HEAL Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on Health

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, March 21, 2002

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1105

The Chair (Ms. Bonnie Brown (Oakville, Lib.))

Dr. Wilf Keller (Research Director, Plant Biotechnology Institute, National Research Council)

The Chair

Dr. Wilf Keller

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1110

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1115

The Chair

Dr. Wilf Keller

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1120

The Chair

Dr. John Fagan (Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer, Genetic ID NA, Inc.)

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1125

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1130

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1135

The Chair

Dr. Alan Wildeman (Vice-President of Research, Faculty of Molecular Biology and Genetics, University of Guelph)

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1140

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1145

The Chair

Dr. Barry Commoner (Director, Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Queen's College at the University of New York)

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1150

The Chair

Dr. Barry Commoner

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1155

Â

1200

Â

1205

Â

1210

Â

1215

The Chair

Â

1220

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North Centre, NDP)

Dr. Barry Commoner

Â

1225

The Chair

Dr. Barry Commoner

Dr. Alan Wildeman

Â

1230

The Chair

Dr. John Fagan

Â

1235

The Chair

Dr. Wilf Keller

Â

1240

The Chair

Mr. Jeannot Castonguay (Madawaska--Restigouche, Lib.)

Â

1245

The Chair

Dr. Alan Wildeman

The Chair

Dr. Barry Commoner

Dr. Alan Wildeman

Dr. Barry Commoner

Dr. Alan Wildeman

The Chair

Dr. Barry Commoner

The Chair

Dr. John Fagan

Â

1250

The Chair

Dr. Wilf Keller

The Chair

Ms. Yolande Thibeault (Saint-Lambert, Lib.)

Â

1255

Dr. Alan Wildeman

The Chair

Dr. John Fagan

·

1300

The Chair

Dr. Wilf Keller

The Chair

Dr. John Fagan

The Chair

Dr. Alan Wildeman

·

1305

The Chair

Dr. Alan Wildeman

The Chair

Dr. Alan Wildeman

The Chair

Dr. Barry Commoner

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Health

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NUMBER 064

l

1st SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Thursday, March 21, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Á  (1105)  

[English]

    The Chair (Ms. Bonnie Brown (Oakville, Lib.)): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's my pleasure to call this meeting to order.

    I'm very much looking forward to the statements from our witnesses today. One of the witnesses, Dr. Wildeman, is apparently stuck in the Toronto airport and may or may not get here.

    I have only a translated copy of Dr. Fagan's presentation. Dr. Commoner's presentation will be based on an article that was published, and we have it in English, but we have not accepted any statements for your use that were not in time for translation. So you're going to have to pay strict attention in order to gather what the presentations include.

    We'll begin with Dr. Wilf Keller, director of research with the Plant Biotechnology Institute of Saskatoon.

    Dr. Keller, you have the floor.

    Dr. Wilf Keller (Research Director, Plant Biotechnology Institute, National Research Council): Good morning, and thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to make a brief statement here.

    For how many minutes am I allowed to stand here?

    The Chair: A maximum of 10.

    Dr. Wilf Keller: Thank you.

    I have prepared notes as well. They will be translated and distributed at the appropriate time. I apologize for not getting them ready on time.

    The terminology around genetic modification can be confusing. We in the science community look at genetic modification in a broad sense, which includes all the methodology that has been used over time to modify and genetically improve and enhance crops. Often genetic modification is confused with the narrower sense of genetic engineering, where genes are inserted.

    It's appropriate to say that several methods for modifying plants genetically have been developed. These include crosses within species, which is the most common method and will continue to be so, to select by what is often called “conventional” breeding methods.

    Plant cells and tissues can be intentionally mutated through large-scale mutagenesis or mutation breeding to select model types. If you've consumed Becel margarine, you've consumed a product called “linola”, a linseed modified to have an oil composition like sunflower seeds. That was done through mutation work, so we treat that as modification.

    I think it's appropriate to say that Canada has a good, solid system of regulating these modifications, and that our system is based on all modifications, not only the narrow or genetic engineering definition.

    Canola, by the way, is a very good example of genetic modification of crops. It never existed in nature. It was assembled by Canadian public scientists bringing together different genetic mutational strains to create this oilseed crop from what was an industrial oil lubricant system or crop used in the Second World War, primarily as a marine lubricant.

    Of course, we're more interested in the area of biotechnology and genetically modified or engineered crops. This science has a history of 30-some years. It goes back to early work in the medical labs in the U.S., where restriction enzymes, or molecular scissors, were developed to isolate and characterize. This allowed for isolating genes, cloning of genes, making copies of genes, replicating them—in bacteria, for example—and studying them.

    In parallel with that work, there was well-advanced work progressing in a number of labs, including a number of Canadian labs, working with plant cells and tissues to make it possible to isolate a cell—from a leaf of a cabbage plant, say—put it into a test tube and regenerate a whole plant from it. Of course, when these two types of technology came together, it became amenable to introduce a gene into the single cell and then recover a plant from that.

    That was first documented in 1983, in the case of our Canadian canola oilseed crop, which I'll often refer to as a model. It was first demonstrated and published in 1985. Between 1985 and 1995 there were a lot of laboratory greenhouse and confined field tests looking at the molecular, biochemical, and genetic properties of these plants, with the first commercialization of field crops occurring in 1995, with larger and much more significant acreages from 1996 to the present.

    In Canada, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, there are three main genetically engineered crop systems—canola, corn, and soybean. Other genetically modified crops have been developed at the research stage but not commercialized. These include wheat, peas, mustard, and a bunch of other vegetable and field crops.

    I also want to comment that in parallel with the development of biotechnology, a lot of very good, sophisticated, reliable methods exist for detecting genes in plants and for analysing modified plants. These include methods for detecting a gene or a gene product, such as a protein. It certainly will include advanced analytical methods for detecting the production of new metabolites. For example, there is now a method, referred to as “metabolic profiling”, where it's possible to identify all 4,000 or 5,000 different chemicals that may exist in a tissue at a given time.

Á  (1110)  

    We have a strong history of genetics in the plant...and in the science community. There are thousands of papers supporting the principles of genetics. New information, of course, is being integrated all the time, and will continue to occur.

    We are now very much in an era of genomics research. Genome Canada has been established, with a budget of some $300 million, to support large-scale genomics research and gene identification. This will result in the identification and recognition of many genes—thousands, I would say—and an understanding of how they work. This will open up many new opportunities for new developments, and I think they have on the whole a great benefit for our society.

