:
Thanks for inviting me to come.
I've been an academic for over 40 years and I've spent my career at the University of California, Berkeley. I am currently at the University of Florida and also at the University of Saskatchewan. I've done extensive work in agricultural technological change, including work on hybrid corn and mechanized agriculture, especially mechanization in California. Also, I've done extensive work in some of the biotech areas.
I'm going to make the comment that I'm not paid to come here to give one side of any story. I find these days that so many consultants also partly give you the answer they want you to hear because they're paid for part of the answer. So I'm not paid by any Monsanto group or any Canadian Wheat Board or anybody in my testimony.
My points will be fairly clear. What I'm going to say is actually in a new book we just published at the University of Toronto. It's called Agricultural Policy, Agribusiness, and Rent-Seeking Behaviour. So in addition to agricultural policy, we also bring in sections on technological change, and also on genetically modified organisms in a chapter.
The literature on biotechnology has grown rapidly, and there are many studies now that have examined GMOs and other biotech products. One of the reasons that the results aren't necessarily consistent is that we sometimes do economics from a different perspective. I've always done economics from what we call “welfare economics”, which is a fancy way to do benefit-cost analysis. And this is a standard approach that's agreed to by most academic economists. I don't know about other fields, but I know it's accepted in economics, in which I have my degree, a PhD.
With that, I'm just going to make a couple of comments from our book and one of the papers we wrote. Actually, I'll leave with you a paper that's written for non-technical people on an overview of the biotech industry.
The first point we make in here is on this whole question about consumer acceptability, and this is where part of the debate comes in about what the impact of biotech is. My colleagues from the University of Saskatchewan—Peter Phillips testified in this group, and I know Peter very well, and apparently this gentleman is part of that group. His assessment is maybe somewhat different from one of his colleagues in economics, Richard Gray, and how he might actually conduct and do benefit-cost analysis for GMOs.
In addition, for example, Colin Carter was my student at the University of California, Davis. He seemed to be a strong supporter of GMO wheats, for example, and he comes out with a totally different conclusion about the benefits and costs of GMO wheats from what Richard Gray and Hartley Furtan do, from the University of Saskatchewan, in terms of the payoffs. Colin is very positive on GMO wheats. Hartley Furtan and Richard Gray and others are fairly negative on GMO wheats.
The big key issue here is consumer acceptability of GMOs. I'd have to agree with the point that it can't be all based on science, whether we're going to make profitability from GMOs. Science only plays a role, but you have to also bring in consumer acceptability for GMOs.
For example, in the wheat business at the present time, committees have evaluated different varieties of wheat. The eight different varieties of bread wheats are actually based on science. But so are the consumer acceptability attributes of wheat based on science. As a result, they have a formal way of actually determining what is consumer acceptability in addition to the scientific aspects of it. So wheat is a good example also about consumer acceptability.
Now, apparently Monsanto did a study, and I think Colin and other people were involved. They make this conclusion, and I think it's well known, that there are big payoff owes to GMO wheats. And we've done this consumer acceptability part of it, but my only question with that is if somebody else did the same study, I can guarantee you that I could show you a benefit-cost ratio of anywhere from 1.0 to 6.0, depending on what assumptions I'm going to make about consumer acceptability.
We could use one of our international trade models, like we do on wheat and other grains, to actually show that. Then it comes back to this question of who did the study, where did they get the numbers from, and who did they talk to. That's the same question as.... At the present time we're evaluating the oil spill in the gulf and we're doing this work on the costs of the oil spill. But the same argument would apply to this sort of thing when you get into willingness-to-pay measures of consumer acceptability from GMO products.
This is the last point I make here in this first paper on consumer acceptability. I've been involved in several lawsuits related to biotechnology and not related to biotechnology. But this issue comes up also with respect to the impact of a power line crossing somebody's property or the transportation of nuclear equipment, etc., in the country.
What happens is the judges always rule that it isn't science that determines whether the electric power lines are necessarily harmful for you living there, it's consumer perception of what determines the damages from the power line. So the whole first part of this paper is devoted to this debate on consumer acceptability.
Then we actually discuss in here the whole notion of producer profitability. Now, it's always been stated that technological change, whether it's hybrid corn, whether it's due to new canola varieties, etc., always results in these huge benefits to producers. That is not true. I can show you models where I can show a negative impact on producers, not a positive impact to producers. That's not being negative or a supporter or non-supporter of the GMOs. It's also part of the market and the dynamics of economics. So it's difficult to generalize.
