Agriculture committee  Thank you. I do think it's very important for us to remember that this is actually more than just an issue of transparency, but an issue where the science that government is evaluating is not accessible to the public, and not even accessible to independent scientists, and, more

Agriculture committee  I was just pointing out that zero tolerance comes from this issue that some countries, say Canada even.... If we have not approved a GM crop for safety, then that's why zero tolerance exists, or any tolerance level. It relates to the regulatory decision. It actually has some grou

Agriculture committee  I would think it's up to countries to decide what they think is a tolerance level they can allow, either scientifically or politically. That would be based on what their population is willing to accept from contamination from a non-approved GM event, which is what we're talking a

Agriculture committee  It comes back to what I mentioned, which is that we really don't think that the segregation systems were given enough thought or really were invested in before the technology was allowed onto the market. There was some very necessary infrastructure. There were assumptions made th

Agriculture committee  If I may also respond to your question about this issue of safety, by bringing forward a critique or recommendations for improving the system for evaluating safety, we're not necessarily saying that the crops on the shelves now are not safe. That hasn't been said. New studies ari

Agriculture committee  I think there are a number of platforms from which the government ends up speaking about these issues with other countries. Certainly one of the platforms that was established, as was mentioned by Monsieur Bellavance, is the Cartagena protocol on biosafety. It's a protocol on bio

Agriculture committee  If I may say, just very quickly, segregation did not work in canola. GE canola contaminated so widely that even pedigreed and certified seed stocks could not be certified as GM-free. That's the reason why over 90% of canola is GM and you can only grow organic canola or non-GE can

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

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  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  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  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