    We can look at now not only the field properties of herbicide resistance but also improved nutritional qualities—for example, reducing saturated fats in an oilseed, or introducing or elevating the amount of naturally occurring anti-carcinogenic or cancer-preventing properties in crops such as broccoli.

    It's also possible to do something different, and that is to deliver medical products—for example, introduce proteins, that have normally come from animal sources, into plants—in a much more safe way, avoiding the types of pathogenic contamination, such as viruses, that could come with the animal sources.

    It is also possible to look at the environmental applications of this science, making industrially friendly and renewable products, such as bio-polymers, degradable plastics, and indeed to use plants to remediate the environment. Plants grow in the Sydney tar ponds; can we maximize their impact and use that biological system to remediate the environment?

    Of course, the question is, are these products safe? There is a lot of discussion about that.

    There are some observations that I suggest would indicate that the regulatory system we have in place, which is science-based, has functioned. We have now seven years of exposure of products from genetic modification, genetically modified foods, in North America. I would estimate that there are probably some 1 billion person-years of exposure to these products, and there is no medical documentation of any illnesses.

    The development of human insulin—this is the human gene that has been put into yeast—goes back to 1983. There are some 10 million or more diagnosed diabetics in North America, and almost all of them use the insulin that involves the production of human insulin in yeast—in other words, the human gene transplanted into yeast. It makes an excellent product. It's a safe product. I would estimate that at least 10 billion doses of this product have been administered. It is far superior to using pork or beef insulin. There is no question about that. It's documented. Cheese has been produced using genetically engineered enzymes rather than taking the enzymes out of the stomach of the calf.

    So I think our system has served us well thus far, but we need to build on it. There will be new products. We need to invest research dollars into building a very strong science-based system that will give us increased transparency. A lot of this has to do with communication to the public. I think our system has demonstrated that it is effective. We need to build on it. We need to develop good communication strategies.

    Canada has a labelling system that is mandatory for compositional changes or for nutritional changes. We have that. We should build on that. The voluntary labelling system now being developed by the Canadian General Standards Board I think is a logical step. We need to consider verification when we label. We have to be able to verify if we're going to label. If you can't verify, you shouldn't label. Otherwise, it will lead to false claims.

    Tolerance limits need to be understood. We are currently looking at 5%. Out there, countries are looking at anywhere from 1% to 5%. Here again, we need research. We need to use the scientific principles. We need to be able to verify and accurately measure tolerance limits, not in a laboratory but in a commercial setting—in a canola crushing plant, or a cookie factory, for that matter.

Á  (1115)  

    To summarize, I think the evidence from the literature and from the results out there on the products tells us that in terms of what has happened to date in biotechnology, there has been a solid scientific base. We don't rest on this. We need to build on this. We can anticipate many new products, and I would anticipate them in the human health area, in the food area, and in the environmental area.

    We need to continue as a society to invest in public research. It is very important that the regulatory agencies can actually verify and be players in a network with universities and with government labs like ours so that the latest tools are available. Our labelling policy needs to be science-based.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Keller. For a researcher, you come across more as a good teacher.

    Dr. Wilf Keller: I have teenage daughters.

    Voices: Oh, oh!

Á  (1120)  

    The Chair: We will now move on to Dr. John Fagan of Genetic ID Inc., of Fairfield, Iowa.

    Dr. John Fagan (Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer, Genetic ID NA, Inc.): Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak with you about the labelling of genetically engineered foods from the perspective of a practical laboratory that has actually been doing GMO testing for something in the range of six years. We were founded in 1996. We have laboratories in North America, Japan, and Europe. We do testing and also certification of foods as being not genetically engineered. We also are the largest organics certifier in Japan, for instance, and offer those services in other areas.

    We work with a network of laboratories that spans the world. This global laboratory alliance is a network of laboratories, all of whom use the technology we've developed for testing GMOs, operating to standard procedures, and working in a very systematic way to serve the food industry, the agricultural industry, and also governments around the world. We work with the Brazilian government, the Korean government, and the Japanese government, and we've consulted with the British. Just yesterday and the day before yesterday I was in Sweden at a conference workshop put together by the food industry and their government on the issue of labelling.

    Let me just put things into context very quickly: Why label genetically engineered foods? There are three basic reasons. The first is that consumers want labelling. There have been polls done by everyone from the biotechnology industry to Greenpeace, and everybody concurs that most citizens—90%-plus—want to know whether their food is genetically engineered. From 45% to 70% of the population is skeptical about eating genetically engineered foods. They have some concerns there. In North America, or at least in the U.S., 70%, whether they're eating them or not, have questions. When you happen to tell them, well, 70% of the foods you're eating are likely to contain something along these lines, they express concerns.

    The second reason that a mandatory labelling program is useful is that in fact most of Canada's trading partners already require labelling. Here's a list of 35 of the 40 countries around the world that already require genetically engineered foods to be labelled. The list includes all of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, other major trading partners, Japan, and China.

    At this point in time, the U.S. and Canada are among the only large major trading partners on the planet that don't require it. We're rapidly becoming marginalized in this particular area, and this has economic impacts that hopefully we'll get to towards the end.

    The third reason is that there is controversy regarding the safety of genetically engineered foods. I won't go into this topic. Actually, I'll leave it to Dr. Commoner to go into more detail.

    I have a series of slides here that I'm going to flip through very quickly, but if you want to explore that question in more detail later on, we can cover that.

Á  (1125)  

    This just talks about how a GMO is made. You isolate genes, you splice the pieces of those together... If you want to see these later, we can do that, but for now the key thing is this final point here, which is that there are concerns of potential health hazards. These are points that your Royal Academy made in their report, that there are potential hazards and that the safety assessment system needs strengthening. In light of that, it would seem prudent for labelling to occur.

    How does GMO testing work? It's quite straightforward. Here you have a trans-gene that has been inserted into a cell. That new gene is present, and it programs the cell to produce a new protein. You can screen a plant or a food for genetic modification, either by looking for that inserted gene or screening for the protein itself.

    Going on... I'm going to skip this. I realize there is really no time to do all of this. I always have this problem; I take too much time. Again, if you want more details on how this process is done, we can go into it.

