Agriculture committee  Just as a quick answer, number one is about communication. It's an important issue for us. I know we have a responsibility and a bigger job to do. It goes back to government having a role to defend and support and keep current their regulatory system. I want to pick up on one q

Agriculture committee  One of the observations I would make is that if you want to feed the population of the world and preserve species and biodiversity, then I think we have to seriously consider biotechnology as well as other technologies and farming practices. If you just freeze technology today,

Agriculture committee  I have just one quick observation, relative to the Wheat Board. We as an organization don't get involved in that. But the discussion I heard here reminded me of the old adage, maybe out in western Canada, that wheat looks to still be 13% protein and 87% politics. On top of what

Agriculture committee  First of all, going back in time a few years, as Lucy referenced, market acceptance wasn't there, so the Roundup Ready wheat was shelved in Canada. Having said that, we had as a guest speaker at our conference a couple of weeks ago here in Ottawa a representative of the world's l

Agriculture committee  You raised three points: Japan, alfalfa, and a system in place. Relative to Japan—and thanks to my colleague here, who anticipated that kind of question—the facts as we understand them are that in 2005-2006 Canada provided 71% of the world supply in the form of GM canola and Au

Agriculture committee  I guess at the end of the day, once again they've been mixing conventional and the GM, and Canada's been predominant there. But I hear what you're saying. On the alfalfa, obviously it's an issue that's been raised in front of the committee, and it's one I have had some personal

Agriculture committee  I have a good example of that is flax.

Agriculture committee  Can I add to that? In discussions I have with our member companies or their heads of research, they identify their risks into two buckets. One is the regulatory and science risk. If we're going to spend $150 million, are we going to get something that's safe and works? They're p

Agriculture committee  You raised a couple of good points. First, on the 25 countries, had we been coming before you three, four, or five years ago it was even fewer, and the number of acres it represented and the number of farmers in the developing part of the world was substantively less. I raise th

Agriculture committee  I'm going to ask my colleague to pick up on some of the international protocols, etc. I just want to reiterate one of the points I made in the presentation relative to the role we think Canada could play in this regard. And that is for Canada to establish a low-level presence pol

Agriculture committee  Thank you. I just want to pick up on the health, safety, and environmental observation in reference to some earlier discussion—I think maybe Mr. Valeriote raised it—about where there's common ground. We have some opposing views, but I think there's a lot of common ground around

Agriculture committee  Sorry, Mr. Chair. You're going to hear more about bioinformatics, molecular markers, gene stacking, tilling, targeted mutagenesis, genomics, metabolomics, proteomics, epigenomics, all of those things. That's the new world out there. My recommendation to the committee in that re

Agriculture committee  I would submit, Mr. Atamanenko, that it is exactly what the regulatory agencies do. They do stay on top of all the studies and work that goes on out there. I want to pick up on your earlier comments about biotechnology being alive and well in Canada. You're right, and it's alive

Agriculture committee  You're right, our recommendation was to not have the bill go forward. Our view was and our recommendation was that the whole issue of biotechnology should be looked at. So congratulations to the committee for doing this now and looking at it in a much broader context, as opposed

Agriculture committee  Thank you for your observation and question. On the issue that you rightly raise about the tragedy in the world of a billion people suffering from undernourishment and hunger, I think most people, when they look at that and how the world is going to help deal with that question,