First, let me thank the chair, vice-chairs, and members of the committee for the opportunity to meet with you today.
By way of background, Syngenta is a leading agriculture company helping to improve global food security by enabling millions of farmers to make better use of available resources. Through world-class science and innovative crop solutions, our 28,000 people in over 90 countries are working to transform how crops are grown. The Syngenta Canada team is approximately 300 people strong, supporting products and services for the country's major crops, including wheat, barley, canola, corn, potatoes, pulses, soybeans, and specialty crops.
While the focus of your meeting today is the PMRA's proposed decision concerning the neonicotinoid imidacloprid, which is manufactured and marketed by Bayer, as just mentioned, the topic is also of critical interest to us at Syngenta, as we are the manufacturers and marketers of one of the other neonicotinoids, thiamethoxam. As well, the PMRA's proposed decision regarding imidacloprid triggered a special review of other neonics, including thiamethoxam, also with a focus on aquatic invertebrates. It is worth noting that there are currently four different re-evaluations and special reviews under way that include thiamethoxam in their remit.
We are supportive of and regularly tout Canada's rigorous and stringent regulatory system. Our system protects the health and safety of Canadians by ensuring that no products are approved that would pose an unacceptable risk to human health and the environment. Our system also ensures that products are regularly re-evaluated and reassessed to ensure they continue to meet the latest scientific standards. That being said, it is fair to say that we have some concerns with some of these current activities, which we will return to in a few minutes' time.
We are also cognizant of the fact that this committee and other bodies of the government have previously spent significant time on the subject of neonics, so we'll use the majority of our time with you here today to focus on some considerations and potential implications of the most recent regulatory actions regarding neonicotinoids.
The PMRA is very clear that before any pesticide can be registered in Canada, Health Canada must review the scientific information to make sure it has value and there are no unacceptable health or environmental concerns related to its use. The focus on value, health, and environment is clear and shared by us as registrants of these products.
With regard to thiamethoxam specifically, it is an extremely important and valuable tool for controlling various insect pests across a variety of crops. Its introduction, together with other neonics, ushered in a new era of insect control and management.
Thiamethoxam is registered for different uses on different crops as a foliar, soil-applied, and seed treatment insecticide. The majority of its use in Canada is as a seed treatment, which also brings additional value and benefits, including protection of seeds and emerging plants from insect damage during the critical first weeks of development.
From an environmental perspective, the benefits as a seed treatment include a significantly lower amount of active ingredient per acre compared with foliar and soil-applied pesticides, direct application to the seeds, reduced impact on non-target organisms, and protection from increased pest pressure associated with a range of agronomic practices, including reduced and no-till field conditions.
From an agronomic and production perspective there are also a number of other benefits, including optimizing seeding rates due to improved plant stand; minimizing the need for replants; extending the application window for in-season pesticide applications, if and when needed; supporting earlier planting practices, which helps to maximize labour and production efficiency; and complementing trait technology to manage insect pests.
Over the past several years various government, industry, and other stakeholders have undertaken work to quantify these benefits to Canadian agriculture, and while they have all employed different criteria and had a different scope for their analyses, all have confirmed the on-farm value of this class of chemistry.
Likewise, the impact of loss of or restriction of uses of these technologies has also been documented and would be expected to impact production in three main ways: yield loss or depression, quality losses, and additional need for foliar applications of insecticides, the majority of which would involve older chemistry with less favourable profiles.
The most recent action by the PMRA related to thiamethoxam, as mentioned earlier, is the special review regarding potential environmental risk to aquatic invertebrates. This special review was announced by the PMRA on November 23 and was triggered by the proposed re-evaluation decision regarding imidacloprid, which was announced the same day. To speak to this, I'm going to turn things over to my colleague Dr. Paul Hoekstra.