    To go to the heart of what I want to talk about, mandatory labelling, based on testing and identity preservation, is actually something that's already working effectively around the world. In all of those 35 countries, GMO testing is reliable. This is data showing the results of two different methods. The first is the immunological test, which is actually quite crude but is a very useful early screen to detect GMOs. PCR testing looks at the DNA, where you can detect as little as 0.01%, which is quite good precision.

    A few mistakes were made out of the 25 labs that took part in this, but for almost everybody, the rate of mistakes was about 5%, and with samples, in the range of 1% to 2%. They don't make mistakes. It is very accurate.

    GMO testing is economical. This is an estimate of how this works. Typically with large-scale...and we do this work. We were involved with certifying something in the range of 4 million metric tonnes of soymeal from Brazil to Europe this last summer, just last year. We did that based on this kind of certification.

    The cost is negligible. It is 0.06% with this large-scale material. With smaller-scale material, such as containers of material going to Japan as food-grade soy, the cost is up a little bit, 1% to 1.6%, because you're looking at single containers that contain only 20 tonnes each. So you are working on a different scale.

    These are strict tests. You'll see that if you are testing per truck with these, you can have a cost that is in the range of 2% to 3%.

    For identity preservation, typical costs are in the range of 0.2% to 0.5%. These are actual numbers that I took from programs that we already have under contract for product going from North America or South America to Europe or Japan. So these are real numbers.

    Identity preservation is economical in the fact that as volume goes up, cost goes down. The reason Brazil is highly competitive right now with North American soy is that they have a whole country that has actually not allowed genetically engineered soy and corn to be grown. There is some bootleg material, and that is why we have to be there to do the certification and to make sure that things are clean. But as you go to the scale of a nation as a whole, the cost for certification of products as non-GMO becomes negligible.

Á  (1130)  

    In reality, the actual costs for segregation are smaller than the fluctuation in commodity prices. This is something that is key, because if you have these kinds of fluctuations in commodity prices, and the cost of the GMO is absorbed in that, then the consumer never sees the impact. The food and agricultural industry are used to absorbing those kinds of fluctuations into their budget. Especially when you realize that the price for the cost of the ingredients in a processed food product is typically no more than 15% of the price of the actual product, you find yourself in a situation where the kinds of costs we are looking at here are very small and unimportant.

    Test-based monitoring and surveillance actually work. Science-based testing—as Dr. Keller pointed out, we should be science-based with this—is working in Europe, working in Japan, and working around the world.

    I would like to show you two overheads now. I borrowed these from a scientist, Philipp Hübner, who is at the Kantonales research laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland. He actually showed these slides at the conference I attended in Sweden two days ago.

    What this shows is how effective their program of surveillance has been. It shows the results of screening done by four different laboratories in Bavaria, in Baden, in Wittenberg, in another Swedish state, and also in Austria. It shows all of the samples they tested. In this case, they were corn samples. All of green ones were non-GMO. There was no genetically engineered material in those. The yellow ones contained GMOs, but between 0.1% and 0.5%. Four samples actually contained genetically engineered material of over 1%.

    So they have in place a surveillance program based on testing. What this shows is that the food industry is actually capable of operating efficiently to a 1% threshold. That's what they are showing here. It's quite effective.

    There's similar data here for soy. There are somewhat higher levels of red samples, of ones that were over 1%, but there's still much less than the total amount of material that you see there. They're a great minority, which indicates that they are being very successful in their screening, in their monitoring and surveillance work, and in policing this particular regulation.

    So what this says is that a threshold-based system operating to 1% works for the food industry throughout Europe. These are German data, but I have seen similar data for other countries as well. They work very well.

    A final point is that mandatory labelling makes economic sense for Canada. Introduction of GMOs into Canada and the U.S. has actually led to a significant loss of export markets. Canada's canola exports to Europe essentially don't exist today, because Canada cannot guarantee that their canola is non-GMO. Australia actually picked that up back in 1996-97, because we brought in the engineered canola. Similarly with U.S. corn exports to the EU; in 1998 there were 2 million metric tonnes, and in 1999 it was 139. It has stayed at that low level ever since.

    Similarly with potato exports to Japan and Korea; we have lost a big piece of our export market from North America to these countries, because we can't guarantee that they are non-GMO today.

Á  (1135)  

    Similarly with soy; today the exports of U.S. soy and Canadian soy to the European Union are something like a quarter of what they were back in 1996-97. That isn't because the European Union has stopped using soy. Brazil has stepped into the gap to provide non-GM soy.

    So these are the countries that are taking our lunch, you might say. I would argue very strongly that if Canada adapts a domestic labelling regime that is consistent with those of its preferred export markets, you will find a great loosening of this situation. Those markets will begin to gain, or regain, confidence in Canada's ability to provide the kinds of products they want, and those lost markets will be regained. In my view, this is the most important argument for taking on a labelling program of this sort. It allows Canada to join the rest of the world instead of being marginalized in this way.

    In agricultural production our exports are a very important part of Canada's economy. By harmonizing with what the rest of the world is doing--regardless of what's happening south of the border here--you will be supporting Canada's agricultural community.

    Thank you very much.

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Fagan.

    Dr. Wildeman from the University of Guelph has arrived.

    Welcome. You have the floor.

    Dr. Alan Wildeman (Vice-President of Research, Faculty of Molecular Biology and Genetics, University of Guelph): My apologies for being late. The flight I was supposed to be on did not go because of the snowstorm, so I was an hour late arriving. Nevertheless, I appreciate the opportunity to speak here today.

    For those of you who don't know me, I'm the vice-president of research at the University of Guelph.

    I wanted to come at this from the perspective of somebody who's worked as a scientist and has been interested in this topic for some time. I thought I would start just by going over what I view as some of the facts in this area.

    Most of the foods we eat are genetically modified. The fact is, we do not live on wild plants and wild game any more, and most of what we have is a product of a selection process. Some foods, however, are genetically engineered--that is, they contain a new gene, such as a Round-up Ready gene or a BT gene. These are the kinds of foods that are particularly of concern right now, I think. And I make a distinction between modification and engineering.

    I don't think anyone argues that dangerous things ought not to be labelled as such. And no one would dispute that human and environmental safety are paramount. Finally, the other fact is that the public should feel secure. Contamination of food and water is definitely a frightening prospect for people.

    I guess what I observe is a level of frustration. I want to take an opportunity for a moment to say why scientists are frustrated about what is happening now. I think in part it's because there's a spectre of tragedy hanging in the air. It's almost that there is an anticipation that something horrible is about to happen. Unfortunately for those who are promoting that spectre, and fortunately for those who are saying we don't think it'll happen, it hasn't happened yet.

