship the industry has with regulators in Canada, but it's not an exportable program. For us to go out to other countries and say they need to have a program, without having one ourselves, is not a very good idea. We've been very supportive of Canada developing a domestic policy that's science-based, predictable, proactive, that facilitates trade, and that can serve as a model for other countries.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Okay. I have a follow-up question about what you said on risk assessments. Could you maybe give us a little more information on what you see needs to be done in terms of those risk assessments?

[Patty Townsend]

What is done in terms of risk assessments in Canada is very stringent. Risk assessments are conducted by both the CFIA and Health Canada, and even on seed. If there's a risk assessment required, Health Canada assesses it or its impact on human health and safety. It does testing around allergenicity. All of the results of the risk assessments and the safety assessments are available from government websites. I do have a document that has all those links that I can leave with the clerk if you wish. Unfortunately, it's not translated.

Then the CFIA looks at it in terms of two different components. They look at it for its impact on the health and safety of livestock. They also look at it for the impact on the health and safety of the environment. In those cases they look for its ability to spread to wild or native relatives and whether it's a substantial change and could have an impact on the non-genetically modified or genetically engineered material that's out there of that same crop. All of that information is publicly available on websites.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

That sounds like a pretty detailed process. Do you have any idea how long it would take to do those risk assessments?

[Patty Townsend]

In Canada there is a service guarantee for safety assessments. Risk assessments don't take quite as long as a full health and safety assessment for full approval. We have not really had a low-level presence issue in Canada yet, so it's hard to know. We have had a couple of what we call “adventitious presences”, which are escapes from research labs or things like that, where it's not approved anywhere, and the risk assessments have taken longer. But where it's already fully approved somewhere else—and in the case of grain for food and feed, there is an international body, under the codex, that talks about how to do a risk assessment and how to do a safety assessment—I think it would probably take a little less time than a full safety assessment.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I have one last question. I'm not sure how much time I have left.

My colleague was trying to talk about a low-level presence, not necessarily GM, in a crop that was shipped off somewhere and then had to be binned and shipped again, and it could be that one little piece of barley or whatever in corn. What are your thoughts in terms of that particular aspect? I'm sure that does happen with seed.

[Patty Townsend]

It does. In the seed industry, that's where all of those very rigorous international standards and guidelines come into play, the OECD seed schemes or those of the Association of Official Seed Analysts, AOSA. There are very rigid requirements for different classes of seed pedigree that say, for example, in a 25-gram lot of clover you could have one canola seed, or you could have one piece of dirt, or you could have one other foreign seed. You could have one weed seed, for example. Those aren't the exact standards, so don't quote those, but those are examples.

So seed has always traded that way. All of the members of the OECD seed schemes, for example, which include Europe, accept, acknowledge, and support those standards. Those are recognized. They are accepted, and seed has been traded for decades under those standards.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Madame Raynault.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Nault, a little earlier, you had a good conversation with Mr. Lemieux. Why do you think it is important to identify a low-level presence of GMOs? What are the risks? Do you think the impact studies have been properly conducted?

[André Nault]

To answer your last question, I would say that the answer is no. The impact studies have not been properly conducted. No studies have been done. We rely on what the companies give us. I have proof of that because the Minister of Health wrote to us and said that she was waiting for the companies to do the necessary studies. So she told us that nothing had been verified and, in the case of SmartStax corn, we were waiting for the company to do it.

When a low level is present, the tolerance level will gradually increase because, as they say, we don't have a choice. This is how it is around the world. The product producer has an opportunity to distribute it more. That is always where the problem lies with very low-level tolerance.

I think Mr. Busque would like to add something.

[Laurier Busque]

Once again, I will use the example of flax.

Generally, once a GMO is authorized and disseminated in open environments, neither the biotech company nor the farmer using the genetically modified seeds have a clear responsibility toward producers of non-GMO products, which are greatly affected by contaminations. That is to illustrate who is responsible.

I think the companies in Europe have responsibilities. If a producer has a contamination problem, the company should normally, through risk mitigating procedures, enable the producer to continue to produce non-GMO products. That is one aspect. We are introducing a problem in Canada with the use of low concentrations. Once again, that does not eliminate the responsibility of companies and users of these products to protect people who do not want them, including a lot of consumers.

