Agriculture committee  Every crop is different, so there's a different potential with each crop. Before genetically engineered crop were introduced in Canada, we had no discussion as to the potential for contamination. We're having that discussion now, and it's better late than never. Zero tolerance i

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Chair. I'm speaking on behalf of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, which is a network of 18 organizations, and we have participated in the consultations on low-level presence where invited. The adoption of the LLP policy would establish Canada as the first c

Agriculture committee  The solutions to world hunger have always been before us. It's a political, social, and economic problem. Now we see that the farmers in Africa and Asia we are connected with are fighting the introduction of genetic engineering. They are very concerned that it will create depende

Agriculture committee  That's highly problematic. In terms of the agriculture right now that's supported by genetic engineering, if we look at Brazil, there's a huge amount of genetically engineered, herbicide-tolerant soy being grown for animal feed. That is not about feeding the world. It's actually

Agriculture committee  That cerrado land is also biodiverse land. This is the problem too, that as we--

Agriculture committee  Certainly we would ask if a lot of the success of canola in Canada is due not to the GE trait of herbicide tolerance but in fact to the quality of the varieties. This is actually an issue, because you have companies that own some of the best germplasm that are incorporating GE tr

Agriculture committee  Well, certainly we would look at the problem of organic grain farmers actually losing canola as a market and rotation crop, which caused them economic harm. These are the same farmers who then used flax in their rotation, and it was contaminated--

Agriculture committee  Sure. Farmers would know what that is in terms of a market crop.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Certainly it's not standard practice for the industry to request farmer consultation. This is how we see one of the core issues here: farmers are not consulted before a GE crop is brought to commercialization. As was said, in 2005 alfalfa was approved for safety, an

Agriculture committee  In that view, there needs to be room for an actual evaluation, moving forward, of the regulatory system; otherwise it's static. Defending a regulatory system without moving it and evolving it would not seem to be feasible.

Agriculture committee  Certainly one of the major problems we see with this question of health risks is the fact that there is no post-market surveillance. Health Canada set up a post-market surveillance project and hosted an international conference and then abandoned that project of tracing and monit

Agriculture committee  Your question is what the risk questions are.

Agriculture committee  It's entirely possible that Canada could approve a genetically engineered Atlantic salmon for human consumption in Canada and approve the Atlantic salmon for production and export. It doesn't matter, in this case, if it's actually safe to eat. If it causes the extinction of wild

Agriculture committee  There are many huge risk problems. These salmon are engineered to grow twice as fast. It's possible that they could out-compete wild salmon but also that they could be much more susceptible to disease. When you genetically engineer an organism, any number of changes could happen,

Agriculture committee  It would not change the DNA of humans, but certainly the consumer is very aware of these risk questions with respect to genetically engineered animals. It is a complex organism we're speaking of. We haven't yet regulated a genetically engineered animal for safety. It does raise n