    With regard to the precautionary principle, many scientists see it as the absolutely perfect foil for lobbyists. Its very name implies that there's some kind of higher ethic at work behind their motives when in fact it's simply saying that unless you know something in its entirety, you can never be sure in making a statement about it. And no one disputes that.

    The fact is, as well, scientists do not want to get it wrong. There's not a fiendish agenda on the part of scientists who have sold out to a Monsanto or anyone else. Bad scientists get caught, and no one wants to get caught doing something that is wrong.

    The third area that I think contributes to the frustration of scientists working in this area is that the benefits of biotechnology are possible to see. The fact is, engineered crops are easier to grow; they can reduce insecticide use and tillage; and there can be new ways of enhancing foods for health and safety that are building upon our knowledge of all of the genes now.

    Scientists, like everybody else, want there to be thorough examination and testing of novel foods. And the simple fact is, why wouldn't they? They represent exactly the same people and do exactly the same things as everybody else.

    I think that contributes to some of the frustration that scientists feel, and I don't think they've been particularly good at voicing that.

    I'd like to get to what I think is the message I want to give today, which is the first point: Is it labelling or marketing we're talking about? I would predict that if labelling is mandatory, we will sit back and watch the farmers lose again. And we will watch them lose because of the economics of it.

Á  (1140)  

    I was part of a study commissioned by KPMG about a year and a half ago, where we tried to do an exhaustive analysis of what the economic impact of labelling would be. The conclusion was that it would have a cost equivalent to roughly 9% to 10% of the retail price of foods, which represents 35% to 41% of the value a producer gets for that food.

    Producers will be pushed to a thinner profit margin since they don't set the price of the commodities that are going into the food products we eat. That is, if we are forced to label, in that price, the cost of doing it, the farmer will get squeezed. As someone who grew up on a prairie farm in Saskatchewan, I would argue that there is not a lot of margin to squeeze any more.

    I also wonder who will regulate the labels. I predict that there are as many slippery slopes as there are genes, and I use this as an example. Here we have a label for apple juice. It says, “Product of Canada, Fairlee Apple Juice”. But the contents of that container, the actual juice in it, came from China. It's because of the value-added of that product--the marketing, the packaging, and all the other things--are of sufficient value at the retail end that you can say “Product of Canada”. But the actual contents did not come from Canada. The possible consequences of trickery in advertising are very great but all perfectly legal.

    Mandatory labelling sends a message as well. If genetically engineered foods must be labelled, does that imply that unlabelled foods are safer or better for the environment? If all of the labelling and marketing says that cigarettes are bad, then by default, the absence of cigarettes is good. I think this is also a real concern.

    The main message I want to make is that I think it will put a serious economic squeeze on farmers in the absence of any evidence that there's a problem with this. This is not to say that there's not a great deal of concern in doing the kind of work that can ensure there's not a problem. I am sure other people either have or will speak to the committee about the quality of our food safety system.

    Voluntary labelling is an option. I would say in that case farmers might win, because advertising could reflect the benefits to the environment of the practices on their farms. We all know that agriculture is a major threat to the planet. It has completely defaced it. It has changed it. The image of pastoral agricultural settings that we have in some kind of doe-eyed reflection of our past is in fact not the way the planet really was to start with. We have to accept the fact that agriculture changes it, but they could use this to their advantage, I believe. Labelling would have a value. Any product for which mandatory labelling was needed would likely be one for which there was an appreciable risk, such as an allergen in foods. If you identify that there is an appreciable risk, you want to alert the public that this is in fact the case. No one would argue with that. That is very important. I think that is closer to the paradigm that the health system works under.

    Finally, voluntary labelling is about free choice. As in everything, Canadians should be free to make choices based on their own decision-making processes.

    Thank you very much. Those were the main points.

Á  (1145)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    We will move now to Dr. Barry Commoner from Queen's College at the City University of New York.

    Dr. Barry Commoner (Director, Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Queen's College at the University of New York): Thank you.

    I greatly appreciate this opportunity to appear here. The issue that the committee is considering is at a crucial stage. It is generally acknowledged that the requirement to label genetically modified foods will seriously affect their acceptability to consumers, and hence the economic viability of the biotechnology industry. You have heard that said already here.

    In Canada the introduction of genetically modified foods is still limited in scope, at least compared with the United States, and there is an opportunity to deliberate about whether or not the process should continue as it is, with your present regulations, or be governed by new regulation—for example, labelling.

    And yet just across the border in the United States, unlike in Canada, I think, genetically modified plants have come to dominate the agricultural system. The basic large crops in the United States—soybean, corn, and cotton—are now largely genetically modified. With soybean it's up to 80%. Their products are not labelled and they're subject to what I regard to be only minimal regulation. I'll talk about that later.

    The point I want to make is this: Whatever your committee decides to do about labelling genetically modified foods will resonate strongly in the United States and elsewhere in the world. The economic, social, and political stakes are high.

    Now, why as a scientist do I warn you about the economic, social, and political stakes? The reason is that behind this issue lies questions that are, or ought to be, answerable to the rational governance of scientific theory and fact. That is what I want to talk about. In other words, what do we need to know scientifically to be able to think in a rational way about this potentially very divisive issue?

    The scientific issue that you face can be stated very simply. Is a genetically modified plant...? And let me say right away that what I mean by this is a plant in which genetic material has been transferred from one species into a crop plant, the so-called narrow definition that my colleagues have talked about. So the issue is whether such a genetically modified plant, one that has been artificially endowed with alien genetic material, is essentially equivalent to a plant that has been altered by conventional or natural breeding.

    The term “essential equivalence” is basic to your regulatory situation. In conventional breeding, the entire array of genetic material in one variety of a species is transferred to another variety of the same species.

Á  (1150)  

    An excellent report from a panel of the Royal Society has carefully considered the issue of equivalence between this type of breeding and genetically modified breeding. What the panel said, and I'm quoting now, is that in natural breeding, the kind that happened before the discovery of DNA and genes and so on, the molecular side, “such gene shuffling consistently recreates the same basic plant, and the expectation of ‘equivalence’ has been fulfilled”. According to the panel, barley is barley is barley. That is the consequence of natural breeding.