Why are everyday consumer products not labelled to indicate that they do not contain GMOs? Because the companies are afraid that people will reject their products if that was indicated. Once again, consumer information should prevail.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

There is a chart in your document on GMOs, risk assessment, the precautionary principle in Europe and the substantial equivalence in North America. Furthermore, I also know that groups have long been putting pressure on the government to have GMO-containing products identified. If they are identifiable, they could perhaps be identified.

On the next page of the English version, it reads:This herbicide, which is used on GM corn and soybean crops, was detected on average in 86% of the samples collected from the four agricultural rivers under study; the dominant crops in the watersheds of those rivers are corn and soybean.

What is happening with these rivers, with the water? Do animals drink this water? Do people drink this water? What are the long-term impacts of having water with GMOs? What happens? Do people die?

[André Nault]

The assessment was done on the glyphosate and not on the GMO as such. We wanted to use this chart to show the presence of glyphosate in the waterways compared to what it was previously. In 2002, there was a low concentration. It has increased since then. In 2010, the concentration was double or even triple what it was before. So it is not correct to claim that GMOs will lead to a drop in the use of herbicides.

[Laurier Busque]

We are also concerned that these concentrations are in the water. For the most part, the water is in the lakes. It settles and concern is starting to grow about what is happening with the accumulation of these products in the sediment. There is very little research to document this aspect, as we find this herbicide in aquatic areas.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

The LLP file talks a lot about accepting the scientific equivalence of foreign countries in our GMO assessment process. Mr. Nault and Mr. Busque, according to you, are these assessment processes standard around the world? Are there models that should be avoided or followed? Who do you trust with respect to this process?

[André Nault]

We trust independent studies, which are unfortunately not recognized by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency or Health Canada. Evidence of that is the complaint we submitted to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency regarding the fact that a genetically modified product crosses the animal's intestinal barrier and gets in the human food chain. This completely changes the order. In fact, GMOs were accepted because it was believed that they did not cross the intestinal barrier and were destroyed by heat. A number of studies indicate that this is not the case.

There are 14 peer-reviewed studies, which were not accepted. The weight of evidence and the science went against their findings. The more studies there are that say that there is no danger, the more people believe them and the more we set the other studies aside.

Science does not have weight. It is only a verification. This verification must be done in relation to everything currently being done, but people do not want to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Zimmer.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thanks to the guests for coming today and appearing at our committee. I feel like I need to defend GMOs. That is not what this conversation is totally about, but maybe I'll have time at the end. We can dig into that a bit.

My question is for Patty. What level of LLP does your organization support?

[Patty Townsend]

We have not yet established any threshold that we are ready to say we support at this point. We are saying that we need to get to work on that, so that whatever threshold of low-level presence gets established for grain doesn't impose requirements on us that the seed industry, as the foundation of the grain industry, cannot meet. Conversely, we're saying that whatever we develop for seed can't put in place thresholds that are so high that the grain industry can't trade.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

I definitely understand, as Frank said, the desire to keep separate organics and GMOs.

From a practical standpoint, and you alluded to this in your comment, is zero tolerance a practical position to take in this day and age?

[Patty Townsend]

No. Given the level of production, where it's being produced, how many acres are in production, and by how many farmers, the increase in research and development, even in developing countries like China and others, of GM or GE products that are meant to serve only domestic markets but that move in the same trucks and are handled by the same farmers, we do not believe zero.... The testing levels that they now use—as I just mentioned, one was .00009%. It is not practical to require absolute zero.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

That leads to my next question. Without a practical LLP policy, would Canada still be able to feed the world as we do? I'm asking that in a leading way, obviously. It's pointing to GMOs and what they've really added to the world, I would suggest. Being able to grow crops where they were not able to grow them, to do it with less diesel, with no-till varieties, and with less pesticide use—the benefits of GMOs go on and on. Our ability to feed the world demands that we do some things more efficiently. I wanted to know if we would still be able to do that if we completely eliminated the GMO product, or seed off the shelf.

[Patty Townsend]

Let's start by looking at the challenges. First of all, the world's farmers, not just Canada's but the world's farmers, need to more than double their production within 40 years to be able to feed the population that we're expecting to have on this lovely planet.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Can you repeat that one more time?