Now, I enjoyed Peter Phillips' excellent presentation on canola, but I have the problem of trying to generalize from canola across all commodities. For example, canola is specific to the fact that it generated huge human benefits, and I think even his estimates or your estimates might even be low from the standpoint of the benefits from GMOs. Richard Gray and others did some studies on the health impact of the new canola varieties. So that case is very clear.
But one of the cases you likely ask, then, is why does Europe accept oils of a GMO quality and they won't accept other products necessarily from GMO quality? But as he knows from biotechnology, it's the nature of your consuming in wheat, etc., so you'd be consuming the trait directly; but with oil you don't, because it's a residual protein. So that's a huge issue there in terms of why one commodity might be accepted and why another commodity won't be accepted. So we spend most of the time debating this question about producer acceptability.
Then the other point we raise in here is this StarLink case. I was involved as an expert witness against Aventis on the U.S. StarLink case. In that particular case, I guess the Greenpeace movement or someone else discovered the StarLink gene in Taco Bell. The corn growers sued Aventis for releasing a GMO corn that wasn't really acceptable or licensed. What we found in this case and what you really have to recognize is sometimes the transaction costs, the segregation cost, when you introduce GMO varieties and mix it with non-GMOs can be huge. That's especially true when these countries have zero tolerance for GMO products.
Japan, at the moment, is a large buyer of Canadian wheat. I'll guarantee you that Japan would never buy GMO wheat from Canada. That's well stated by them, and it's also well stated in some studies we reference in our book that have studied consumer acceptability in Japan, India, and other countries. Other countries in the world likely will accept GMO wheats, etc., but Japan certainly won't.
So when the StarLink corn got mingled in with the other commodities, what happened was the Japanese were involved too. So the Japanese then requested that a testing be done not only in the U.S. about StarLink corn, but also they tested loads in Japan and they turned down huge amounts of corn actually going into that market. They have zero tolerance, and when you have zero tolerance on a commodity it's going to be very costly to keep these markets segmented so that you don't end up with GMO corn and non-GMO corn all mixed together--or GMO wheats, or whatever commodity you're talking about.
I can go on with a whole host of comments. My comment is that I think products have to be treated separately when you talk about GMOs. And I think you have to engage in a process where in fact you have to be necessarily almost guaranteed that you have an end product that's going to be consumer-accepted.
To have that, you also have to tell me what exactly you're breeding in a GMO trait to even do a study on consumer acceptability. You just can't go and ask a buyer in Japan and say, “Do you accept GMOs or not?” You have to be much more specific of what this product is and what you're actually trying to do with it.
I'm over ten minutes. Sorry.
:
First, I would like to thank the committee for inviting us to appear.
Before we start, I would like to introduce our delegation from the Réseau québécois contre les OGM. You've already met Mr. Nault, from the AmiEs de la Terre de l'Estrie. I remind you that you should have a written copy of our brief. My presentation today will be slightly different, so that I don't go over our 10 minutes.
The purpose of our network is to bring all GMO opponent groups together into a strong network that works together to address certain issues and, in particular, facilitate the exchange of information and ideas for a GMO-free future.
We represent some 20 organizations working mainly in the fields of the environment, consumer rights, agriculture and health; a full listing is available on our website. We also work very closely with the Canadian Biology Action Network.
Our network is here today to contribute to your study on agricultural technologies. Our oral presentation will focus on at least one element, that is, the 2001 report by the Royal Society of Canada. We hope that your campus visits next week will be very fruitful. We also hope that, as the public, we will have access to the account of these meetings, so that we can see what you are studying and what people have to say.
The reason I want to focus on the Royal Society of Canada report is because today, or very soon, is a historic date, the 10th anniversary of the 2001 Royal Society of Canada report, which is titled “Elements of Precaution: Recommendations for the Regulation of Food Biotechnology in Canada.” You can have a look at the copy I have brought with me. The French version is about 280 pages long. I will provide you with some background. The report was commissioned by the federal government and was drafted by 14 “arms-length” experts who were not members of our network, but rather scientific experts from the whole academic community. The report lists 58 recommendations. As the title suggests, the report really focuses on precaution.