    The panel has carefully analysed the scientific evidence regarding the degree to which genetically modified organisms obey the substantial equivalence rule. They conclude that the expression of a new gene in a transgenic organism—and I quote—“will be accompanied by a range of collateral changes in expression of other genes, changes in the pattern of proteins produced and/or changes in metabolic activities...” In other words, according to the panel, in genetically engineered plants substantial equivalence does not apply. Transgenic barley is not simply barley.

    There you have your issue. There is a serious disagreement between what you've heard from Dr. Keller and Dr. Wildeman, which is generally the position of the biotechnology industry... There's disagreement between their saying this is equivalent to natural breeding and what the panel from the Royal Society has said with respect to the factual outcome of transgenic modification of food crops. This is the nub of what I want to say here. What I want to try to do is to give you some scientific background for understanding this disagreement.

     Unfortunately, while the panel has produced--

    The Chair: Dr. Commoner, one of our valued committee members has just come in. Seeing as you just articulated what you think is the essential question, I wonder if you would just repeat that little section of your talk so that Ms. Wasylycia-Leis can tune in to the rest of it.

    Dr. Barry Commoner: Yes.

    In my view, the fundamental issue resides in the term “essential equivalence”. That is, are artificially genetically modified crops essentially equivalent in their properties to ordinary plants that have been bred in conventional ways? That's really what it's about.

    What I've said so far is that there is a scientific disagreement between the biotechnology industry and the panel of the Royal Society, which has said flatly that in the case of ordinary breeding, barley is barley is barley, is equivalence, and this is not so. What I want to talk about more is, what's the scientific basis for this disagreement?

    The panel has produced, I think, a magnificent piece of work, a 240-page report. It's scientific. I mean, it's a very prominent panel, and from reading their report I found that I learned a lot. It fit in with my understanding of what the science is about. So I found it a very valuable document.

    On the other hand—and I speak now only about what happens in the United States, so I don't want to get into trouble here—in the United States this is not what we get from the biotechnology industry. What we get is full-page ads with about three lines of type and a big picture, or we get statements before legislative committees, which in a way don't tell you much. But let me give you a typical example of one that was presented by Ralph W. F. Hardy, president of the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council before a committee of the U.S. Senate in 1999. He described the scientific theory that guides the industry in producing transgenic organisms. He described it this way: “DNA (top management molecules) directs RNA formation (middle management molecules) directs protein formation (worker molecules)”.

    Despite its commercial language, this quite accurately describes the scientific basis of genetic engineering. Proteins are in fact the agents that cause the genetic changes—the catalysts, the enzymes. If you change a protein you're very likely to change the trait. So they do the work.

    DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, those molecules working through RNA, another kind of nucleic acid, influence the chemical properties of the proteins. This is well known. And as long as you believe that DNA has the genetic information and that it can be nicely transferred to protein, then a DNA gene is capable of governing inheritance.

    This is really a solid scientific statement, and to some extent it is true. The devil is in the statement “to some extent”.

Á  (1155)  

    The picture we have of this goes back to 1953, when Watson and Crick discovered the molecular structure of DNA, the famous double helix. It was a very important discovery. What it showed was that in the double helix the structure is such that the molecules are long strings. They are made up of four different kinds of units stuck together one after another. It's a linear molecule in a spiral.

    The most important thing about it is that the two strands match up in a particular way, where one kind of unit always wants to be linked across this two-strand thing to a particular other one. So if there are four kinds of units, T, A, C and G, whenever you have a T here, you have an A there. If you have a C here, you have a G there.

    To a scientist concerned with replication, it's absolutely an unavoidable idea that what you have is a template here. You have one strand of DNA able to make a copy strand, and you have in this molecule the molecular basis of a fundamental biological property, which is self-duplication.

    I can't emphasize this too much. What this is all about is the question of replication, which is absolutely unique to living things. There is nothing else in the universe that makes more of itself—nothing else. This is a remarkable property, and now Watson and Crick come along and say it resides in a molecule.

    I once had a big argument with my friend Linus Pauling, a famous scientist. He called it a “living” molecule, and I said that molecule is not alive. But we will get to that. At any rate, that's the fundamental thing that happened.

    Watson and Crick, although Crick in particular, developed the consequences of this, and many scientists flocked to the idea, beginning to work on this set of ideas to see how the ideas spelled out. It was quickly discovered that Crick's basic theory, the sequence of units, called nucleotides, in the DNA serve as a code for the structure of the protein, will do the work. Protein is also a linear molecule. Its units are amino acids. Instead of being four different kinds of units, there are 20 different amino acids.

    So what Crick said was that the four different kinds, the sequence, the spelling out of the nucleotides in the DNA, tell you the lineup of the amino acids in the protein. And it was well known that once you knew the amino acid lineup in a protein, it told you a lot about what it could do chemically. In between, RNA serves as a sort of messenger.

    So there you have a molecular process that does two critical things. One is that this molecule, DNA, replicates itself by lining up the units in exactly this parallel way that I mentioned. It's self-replicating. On top of that, it sends a message of genetic information to proteins. The proteins do the work and create the blue eyes and the tasselled corn and so on. In other words, this reduces biological replication to a molecular system, and the biotechnology industry is based on that idea.

  (1200)  

    Now, there has been an enormous amount of work on this. It has dominated biological and medical research since the 1950s. A tremendous amount of work has been done. A lot of it has confirmed what I've just told you, but there have been other experiments as well, done by the very same molecular geneticists who raise very serious questions. The biggest and most serious question came from the biggest and most expensive experiment, the Human Genome Project.

    The Human Genome Project, based on the Crick theory, took the basic idea that if the DNA gene regulates the construction of a protein, then there ought to be equal numbers of genes and proteins in a living organism. For every gene there ought to be a protein.

    Proteins are very difficult to work with. I've worked with them. They stick together, so it's very hard to separate them and analyse them and so on. DNA, amazingly, is very easy to get out in pure form and analyse. So the Genome Project was launched with a very clever idea. If we could analyse all of the DNA in the human body—and it consists of three billion nucleotides, four different kinds arranged different ways—we could spell out the exact sequence of all three billion nucleotides and recognize what chunks they form as genes. We would identify the genes, count them, and use that information to decide what kinds of proteins can be produced using the code. That was the basic idea. Then we would know exactly—what molecular activity tells us--who we are.

