Thank you.
GMO technology has seen very limited practical applications in beef cattle for reasons I can explain later if you wish. That may change. Recent developments have allowed genetic surgery to remove the horn gene from dairy cattle. To this point, genetically modified cattle have been developed to produce antibodies to help treat rheumatoid arthritis and organ rejection in human medicine rather than for beef production.
Beef from GMO cattle is not likely to be on the store shelves soon, but peer-reviewed research has already demonstrated that beef from GMO cattle has no measurable differences in nutritional value or adverse health implications compared to non-GMO beef. Beef cattle have been fed GMO feed for many years. A retrospective study of data from over 100 billion head of livestock found no adverse effects of GMO feed on animal health. No residues of GMO feed have been found in the meat or milk either.
Biotechnology does present significant opportunities to Canada's beef industry. In food safety recalls, biotechnology allows the Public Health Agency and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to quickly and precisely identify the specific bacteria responsible for food-borne disease outbreaks. Comparing the DNA fingerprint of samples collected from human patients to samples collected from processing plants and other environments allows source attribution to occur more quickly, or in other words, where and when did the initial contamination occur, and how should the recall be focused?
Agriculture Canada researchers, in collaboration with the Public Health Agency and other Canadian researchers, are using similar methods to track whether anti-microbial-resistant bacteria and genes are moving between farms and human environments through food or water.
For beef quality, Canadian researchers have identified some of the genes responsible for beef tenderness. As many of you as consumers know, tenderness is one of the primary attributes of priority for beef consumers. Advances such as this will allow Canada's beef industry to build on our internationally enviable reputation as a supplier of safe, high-quality beef.
Biotechnology is also being used to develop tools that can rapidly, accurately, and cost effectively diagnose disease in beef cattle to improve animal health and welfare. Calf diarrhea is a very costly cause of illness and death for newborn calves. Bovine respiratory disease is the costliest animal health issue in Canadian feedlots. One current beef cluster project is developing diagnostic panels for both of these diseases. Better biotechnology-based diagnostics lead to better animal health and welfare outcomes for animals, but they can also help veterinarians and cattle producers to design more appropriate preventive vaccination programs and help to ensure more targeted anti-microbial use. Biotechnology also allows for the more rapid development of effective vaccines to prevent diseases. These can reduce animal disease, anti-microbial use, and anti-microbial resistance.
Genomic technologies also allow new feed grains and forage varieties to be developed more rapidly. This is important for our industy, as 80% of the lifetime of a Canadian beef animal is spent on a forage-based diet. In the feedlot sector, feed costs are the largest single variable cost associated with finishing cattle, aside from the purchase of a feeder animal. Any improvement in feed production that enhances productivity through biotechnology can have a very large impact on our industry.
Corn yields are two to three times higher than barley yields. That's partly due to the extensive use of biotechnology in corn breeding. Biotech corn has been grown extensively in central Canada and the U.S. for many years. Both Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer have recently made significant investments in corn breeding in western Canada.
Biotechnology is beginning to find its way into barley breeding. Accurately identifying cultivars that carry favourable genes for quality and disease-resistant traits has facilitated more expedient variety approval. In essence, we are seeing that new varieties are able to reach the market 20% to 40% faster when biotechnology is used to support the breeding process. This is important, as lagging barley yields relative to corn yields have placed the western Canadian feedlot sector at increasing risk of being at a cost disadvantage to the U.S. As we know, if we are at a cost disadvantage to the U.S., we'll see more feeder cattle moved across the border to the U.S. where they will be fed and slaughtered instead of being fed and slaughtered in Canada.
Agriculture Canada's researchers in Alberta and Quebec, through the science cluster, are collaborating to identify genes responsible for improved cold tolerance and winter hardiness in alfalfa and also working on other forage varieties. Once these genes are identified, traditional or biotech breeding methods can be used to move these traits into commercially popular, high-yielding alfalfa lines.
Either approach would work, but the biotech approach is faster, so Canadian forage and cattle producers would benefit sooner.
Lastly, with regard to environmental sustainability, a recent peer-reviewed scientific paper that came out of a beef science cluster project reported that the environmental footprint of Canada's beef industry is shrinking. Compared to 30 years ago, each kilogram of beef we produce today requires 29% fewer breeding stock, 27% fewer slaughter cattle, and 24% less land, and it produces 15% less greenhouse gas.
You might ask how we do that. Better yielding forages and feed mean more cattle can be raised on the same land base. Improved animal nutrition and health means a greater proportion of cows are having a calf every year, and more calves are weaned and stay healthy through the feeding process.
Improved feed efficiency means that cattle are eating less and growing faster. That means fewer days that they're producing manure, drinking water, and generating greenhouse gases.
Improving efficiency through innovation has already proven to have very tangible environmental benefits. With the relatively recent advances in genomics technology, we have every confidence that our environmental footprint will continue to shrink and our production efficiencies will continue to improve.
In terms of informing the public about biotechnology, a small vocal minority of people will oppose any technology, even those with a demonstrable public benefit. This is true for GMOs, vaccination, and many other technologies, but reasonable people will accept the informed expert opinion of impartial scientists.
Canada has excellent scientists in federal, provincial, and university-based institutions. Some of them are also excellent communicators. The general public gets confused when currently it has to choose between the opinion of a technology advocate and the opinion of industry. We feel that encouraging and allowing public scientists to more openly communicate with the media and the public on these issues can help.
Challenges remain. For Canadian companies, researchers, agricultural producers, and society to pursue, accept, and benefit from biotechnology, we need to ensure that new technologies receive regulatory approval in a timely manner in Canada. We're a small market, so consequently companies look at us differently than they do the U.S. If they see delays in our approval processes at all compared to those in the U.S., those are a distraction. Basically, they will look to other markets at that point.
We also need to ensure that new trade agreements are science-based. Timely approvals for new products and market access for agricultural products that are produced using technology are key to ensuring that the Canadian beef industry remains globally competitive relative to our international competitors.
With that, I thank you for your time. We'd be happy to answer any questions.