Reading the 58 recommendations is out of the question, but I would like to at least read a few, to add to the comments of my predecessor:
7.1 The Panel recommends that approval of new transgenic organisms for environmental release, and for use as food or feed, should be based on rigorous scientific assessment of their potential for causing harm to the environment or to human health. Such testing should replace the current regulatory reliance on “substantial equivalence” as a decision threshold.
7.2 The Panel recommends that the design and execution of the testing regimes of new transgenic organisms should be conducted in open consultation with the expert scientific community.
7.3 The Panel recommends that analysis of the outcomes of all tests on new transgenic organisms should be monitored by an appropriately configured panel of “arms-length” experts from all sectors, who report their decisions and rationale in a public forum.
8.1 The Panel recommends the precautionary regulatory assumption that, in general, new technologies should not be presumed safe unless there is reliable scientific basis for considering them safe. The Panel rejected the use of “substantial equivalence” as a decision threshold to exempt new GM products from rigorous safety assessments on the basis of superficial similarities because such as regulatory procedure is not a precautionary assignment of the burden of proof.
8.2 The Panel recommends that the primary burden of proof be upon those who would deploy food biotechnology products to carry out the full range of tests necessary to demonstrate reliably that they do not pose unacceptable risks.
8.3 The Panel recommends that, where there are scientifically reasonable theoretical or empirical grounds establishing a prima facie case for the possibility of serious harms to human health, animal health or the environment, the fact that the best available test data are unable to establish with high confidence the existence or level of the risk should not be taken as a reason for withholding regulatory restraint on the product.
8.4 As a precautionary measure, the Panel recommends that the prospect of serious risks to human health, of extensive, irremediable disruptions to the natural ecosystems, or of serious diminution of biodiversity, demand that the best scientific methods be employed to reduce the uncertainties with respect to these risks. Approval of products with these potentially serious risks should await the reduction of scientific uncertainty to minimum levels.
There are 58 recommendations, so I will stop here. I am not going to bombard you with the recommendations made by the Royal Society of Canada, which, I remind you, is the highest scientific authority in Canada. It does have a certain credibility in this field.
Unfortunately, the recommendations set out in the Royal Society of Canada report were mostly ignored by the government. The government simply threw the report away.
In 2004, three years after the report was submitted, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development published a Canadian Food Inspection Agency audit, which confirmed and gave more details on what the Royal Society of Canada report covered three years earlier.
Almost nothing has changed since 2001. What's worse is that GM plants with multiple gene insertions, such as StarLink corn, have been authorized without a specific assessment. GM animals, especially the GM pig, are on a fast track to becoming authorized. GM salmon could be marketed soon.
Canada has still not ratified the United Nations Biosafety Protocol, while 160 countries have done so. Consumers are still waiting for the mandatory GMO labelling that some 40 countries have already adopted.
The approval of GM alfalfa will lead to a crisis, which I hope you are aware of.
So, what can your committee do? We have formulated five basic recommendations.
First, your committee should encourage all MPs to vote in favour of Bill . The bill will not solve all of our problems, but it will at least enable us to protect farmers from the economic impact of a poor biotechnology management policy.
Second—
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In a generation, Canada has gone from zero in the production of pulses other than beans to being the world's leading producer, not only in the production but also in the export of pulses. This year we produced about 4.5 million metric tonnes in Saskatchewan alone. That would be mainly peas and lentils. Last year, $2.2 billion worth of pulses were exported from Canada, of which $1.8 billion came from our province.
Most of this success has been possible because of the tripartite group--made up of the University of Saskatchewan, the Ministry of Agriculture of Saskatchewan, and the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers--funding research at the university. The growers have commercial rights to all the varieties that are developed at the university, so we determine whether we will release a variety to the growers. We have that right. Because the university is a public institution, they were able to negotiate those exclusive rights to us. In return, we put back funding into the program from a levy of 1% that our growers pay. If you consider other crops, I'm sure those growers are paying more than 1% for the development of technology.
We feel that research and development is the greatest asset we have. It has made a return of $20 for every dollar that the growers have put in. In genetics, it is $28 in return for every one.
We do not have GMOs in pulses at this time, because we feel that our markets do not want them. The signal we get from the market is that they are not interested in a GMO pulse. We've always said, and I've always said, that if India releases a GMO chickpea, we will work on a GMO pea.