    There were very big statements made. Watson, for example, said this will tell you the difference between a carrot and a person. Blair and President Clinton had things to say. Clinton said the human genome is the language in which God created life. You know, it's very important stuff.

    Well, you may remember that about a year ago the reports came out. If you remember the headlines, the big news was that the main result was unexpected. It was guessed that there were some tens of hundreds of thousands—400,000 to 500,000 or more—of proteins in the human body. What the Genome Project found was 30,000 genes, not enough to account for the proteins. Worse than that, it was about the same number of genes found in a small weed.

    Now, it's hard to say that we are just as complicated in our inheritance as a weed, so that was unexpected.

    To a simple-minded biologist like me, that result said a very simple thing: Genes do not tell us everything about inheritance. Something is missing. They are too few. They tell us something, but they don't tell us the whole thing. The important thing about the Crick theory, which the biotechnology industry uses, is that it is absolutely total. The genetic information is all in the DNA, and it goes to the protein with no interference from any other outside things.

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    Now we see, from this big result, that this may not be true.

    I have to tell you, the scientists involved did not react the way I did. What they said was, “Oh, we should be humble now, because we're not very different from a weed or a lowly roundworm”. I'm quoting, essentially.

    Why did this happen? And in fact, in the reports there was an explanation as to why there were so few genes. They talked about a set of data—there are now nearly 10,000 scientific papers on this—called “alternative splicing”. What is it? Well, it turns out that during the passage from DNA to RNA, the RNA is the messenger that delivers the code to the protein. The RNA is frequently broken up, cut up into many pieces. So a single gene, with its nucleotides, gets split up and then it gets recombined in different ways.

    When you do that to a code, you can make a lot more out of the code than you had before. The example I like to use is to take the word “time”. If you take the same four units and rearrange them, they spell “mite”, a little thing. You can make another word out of that, “emit”.

    What I'm saying is that if you rearrange the component parts of this word, or a gene, you can make more information out of it than you had to begin with. And that is exactly what alternative splicing does.

    For example, in our inner ear we have 576 proteins that are arranged to help respond to the proper tunes. It turns out that there's a gene, one gene, that makes all 576 proteins—and they're all different—by alternative splicing; in other words, scrambling.

    In other words, when you have 576 different proteins made from the information in one gene, you have a lot more information than you had to begin with, and it has to come from somewhere. Where does it come from? It comes from the action... I said the thing is split up. Well, it doesn't just split up. A group of proteins sits down at certain points and cuts the RNA, and these proteins are very specific. So the proteins are able to do this explosion of information.

    What this tells you is that the DNA is not alone. It contributes, but proteins can contribute as well.

    To quickly move ahead, what I want to say is that there has been a series of observations—the article you have of what I wrote goes through these—that tells us that there are molecular activities other than the ones spelled out by Crick and used in the biotechnology industry. There is a series of other molecular processes whereby genetic information other than what's in the DNA gets into the system as a whole. Instead of being a straight-line system, it circles back. So, sure, you get a protein, but the protein can turn around and act in alternative splicing. Or, for example, it turns out that proteins are greatly responsible for the reliability of the self-duplication of the DNA. That isn't even self-duplication.

  (1210)  

    Another important thing you should know is that Crick said, as a principle—and this is what he called the central dogma—the information can't get out of proteins. Well, we have a very good example of a disease caused by information getting out of proteins, and that's the mad cow disease. The mad cow disease is caused by an agent that is infectious and that is a pure protein. It gets into the brain, comes in contact with a normal brain protein, changes its structure to match the agent, called a prion, which then becomes infectious and continues the infection. In other words, you have a genetic process from one protein to another.

    All I'm saying is, there is good scientific reason to believe that replication inheritance is more complicated than this straight-line business.

    Let's go back to your basic problem of what this does mean. If you have a transgenic plant, what you... Let me say this. The system I'm talking about then has DNA, say, and everything that goes with it, and other sources, mainly proteins, that contribute as well. When you transfer in a genetically modified plant, what you transfer is pure DNA. That's what you're doing. You're putting the DNA from a bacillus, let's say, that produces an insecticidal protein, into a corn plant. In the corn plant, it will have to interact with the alternative splicing system of the corn plant. In other words, it will confront a part of the genetic system with which it is not familiar, and the big problem that genetic engineering introduces is that you are creating an absolutely novel system. There is no other way of looking at it.

    And why is it novel? Well, this system is put together over the course of evolution. A corn plant has a long evolutionary history, and the two parts of the system are compatible because they have been tried over the long course of evolution. What you do in genetically modified plants is abrogate that compatibility.

    Now, that's theory. What's the practice?

    The practice is when genetically modified plants are produced. I had a conference with some colleagues of doctors Keller and Wildeman. They said, well, we have many failures, of course. We winnow this and take only the things that succeed. And a characteristic of the research in genetic engineering is that you have mostly failures and a few successes. In other words, it's easy to get into trouble, and you get a few successes.

    The other side of it is that the detailed examination that's needed hasn't been done. And when it was done, just a couple of years ago, in the case of genetic soybeans, it was found—exactly what the panel at the Royal Society predicted—that there were changes in the structure of the soybean's own genetic system as a result of putting in the artificial gene. What that says is that the panel is absolutely right.

  (1215)  

    There is one last thing I would say. In another example from a related area, cloning, the National Academy in the United States put out a report about a month ago in which they said that cloning works 1% of the time, and 99% of the embryos—these are animal clones—may die. But what they said that was even more important was that no one knows why the 1% succeeds.

    In other words, we are dealing with an unpredictable situation, an unpredictable situation that is replicated. In that sense—and I'll say this—a genetically engineered organism that is allowed to grow out in an agricultural field is a genetic time bomb. With time, a change will develop that we don't know about, because, at least in the United States, we don't look for these details. It is something to be scared about, because we are working in darkness.

    My opinion is that genetically modified food plants should never have been left out of the laboratory. They don't belong in a field.

    Labelling is a necessary but not sufficient regulatory step. What will do the trick, I think, and what will be necessary is to forbid the use of genetically modified foods in agriculture.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Commoner.

    I have a feeling that the cat is among the pigeons now, so we'll move on to questioning from members of the committee. I don't have anyone on my list...

    Mrs. Wasylycia-Leis will represent the opposition.

  (1220)  

    Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North Centre, NDP): Thank you, Madam Chairperson.

