Agriculture committee  One of the things you have to conclude, as any rational person should, is that the science is mixed. If you had enough money, scientists could probably come up with whatever conclusion you were after, especially in the life sciences in the fields of biology, where we don't fully

Agriculture committee  Yes, absolutely.

Agriculture committee  As a taxpayer, I'd probably be disappointed if the government ended up being responsible for that. Let's face it: when we consider the ones that are already out there, the ones that have been used by innocent farmers for 15 years, we're not going to go back and make them responsi

Agriculture committee  Just to comment on the rBGH dispute, I also was involved in that back in the late 1970s. I was at a meeting two weeks ago here in Ottawa with heads of Health Canada, the Dairy Farmers of Canada, and the organic sector. I can safely say there's nobody in the dairy industry in Cana

Agriculture committee  Among the farmers, no, I don't.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. Just to repeat, that is our goal, respectful coexistence, because we're a minority group within the farming community. Most of our neighbours are conventional farmers. Many of them are growers of genetically modified crops, so we have to find a way to work together.

Agriculture committee  I'm not a litigation lawyer, but I know that liability tends to work its way up. It starts off at the individual level and works its way up to the supplier of the product and so on. There would eventually be a level of responsibility for the company that provides the product as w

Agriculture committee  I think it's an absolutely reasonable idea, given that there's very little benefit to GE alfalfa. I mean, I've talked to farmers across the country. I've grown alfalfa, harvested it, and fed it since I was knee-high. We don't need GE alfalfa. It's of very limited use in the indus

Agriculture committee  The best information I have from the scientific community is that if GE alfalfa is introduced, there will be no way to completely eliminate contamination of the seed supply, because the set-aside distances would be so great. There is a lot of evidence that pollination occurs at u

Agriculture committee  I think that if the right people are in the room, a meaningful discussion about the food issue can be entertained. It's something that would help a lot and it's long overdue. We have introduced these technologies into the food system without consulting with people, without inform

Agriculture committee  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for inviting me to speak to you today from the perspective of the organic sector. My name is Ted Zettel. I have been an organic farmer since 1983. Twenty years ago I participated in the founding of Organic Meadow, a farmers' cooperative, which