Biotechnology is a tool, and it should only be used if it's the most appropriate tool to give you what you need. It's not something that you apply.... It's like plumbing; you don't plumb every part of your house, right? Biotechnology is a tool.
For us, with the kinds of threats we face, most of those threats cannot be addressed by GMOs. Disease resistance is not a trait that pays a lot of money. A chemical firm will not develop disease-resistant strains because then they won't sell you the fungicide to spray. That's why we are concerned with declining resources from the public side of funding research and development. Not only that, but we are concerned that when those resources are available, we'll target them to a particular part of science--applied, pre-commercial.
We believe that the way into the future is to define your problem, do your needs assessment, identify the gaps, and provide resources to develop the knowledge and technologies to address those gaps. It does not matter the spectrum of science, whether it's fundamental, whether it's basic, whether it's applied; if that is pertinent to the solution, you should do that.
We've always felt also that plants with novel traits regulations in Canada are not friendly to smaller crops. It could cost you up to $200,000 to demonstrate a trait for feed use only. If you put it as a food use, it escalates. If you look at the span of crops we have in Canada, if you take the world's top ten by size, by tonnage, wheat might be the only crop in Canada that would make that list. It tells you, then, that industry investment in crops is always by the size you sell. Take the number of seeds, multiply that by the acres, and make your money, or sell a chemical, times the number of acres, and make your money.
We in this country have always based our productivity on the quality. We still have an environment in the west of 120 days frost-free, and we have to design our genetics to meet that.
We think that plants with novel traits, the way they are now, are certainly not very conducive to that and should be looked at again. The public helps bring new traits into the market.
We think that into the future, biotic stresses are going to be key. As the climate changes or the variability in the weather becomes unpredictable, the impact on productivity will be quite harsh, and we will need all the genetics.
What we see in the future is genomics. We believe that understanding a plant's genome and knowing the genes that are in there will give our breeders the tools they need to bring new traits into the marketplace. Some of those traits may come by way of transgenics, but by and large most of my breeders have told me that with genomics they think they can get what they want in pulse crops without GMOs. That's what they have said. But we also think that the public has not responded to the funding of genomics to the extent that other countries have. Look at the United States. It has determined crops as strategic and at the federal level has gone ahead and sequenced.
Sequencing is only one part of the equation. It's very cheap now. The right technologies that can sequence a genome are under $50,000. When you get those millions of reads, making sense of that, bringing that down to a level breeders can use, is where it is at. We are investing in the National Research Council Plant Biotechnology Institute to put a position in place in bioinformatics to get that kind of translation for our breeders. We think that should have been done by the public.
In conclusion, we view GMOs as a tool that we will only apply when the market is right. We have our signals from the market on an ongoing basis. It's the market that will determine that. A regulatory approach may be a pre-emptive strike that will serve no purpose. I think that every industry in Canada, be it wheat or canola or pulses, has groups that are looking out at the marketplace. And if the signal is that we will take it, I'm sure they will go ahead and develop a technology for it.
We feel strongly, though, that genomics is the way to go in Canada. We have fairly small crops, outside of wheat and canola. There isn't a lot of industry investment on the private sector side for most of our crops. The public should step up, invest in genomics, and let our breeders have the tools they need to develop the traits on the genetic side that will cope with our future climate.
Thank you.
:
Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you.
[English]
I'll be making my comments in English.
[Translation]
However, do not hesitate to ask me questions in French.
[English]
Thank you for inviting me here today. I'm talking on a slightly different issue from what some of my colleagues have, although it connects up in several ways.
I'm a professor in the faculty of law at McGill University, where I specialize in intellectual property: chiefly patents, innovation, and biotechnology.
Just for the record, all of my funding comes from public sources, mostly grants or governmental institutions. I've provided advice to Health Canada, Industry Canada, Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, World Intellectual Property Organization, World Health Organization, UNITAID, and the OECD.
I was also an expert on the Council of Canadian Academies' report on nanotechnology, which touched on some of the issues of precaution. In fact, the chair of the royal commission study, Conrad Brunk, was one of the committee members.
My goal here is simply to help the committee. I'll make a few remarks, but I'm open to questions, particularly related to patents and innovation. I have circulated a background document that should have been translated. I won't be referring to it directly, but it gives some background ideas.
First, I'm going to concentrate on patent law. The first thing to say is that Canadian patent law in the area of agricultural biotechnology is for all intents and purposes equivalent to that of our neighbours in the south and in Europe. There are technical differences, but the scope of patent law protects plants and animals, even though the patent law doesn't technically apply to them. It still provides the same amount of coverage.