    I want to thank all of the presenters. I am sorry, I missed a couple of presentations; I came in at the tail end of Dr. Wildeman's and I heard some of Dr. Fagan's and most of Dr. Commoner's. I apologize to Dr. Keller.

    Let me start where Dr. Commoner just left off, which is that the task for all of us is labelling, but that's only part of the issue. The real issue we are dealing with is the growing concern among Canadians around safety of the food system. Many groups and individuals are increasingly expressing concern and raising questions about whether or not genetically modified foods are safe beyond a reasonable doubt. That in my mind is the precautionary principle.

    I didn't hear all of Dr. Wildeman's speech, but what I did hear caused me a great deal of angst, when he suggested in fact that these were a bunch of lobbyists who are hiding...or not hiding, but are using the precautionary term as a higher ethic than really is intended in terms of the words “precautionary principle”.

    You'll have a chance to respond, but my sense is that the precautionary principle is about whether or not, if you want to prove something is safe, you want something to be safe until proven to be unsafe or unsafe until proven to be safe.

    In terms of Canadian consumers, and the groups that represent them, we want lobbyists, but ones advocating for safety and human health and well-being. They want our government to follow the principle that something is considered to be unsafe until it is proven to be safe. I think the real issue for this committee is that we have seen the flood of products on the market. We have seen industry telling us, without science, that we have the safest food supply in the world, that there is nothing unsafe about genetically modified foods--without proving the science base for that decision.

    I guess Dr. Wildeman will want to comment on my interpretation of his remarks, but to certainly Dr. Commoner, since he has given us so much food for thought, I think the real issue here is the question of substantial equivalence, or essential equivalence. The Royal Society talked about this in their lengthy report. I don't know, as a layman, how to ask this question, but I would like to know, in terms of the government regulation system, in terms of tests, scientific research, or surveillance investigation, what has to kick in to prove that this product is safe beyond a reasonable doubt before it's allowed to get on the market?

    Dr. Barry Commoner: The way to do it is to take the industry at its word, which is that they can put into a plant exactly the same gene that they started with and get exactly the same protein that gene did in its bacterium, for example. In other words, the test ought to be to go out in the field, analyse the crop, and look at the actual nucleotides array of the gene and of the neighbouring part of the plant's genome to see if it's true that all that you have is precisely the gene that you put in and nothing else.

    Monsanto already acknowledged, in the case of soybean, that actually they had put in not only the gene in one place but on either side of it pieces of the gene. That was acknowledged. But then the Belgians came along a couple of years ago and found, over here, a scrambled part of the soybean genome.

    So that's the sort of thing; that's the test. Or in the case of proteins, we know exactly what is the amino acid sequence of the protein that...let's say, the bacillus that makes the insecticide. All you need to do, in the case of the corn plant with the bacillus gene in it, is isolate from the corn plant the insecticidal protein, analyse it, and show that it has exactly the same amino acid sequence. Neither of these two tests is required in the United States.

    What we know is that when you do, at least the one with the DNA, it fails, and in a major case. Otherwise, if you have a change in the genome, you are changing the inheritance of the whole plant.

    The panel has referred to some very interesting papers in which it is shown that this is a process that goes along with age. For example, when you make a cloned plant, in the case of a palm tree, decades after that palm tree has been growing it begins to show abnormalities.

    And talk about scary; one of the scariest things I know, and it's happening in Canada, is the genetic modification of trees, because trees keep growing. At least the corn plant dies. That's helpful. Of course, it doesn't really die; some seeds are going to be dumped from the truck and sprout, but at least the bulk of the plant dies. In the case of trees, they grow for a very long time.

    These things are genetic factories, the control of which we've lost. The only way--

  (1225)  

    The Chair: Dr. Commoner, I think I will let Dr. Wildeman respond, seeing as he was named in the question.

    Dr. Barry Commoner: Yes, I'm sorry, that's enough.

    Dr. Alan Wildeman: I would like to respond to a couple of things.

    First of all, with regard to my comment about the precautionary principle being one that lobbyists, per se, have used, I put it out there because it is, I think, in a similar league with the fear-mongering kinds of statements that there are too few genes in the human genome. Well, there are not. In fact, we have just enough, because we're all here and we're doing just fine. So 30,000 genes is enough.

    Arguments about proteins containing genetic information are simply false, because they don't; the genes transmit the traits. Protein variability as a result of alternate splicing is very well known. Every human being in this room is a transgenic human being, because we have acquired viruses as we have gone through life, and our genes are becoming scrambled all the time.

    With that in mind, I am not afraid of that. As a scientist, I am quite happy...and I spend a lot of time talking to people about it. It doesn't worry me, but it's something I want to understand. I want to know what the consequences of it are.

    When people hold up the argument about the substantial equivalence, I agree with that completely, and I agree with the Royal Society recommendations on that. On the issue about safety, though, I think substantial equivalence and the precautionary principle are red herrings to the real issue behind it, because you can do things and create safe foods that are not substantially equivalent. In fact, they can't be, as Dr. Commoner has pointed out. If you put in one gene, you are going to change the profile of many proteins in that cell. No one would argue about that. The question is, have you made something that's dangerous?

    In the absence of anyone yet getting sick from BT corn, from drinking milk that came from cows fed BT corn, or from products from Round-Up Ready soybeans, I guess the entire scientific community that works on these is waiting and watching and monitoring to see if anything goes wrong. If it does, it has to be flagged.

    We know there are many other things that are not safe. Automobiles are not safe. Cell phones are not safe. There are many things that are not safe, but we do everything we can to control them and understand them. I think there is a real risk here; if this stuff is so bad, why have so many farmers starting using it? Because it makes their life safer and cleaner. The disengagement of the farmer from this debate is a serious travesty, because there are economic questions, and every farmer out there is waiting, asking, “Will somebody please tell me if people are getting sick from eating this stuff?” And if that happens, then....

  (1230)  

     I put that up there as a teaser, because I was anticipating Dr. Commoner's presentation, having read his article in Harper's Magazine, which I'm sure everyone in the room has read.

    So I think it's a really critical issue. What are the facts behind the arguments? Many of the facts behind his are wrong. Many of the facts behind scientists saying, “Oh, we can prove this” are also wrong. Somewhere down the middle there's common sense.

    The Chair: Dr. Fagan would like to comment on this theme.

    Dr. John Fagan: These are interesting points that have been brought up by both Dr. Wildeman and Dr. Commoner.

