Evidence of meeting #24 for Agriculture and Agri-Food in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was gmos.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Okay.
Currently in Canada, it's not mandatory to label whether salmon is farmed or wild. Is that your understanding as well?
10:35 a.m.
Policy Director, Ecology Action Centre
That is my understanding. I think the wild industry makes an effort to label it as wild.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Does your membership or your organization advocate for one versus the other?
October 18th, 2016 / 10:35 a.m.
Policy Director, Ecology Action Centre
Do you mean in terms of wild versus farmed?
10:35 a.m.
Policy Director, Ecology Action Centre
It depends how the farmed is grown. When it comes to shellfish—and by the way, they have been growing oysters in P.E.I. for a long time—when it comes to farmed, it's a question of how it's grown.
I won't pretend that we don't have issues with the aquaculture industry, and you have heard about them presumably either in the news or here. We're pushing for better practices.
Again, GMO takes it to a whole new level. That would be my answer.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
When you say “to a whole new level”, has your organization done a scientific assessment with regard to that?
10:35 a.m.
Policy Director, Ecology Action Centre
We have the DFO assessment of the export of eggs, and then we have as part of the core process another 400-page document.
I would love to see more science, more discussion of science. Actually, our organization is thinking about convening some kind of scientific discussion around this, because it's not happening elsewhere.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Your main concern is not with regard to the health of humans, but rather the environmental impact that it may have.
10:35 a.m.
Policy Director, Ecology Action Centre
I care about my family and my friends. Yes, I'm concerned about human health. It's not my area of expertise. I respect others who are concerned about it.
Also, when we got into this court case, we got calls from people from the Jewish faith who said there's an issue here for them in terms of kosher food. This issue has many dimensions—ethical and health—but our focus is on, and has to be on, the natural world and protecting, in this case, wild Atlantic salmon.
Again, I would say the gene-editing technology is getting cheaper and easier to use, and we're going to see potentially other species that have wild counterparts, and the integrity of those wild species is going to be put at risk or affected. If we had done a bit more thinking and conversation in the beginning days of aquaculture—I was kind of around there; I worked at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre when it was happening—maybe we could have avoided some of the mistakes we subsequently encountered that have harmed the industry and its image.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Forgive me if I ask a stupid question, but I don't live close to an ocean.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Are you satisfied with the current practices of farmed salmon in Atlantic Canada? If not, what are some of the recommendations that you would have for industry to adopt better practices? That will relate back to GM salmon, if there are escapes or if the escape rate is too high. How would you deal with that?
10:40 a.m.
Policy Director, Ecology Action Centre
Right now, if you are growing a lot of fish, there are impacts on the surrounding environment. For finfish—salmon, trout, halibut—we prefer to see closed containment, because that has a number of advantages in terms of waste, antibiotics, and sea lice. We have companies in Nova Scotia that are moving in this direction, and I am very happy to buy their product.
With GMOs, if it happens once, that's it. Then that trait.... It's like the first ship that brought zebra mussels into the Great Lakes. In an aquatic system, you can't get those zebra mussels back into the ship. You can't round them up.
Aquatic systems pose unique challenges.
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Oh, sorry, we didn't have names.
It's Mr. Anderson, I guess. Go ahead.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Mr. Fletcher, maybe I'll ask you one and then let my colleague have a bit of time before we are done here.
I'm just wondering what surprises you faced along the way. Were you surprised by any of this? You said this was fairly easy technologically, or whatever, but I'm just interested in the surprises you faced.
10:40 a.m.
Memorial University of Newfoundland
My first surprise was that it worked. We didn't know that. That's the kind of thing you hope for. In fact, the growth hormone one was part of the best experiment I ever did. We got results in one year. Normally, I'm looking at years and years of rather straightforward stuff, so that was the first surprise.
In the beginning there wasn't.... When we were doing the antifreeze, there wasn't.... Nobody complained. In fact, the university touted it, and the region was dipping into gene transfer. It was the same with the Atlantic provinces. When I gave talks—I am an academic, so that's the kind of talks I would be giving—there wasn't any there.
In my view, a lot of this happened in the 1990s, with the handling of the mad cow disease in Britain, when the public became aware that the government might not be completely honest with the public. That's when.... The surprise was that suddenly there was a backlash from people who were concerned.
10:40 a.m.
Conservative
David Anderson Conservative Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK
Okay.
Mr. Breton, do you want the remaining time?
10:40 a.m.
Liberal
Pierre Breton Liberal Shefford, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Anderson.
My question is for Dr. Fletcher.
We know that the industry is currently hesitant to market the product and that consumers are also experiencing reluctance about this. What should the industry do to improve consumer and retailer confidence in this product? Many retailers in the United States don't want to market it.
What should companies do to reassure the public and the industry about this?
10:40 a.m.
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Well, I think that businesses will look after themselves first. If they have a perfectly good business and they see the public being concerned about this product, I can see why they would say they don't want to have anything to do with it. Many of them are publicly traded companies, so why would they do that?
In my view, the onus is then on AquaBounty, or whatever subsidiaries there are, to educate the public. It is an education program, because the public as a whole, as it becomes more and more urban, has no idea where food comes from. They don't understand the process, anyway, so it's really an education program, to understand that these are techniques. When we have food on the market, it is created from mutants. They pick out the mutant that does best, and they produce it. It's not called a GMO, but it goes into the marketplace. So you have an education program. That, I think, is the biggest challenge, whether it's for the companies or for the government, to teach people more science.
10:45 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Pat Finnigan
Thank you, Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Breton.
That brings us to the end of this session. I want to thank you so much for taking part, Mr. Butler and Mr. Fletcher. This will certainly help us in writing our report.
For the committee members, we'll be here next Thursday for an hour and a half on APF, and then 30 minutes for a business session.
The meeting is adjourned.