The issue I want to talk about is uncertainty. I want to quote from Justice Binnie in a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada from 2000, in the matter of Free World Trust and Électro Santé. He said, “There is a high economic cost attached to uncertainty and it is the proper policy of patent law to keep it to a minimum”. So it's on those issues that I would like to speak.
I am not going to be advocating for or against particular biotechnologies. I think most of us agree that there are some biotechnologies, including genetically modified organisms, that are very helpful. I would think of plant-derived vaccines, which provide vaccine production at much lower cost and are much more stable and able to be transported in high-heat areas. And there are other technologies that we would mostly agree should not be pursued. Canada has decided with respect to BST and genetically modified wheat that we do not want to go forward with these technologies.
I'm taking it for granted that some biotechnologies are wanted and others are not, and what we need is a regulatory, including patent, regime that provides certainty so that we get the investments that give us the products we want. We also have laws that protect those who may be harmed by undesired uses of these crops. If we don't do these things, we will have under-investment by industry in the crops we want and under-compensation for those suffering harm.
There are a variety of uncertainties in patent law. I want to note that the uncertainties in patent law may pale in comparison to some of the uncertainties in regulations—the high cost of regulation, the absence of regulation with respect to genetically modified animals, and so on. But in respect of patent law, one of the risks and uncertainties I want to talk about is patent quality.
In the United States there were studies conducted showing that almost half of the patents that actually go to court have been ruled invalid, and I don't think we can say that Canadian patents are any better. In fact, they may be of lower quality, especially in areas of high technology such as biotechnology. So one worry is whether a patent is valid or not. That's a risk both for those who hold the patents and for those who might want to do research in the area covered by the patent.
This is a problem inherent in the patent system. One of the ways people have suggested to fix it is to invest more in the patent office, which Canada has done. Another way is to introduce an opposition procedure within the patent office so that those who wish to challenge a patent can do so. Europe has such a scheme, and the United States for the last few years has at least been debating it. Canada is significantly behind.
Another issue is freedom to operate. Until recently, only a few companies had the ability to introduce products on the market. One of the issues in biotech is that each generation of product sits on a platform of all previous innovations, and that means you need access to the patents that other companies have. For a long time this has been an issue, since only a few companies had enough financial ability to either license the technology in or take the risk that they would be sued. This would limit access to the market and innovation.
More recently, we have seen an increase in cross-licensing, so that more people can introduce products. We would like to see that continued in order to ensure that people are not put at unjust risk. We can do so through government policies that encourage cross-licensing, as well as better enforcement of our competition laws in fields such as this.
Another issue relates to the calculation of damages. This has been particularly important in the area of agriculture biotechnology. If a patent holder holds a patent over a crop over which there sits a patent, the calculation of damages in Canada is very uncertain. The courts, both the Supreme Court and the federal courts, have given us contradictory rules about how to calculate those damages. This could either lead to overcompensation--that is, the patent holder gets too much--or to undercompensation: that is, it's worth violating the patent because there will not be enough return. Clarifying the rules helps both farmers know what their risk is and the companies determine how much to invest.
Further, the entire area of agriculture biotechnology as well as areas such as nanotechnology or health biotechnologies raise an issue that the courts are the final determiners of the validity of a patent. Most judges do their best in trying to understand the science underlying biotechnology, but they are not trained. Most of them went into law because they didn't like science. While they do their best, if you read these cases you realize that there are sometimes misunderstandings and misapplication of scientific principles.
This is an issue that is inherent in any patent system. But again, an opposition process--which allows more disputes to take place within a patent office, which has greater expertise--could be beneficial.
I'm happy to answer any questions on patent law, but I will just end on that note.
Thank you.
:
First of all, I want to thank all of you for appearing before the committee.
We've had a rather difficult journey in having this discussion. The idea is to unveil the issue, unveil the industry, so that a better understanding of the issue by the public could somehow be achieved. I'm glad you're participating in it.
Before we rose in December, a group came before us on the issue and described it as being two solitudes, one pro and one anti-GMO. I felt good leaving that meeting, because a number of people from each side had actually come to kind of an understanding that maybe there is a forum that could be created in which those for and against could come together and actually help us look at the issues, and maybe come up with some regulations that might protect biodiversity and the interests of each of them. That forum existed, I think, in the late nineties, then kind of diminished in the early 2000s, and now they don't meet at all.
