Madam Speaker, what an interesting debate. As I said the other day, there are many different points of view. If any of us speak long enough we will probably disagree with ourselves at the end of the day because it is a very complex topic.
I will begin by basically paraphrasing a former prime minister with regard to a position on an issue. It might be ours and it could be about any party's position in the House of Commons: mandatory controls if necessary, but not necessarily mandatory controls, because we do not like to see that type of rigid enforcement.
With the demise of one of the big players in the field, Monsanto, there has been a slowdown in recent months in terms of genetically modified foods. Monsanto's market share has plummeted as compared to where it was in the marketplace over a year ago. One of the reasons for that is the so-called frankenfoods, to quote that term.
I want to speak specifically to that. The hon. member from Winnipeg mentioned the controversy surrounding the Brazil nut. He spoke about the crossing of genes from the Brazil nut with that of a soybean. As members well know, the soybean is a major source of nutrition for many parts of the world and they had invented a product that would take on many of the characteristics of the soybean or the Brazil nut in terms of the strength and durability of the seed or the plant.
However, by crossing these genes they unknowingly brought in the same characteristics and allergic reactions from the Brazil nut. It was science doing one thing for a net gain to the public but inadvertently creating another problem, which was the allergic reaction to a new product that no one imagined would happen. The good news is that it was, thankfully, pulled from the market shelves by the agricultural community before it actually reached the marketplace.
Michael Lipton, an economist at the University of Sussex in England, does research on poverty and the demographics of food distribution in the Third World. He said that when electricity was first invented if the first two products of electricity was the electric chair and the electric animal probe where would we be today.
I think that is one of the problems that this science has experienced in regard to genetically modified foods. There have been some horror stories coming out and, suddenly, because they are the first products, there is some fear-mongering, and rightly so, and some uncertainty on the part of the consumer which is showing up in the marketplace, hence, I guess, the demise of companies like Monsanto.
That is not to say that they are going to die a natural death. They will always be around because of some of the positive benefits of the alteration of species, plant breeding and so on, but what they have done in some of these cases is just taken it a step too far and that has cost them. It has cost them a lot of confidence in the marketplace which, at the end of the day, will determine whether some of these products survive or not. As consumers, we will determine that.
Animal genes are being crossed with food products, or plant genes, to create a product that will withstand, for example, cold temperatures. One of the recent discoveries was the taking of genes from a fish that lives in the North Atlantic, some of the coldest waters in the world, and crossing it with a strawberry. They are taking an animal gene and putting it into a food product with great success. One of the biggest enemies of the strawberry plant is cold and frost, Madam Speaker, which you well know coming from the province of Quebec where there is a huge strawberry industry. They have been very successful in doing that.
What happens is that this conjures up all the fears we have as consumers. I only have to mention mad cow disease. What was being done there was that they were feeding cattle their own entrails, after going through a heat process. They were feeding their own meat to their own species which in turn created a problem within the cow. There is some evidence now that mad cow disease has jumped the species barrier. I have asked the Minister of Health what the department was doing and how it was monitoring that. We have evidence that the disease has entered the food chain and human beings are now being associated with that disease. It seems to have gone from animals to people. That is the result of science gone crazy or the application of science not benefiting mankind as we would like it to do.
Another example of that is atomic energy. Look at the gains we have made in this world when we cracked the atom. Some of them are very positive and some of them are very disastrous. The result is that atomic energy can produce a very clean power but because of mistakes made in the past, the atomic energy business is almost at a standstill. It is almost dying on the vine, yet it is something that should be growing. Scientists got off the track and the monitoring and procedures that would be used to keep people in check have not been there and we have seen a demise in that industry.
The same is occurring in the genetically modified food industry. There are so many examples of where science can do good. One of them is in a new product called golden rice. A couple of scientists, one is from Germany and I believe the other is from Austria, have developed a gene which they placed into a rice plant. It allows the rice plant to generate vitamin A, a missing ingredient in the diets of about two billion people on the face of the earth.
Last year over 200 million people died because of malnutrition, because they simply did not have vitamin A in their diets. We are talking about those societies that depend on rice crops.
They put in beta carotene, or vitamin A; there is a connection between the two. They call it golden rice because of the beta carotene which is what is in a carrot. They have put it into the white rice crop with huge benefits. None of us disagree with the benefit side of it.
We have to know where it will lead and where it will stop. Is government going to put a check on these advancements and how rapid will these be?
The other day I mentioned what they call the terminator seed. It comes from the famous movie, the Terminator . Think about it. A company like Monsanto, with the power that exceeds the power of some governments, came up with a terminator seed. For example if we are talking about a wheat crop, the wheat would grow but the seeds that the crop would produce could no longer be used. They could no longer reproduce because the seed had been genetically modified so only that company could sell the seed. It is a monopoly on seed and food production. That is what scares a lot of us in the House. It is called the terminator seed.
Imagine the repercussions in the third world. Countries would be forced to buy seed. They could not save their own seed for the next year for planting and eventually harvesting.
Those are examples of science going too far. None of us will deny the benefits of the science, but we want to see a check on it. We hope that mandatory restrictions will not be needed and that voluntary compliance will work. If it does not, we are suggesting that government at that point does have to step in.