I'd like to hear from you, Éric, on that, and I'd like to hear maybe from you, Andrew, or anyone else who would have a comment on the value of re-establishing that forum. Clearly, we're not able in a committee to sit around and come up with the actual regulations that are needed, and come up with solutions.
Can I hear from you, Éric, and then someone else?
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It started--was it in the eighties--and it finally cost about $2 billion to sequence a human genome. It was a global effort. I think we were part of that, led mainly by the U.S. and the EU.
Essentially, genomics takes a very good look into the DNA makeup of an organism, whether it's a bacterium, a plant, or an animal.
The first point is to sequence that DNA. Essentially, it's like breaking it into its constituent parts. But knowing where the genes are and the location of those genes we believe gives you an understanding of whether there is a gene we know that is conferring resistance to a major disease, for example. Maybe it's present in a related species or in the wild. If it is, then you can work to bring it in. The tools are being developed so you don't have to cross it into a cultivar it and do it backwards. It takes you forever to clean it up. You can bring it in, in a much more efficient way.
We think it will increase the rate at which we can adopt traits. Also, the kinds of traits, like GMOs, may not be very good in terms of a single gene trait when you have a multiple gene effect, especially on diseases, which is what breeders say. Most diseases have a multiple gene effect.
It will also help with biodiversity. If we have species out there today in labs, in our gene banks, we cannot use them because we don't know how to make effective use of the trait. Genomics will be the way to go.
:
Thank you for this question, which was very much to the point. I hope that my answer will be as concise.
An interesting fact is that the biosecurity protocol was signed in Montreal in 2000, and that the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity is based in Montreal. It is somewhat ironic that the host country of the secretariat has not ratified the protocol. In fact, the biosecurity protocol is part of and originated with the Convention on Biological Diversity.
A major environmental concern is cross-border GMO contamination. The main objective of the international protocol is to make transfers between two countries transparent. Transparency means that the country receiving GMO products will be aware of this fact. The protocol also aims for transparency with regard to studies conducted and sets out a compensation mechanism in case of a disaster, which makes it possible to decide who will be paying out compensation.
So far, 160 countries have signed this protocol, but Canada has not. I try to follow the Canadian delegation during negotiations, and I find it somewhat surprising that Canada is always boasting that its biosecurity standard is similar or even superior to that outlined in the Cartagena Protocol on Biosecurity. If that is indeed the case, there is no reason why Canada should not ratify the protocol. My question is: Why has it not done so?
The United States cannot ratify the Cartagena Protocol on Biosecurity because it has not ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity. This is the reality our colleagues to the south are facing. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed, we have been part of a free trade space with Mexico, which has ratified the Cartagena Protocol on Biosecurity.
:
Thanks to all of you for being here.
Not too long ago we had testimony before committee by Dr. Ian Mauro from the University of Saskatchewan. In his testimony he said that he had done a project involving 2,500 farmers across the three prairie provinces. He asked them what their concerns were in regard to the technology. I'm just going to bring up some points from his speech and ask you to comment on them. He said:
Risks are less well understood, and this is where my research really provides new information. For both genetically engineered canola and genetically engineered wheat, the main risks, ranked in order of importance by farmers themselves, included markets, which were the top risk for farmers. They were concerned about loss of income. They were concerned about problems in the segregation system, that biology would leak into a segregation issue, which would lead to market harm.
We have had that same point given to us by the representative of the Canadian Wheat Board when he spoke, that it was very difficult to contain or separate, especially in bulk handling, genetically modified organisms from non-modified.
Then farmers were concerned about corporate control of agriculture, seeds being privatized, lawsuits. And then he talks about agronomic “volunteers”—in other words, migration of crops across the landscape—and then, of course, it tied in with contamination.
We've recently seen that the United States has approved the release of genetically modified alfalfa. We've seen three organic organizations state that they would have supported that if there was confinement, which is hard to understand.
As you comment on this, I'd like to know if it is really possible to contain any genetically modified crops so that there's no cross-contamination. There seems to be a lot of evidence in regard to alfalfa that it is not. My concern in the way we react to it is that many in the industry say we have to be science-based, although it's often their science.
Dr. Schmitz, you talked about consumer acceptability and producer profitability. Mr. Agblor, you talked about the fact that you folks are watching very closely market acceptance. Is there room for guidelines, developed by government in conjunction with the industry, which is specifically what my bill would target?
I'll leave it there and maybe we can have some comments before we're out of time.
Dr. Schmitz.
:
Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
And thank you for taking time out of your day to come in front of the committee today to talk about biotechnology and how it can impact our agricultural sector.
One point I would make, of course, is that although genetically modified products are part of biotechnology, they're not all of biotechnology. One of the things we're going to have to keep in mind as a committee is that—we talk about GM products, of course—we not focus only on GM products, because there's a lot more going on in the biotechnology sector.
There are the two extremes. The one extreme would be that biotech should rule everything, and then the other extreme would be that it shouldn't touch anything. In between is, I think, where the committee is, and the question is, where does biotechnology help agriculture and where does it not help agriculture?
With some of the discussion we had today.... Certainly, Mr. Schmitz, you brought up, for example, the fact that the consumer has an important role to play. This is a discussion that we've had. Science has to dominate the argument, because the fundamental question is whether the end product is safe for human consumption, yes or no. Science plays a very fundamental role in that, and as a result scientific assessments, scientific procedures to determine that question are extremely important.
But the other side of it is of course consumer acceptance.
Mr. Schmitz, you mentioned trying to get consumer opinion on this matter. Did you have particular mechanisms in mind, a coherent and cogent way of doing that?
I thank the witnesses for coming today. It's quite a broad spectrum.
Recently in The Economist there was an article concerning the future food crisis that more or less stated that the world has gone through an economic crisis a bit, but that the food crisis is next and is going to be just as challenging—more challenging, definitely—than the economic crisis.
When we sit around the table, as the western world 20% of us are fortunate enough to have lots of food, and we can make decisions and choices about our food. The other 80% of the world just go day to day getting their food.
If this crisis happens—it is happening now, and we see it—although we should have been ahead of the curve with the economic crisis, if we're going to be ahead of the curve with this food crisis when we have to feed ten billion people, I see biotechnology as probably one of the few tools or the best tool to help avoid some of the problems, especially with world climate changes and distribution.
It has been stated that the more local food we can get produced, the better we're going to be able to adapt. For that to happen, you're going to have to have varieties and things like that.
Often we're looking through our own lens at our own consumers, our own tastes, our own concerns. But shouldn't the powers that be look at how we are going to start growing crops in the sub-Sahara or in parts of Africa or India or wherever? Shouldn't we be coming to grips with that? How do we come to grips with it, and how is biotech going to deal with it? And what leadership role should we be taking in that kind of way?
I will just open it up and I would hope everybody will have a few minutes.
:
Here are a couple of comments. First of all—and it may be the answer to this other gentleman too—you have to remember that there are some GMOs that really you have to accept and that there's no controversy over. BT Cotton, for example, was a huge breakthrough. You don't consume cotton, so there's no controversy on some of these. You can't let the problem with categorizing in general.... There are some real success stories just like this.
But on the food thing, I think there are huge areas yet to be done with respect to breeding rices that aren't GMO rices. This is a huge area, but IRRI, etc. are working on some different type of rices, and they're also trying to develop the iron content in the rice. I think it will have a huge payoff.
The other thing is, I believe more in the Chicago school of economics. I'm not a government interventionist type, necessarily. Markets usually take care of themselves. We've always had poor people, starving people. That's almost a different area from our trying to feed the world in what we do—population growth, etc.—because we have commercial demand, and somebody has to pay for this food yet.
We had a conference two years ago, and everybody asked the same question—where is this food market headed?—when wheat futures got over $12 a bushel and we thought we farmers were going to live in heaven forever. All of a sudden the markets all collapsed, until this spring. Now we're back into this price spiral. But you see, that isn't all necessarily with technology; it's also with respect to government policy, because government policy at one time got involved also in holding food stocks. They avoid all this instability.
Then we dropped that argument under the U.S. Farm Bill, whereby now we're no longer required to hold wheat when the prices get below what they call the loan rate. That's something we should look into too in relation to this food crisis. It isn't all on increasing supply and trying to increase production; it's also to do with management and what we do with this huge weather instability that's out there at the present.
But I have a forecast: don't buy a bunch of farmland in Saskatchewan on the basis of these prices that exist at the present time.
:
Thank you for that question.
Actually, I think Mr. Agblor's comments at the beginning partially answered that. It was a consortium between those growing it, researchers, and industry to develop the technology. That really seems to be the way of the future. If you want to have the right biotechnology--and you're quite right, it extends to tools that identify what kinds of plants or animals, country of origin, or GMO--with the whole gamut of technologies that actually are suited to the farmers, and ultimately consumers, you need these consortia.
Anything we can do to help fund them gives security to everyone. Right now when universities develop technology, they often have to give them away at a very early stage. No one can value them. No one knows whether they're appropriate or not. They sometimes have difficulty figuring who to license to, or even.... As I said, sometimes only large companies have the ability to take on that technology.
So anything we can do to help build consortia, with links between universities, the growers, and the industry so that they develop products, will create stability. We'll create better enforcement in the end, because we're developing a community that believes in the technology. The only way to find out if someone is violating your patent is if someone lets you know. If you have a good community and everybody is supportive of the technology, you have a much higher chance of enforcing your patents when they exist.
:
Thank you for your question. This issue has been around for a good 15 years or so, but I think that it will become more and more relevant, given the fact that a small U.S. biotechnology company based in Prince Edward Island is trying to get GM salmon approved.
I want to go back to the Royal Society of Canada report, which was very clear on this subject: if there is one thing that we must not do, it is run the risk of releasing GM fish, salmon or some other kind, into the environment.
The issue continues to be relevant. The FDA, in the United States, is looking into authorizing GM salmon for human consumption. What's quite interesting is that the American system is somewhat more transparent than our own. Some of these studies show that there could be concerns for human health. That is why additional studies have been requested. The FDA continues to conduct studies on the issue.
I am very afraid that, under all kinds of pressure, GM salmon will be approved for consumption in the United States. If that should happen, it will very quickly lead to a crisis in Canada, given the Canadian government's position.
I want to remind you that, following the publication of the Royal Society of Canada's report, the Government of Canada very clearly stated that it meant to establish regulations specifically for GM fish, owing to the specific risks involved. However, 10 years down the line, we are still waiting for these regulations.
If the United States authorizes GM salmon, a crisis will ensue in Canada. First, it will have to be determined whether Canada should produce GM salmon eggs. Second, if they are produced here, they will have to be exported in the context of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosecurity. Third, the consequences of consuming this product will have to be determined. Will we be able to prevent the accidental spread of eggs in water? This is a potential threat to a very important sector, that of salmon farming and the salmon industry.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to our witnesses.
I'm from Ontario, and I've had a number of great meetings with commodity organizations. We don't grow many lentils or peas right where I am, but that being said, we do grow a lot of corn, soybeans, wheat, and edible beans.
I'll go to Mr. Schmitz. I'll ask you for help, because I think we all need it in terms of how we communicate. I think there are two issues. It was mentioned earlier today that we sometimes have a fear factor that goes out, and we'll make the worst scenario so that we get a bad push. I don't agree with that scenario. I think we have to be balanced. We have to have science. That's what our basis is. As far as marketing goes, give farmers credit: quite honestly, they're not going to grow something they can't market. They aren't going to grow something if they don't have the research and development. That's actually what our grain farmers are saying about why a partnership developed. With Mr. Gold and Mr. Schmitz and Mr. Agblor, we've talked about developing these partnerships among universities, the growers, and the industry.
We're developing products, and we say we shouldn't be using these for commerce or to generate energy or whatever. The interesting part is that, based on the research one of my growers is showing me--and I'm a farmer also--at the end of the day, we will generate energy. We will generate a product for commercial industry. We may even generate products for pharmaceutical use. At the end of the day, we still have food, because now the research has been able to pull apart—let's use corn for example--in the energy development of ethanol.
Everyone has heard for a number of years--and somebody's always been putting it out--that GMO, genetically modified, is bad stuff. Nobody seems to understand genomics. That sounds a little softer. So how do we communicate, quite honestly, that not everything is right, and not everything is wrong? In the dairy industry, which I was in, in Canada, we did not accept BST. We have a sovereign right to do that, thank you.
How do we communicate those types of things to the people?
We do have a number of our younger families.... I don't read the labels, but my daughter does. Getting them to understand it is the other part.
How do we communicate that clearly? Could I have any ideas, please, from the three of you? Because it is an important aspect.