    First of all, I would like to try to debug this thing of using the precautionary principle as the bad guy here. The precautionary principle is badly misunderstood as it's really expressed in, for instance, the European Union white paper on the precautionary principle. It's something that we all would agree with. If you have some suspicion that something is harmful, and yet you don't have complete data on its harmfulness, it's still a good idea to approach that particular thing with some care and to ask for more data that it be safe.

    Now, this is in contrast with what is the existing legal framework for business in the western world, which is that a company normally has the right to sell a product to the public until it's proven dangerous. That's the difference.

    That has given us tobacco, it's given us cars with faulty brake systems, and it's given us many other things. The precautionary principle is simply saying, hey, before we require more safety testing on something, we don't need to have complete proof that it's dangerous but simply some questions. In fact, I think there is sufficient data or evidence, even within the Royal Society's own report, to say that the precautionary principle should be applied, in this forum, to the issue of GM crops.

    I'll move on to an interesting statement from Dr. Wildeman, that the question is not whether there's something that's been changed but whether you've made something that's dangerous. This is really the crux of the debate around genetically engineered products.

    I think the point that Dr. Commoner was making is that because of the complexity of the genome and because we don't really know completely what's going on with genetics yet... As a molecular biologist, I would say that we know, at best, 10% of what there is to know about genetics—I think I see Dr. Wildeman agreeing with that—so we have a big area of unknown there. As Dr. Commoner said, we're working in the dark to a certain extent.

    So how do you know if something is dangerous or not, especially when the process of genetic engineering is using techniques that the biotechnologists themselves call “biolistics”, which is like ballistics? You take a gene, sort of throw it at the crop, and hope it hits the right spot. So there isn't a lot of control there.

    The real question, then, is when you've done this relatively random, uncontrolled process, how do you know what's gone wrong and what hasn't? They eliminate thousands and thousands of GMOs when they do a transformation event. They eliminate many because, well, this one doesn't grow well, and this one has funny-looking leaves, and this one doesn't yield as well, and this one dies when it's subjected to even moderate amounts of sunlight. But the thing that's critical is the changes that have occurred that you might not be able to see. In fact, there are some that are agronomic, and there may be some safety ones as well.

    We are quite certain that the genetically modified crops that have been commercialized to date are not acutely toxic, or acute allergens, and they contain most of the key nutrients, the large nutrients. But we don't know the subtleties of it.

  (1235)  

    For instance, under the current regime, where our crop is essentially...and this is the thing that the critics of biotechnology raise. They say—and this is a true statement—there has not been a single test of any commercialized GMO on human beings. There has not been anything equivalent to a clinical trial on GMOs.

    What they do is a chemical analysis and they say, “Oh, yes, it has about the right carbohydrate, fat, and protein”, and they feed it to some rats. They say, “Well, the rats didn't die”—or the bullhead fish, or the cows—“and they seem to be okay.”

    But let me give you an example of the kind of thing that might be missed. I'm not saying this is the case, but in fact it's something that could be missed. What if you had a GMO that caused headaches? A rat can't tell you it has a headache. Now, let's say it gets through and it gets out into the food system. Now, this one GMO, let's call it a corn variety, goes into maybe 5% or 10% of the corn that's produced in North America. That GMO goes into some batches of cornflakes and not into others. They're not labelled.

    Now, twice or three times a week, I eat cornflakes, or you eat cornflakes. What happens when you get a box that causes a headache? You can't tell whether it was that or whether it was something you ate the night before or something else. Without labelling, you might go on for years without ever being able to connect it. So labelling would allow us to detect those things that weren't exposed during the safety testing.

    And I would take exception to the statement that Dr. Wildeman just made, that the scientific community is waiting and monitoring. We don't have the tools to scientifically monitor.

    Dr. Keller earlier said, well, North Americans have been eating genetically engineered foods for six years. There's been no scientific, systematic approach to that to go to the conclusion that what's been done is safe. That's the basic problem. And that's what mandatory labelling will allow—some traceability. It still will not allow us to do this in a systematic, scientific way. In fact, the European Union is revising its regulations on novel foods. It's going to require that, in certain cases, in quite a number of cases, there will be post-commercialization monitoring, based on labelling, that will allow just this sort of thing to take place.

    I'd like to end with just one more point, which is the problem with the disengagement and disenfranchisement of the farmer. I agree, there's been disenfranchisement of the farmer around this issue, but the examples I gave before, of loss of markets for canola, loss of markets for corn, loss of markets for soybeans and for potatoes, are all examples of how moving this out without labelling, without segregation, without protecting farmers' markets around the world have created a situation where North American farmers are currently getting less for their potatoes and corn and soybeans than they have historically in 30 or 40 years. That is disenfranchisement.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Since Dr. Keller was named, I think he should at least be given an opportunity to respond.

    Dr. Wilf Keller: Thank you. I'll comment on a couple of things. There's a lot to comment on this; we could have a whole conference on this.

    I think it's somewhat unfair to say that there has been no scientific evaluation of these products. That is untrue. We've heard that implied at the table this morning, that somehow these products have come forward without that. These plants have been tested under laboratory conditions for many years for their biochemical and molecular properties. They have been tested in confined field tests. I was fortunate to see researchers involved in the kinds of analysis that were required by the regulatory bodies in terms of allergenicity testing and DNA stability testing. So this has been done.

    I think one thing that we in the community have improperly done is to publish this and to disseminate that properly. Some of that is related to the way science functions. We try to generate new knowledge and publish those new findings to corroborate or to re-evaluate or to publish something that's already been developed. There's less incentive for that.

    I think this committee needs to figure out how we turn our findings and our research into a transparent system. A lot of this information has been available, and is available. I think it is fair to say that when people have been consuming these products, it's not on the basis of a gamble. Based on the technologies we have had and have used, it was appropriate to say the benefits were worth proceeding with, and the results bear that in mind. So this was not an experiment.

    There were some comments on substantial equivalence that were made by Dr. Commoner and in the following discussion. The Royal Society commented on that. Substantial equivalence is not the only tool. It's sometimes implied that it is. Substantial equivalence is important. It needs to be used somewhere. The Royal Society says maybe we should move it further down the decision-making tree, and I think that is good.

    When you develop varieties, if you grow canola in southern Manitoba near Winnipeg or you grow it in the Peace River, the amount of saturated fat in that canola differs by 2% or 3%. So when breeders—and this has nothing to do with GMOs—develop varieties, they test to see if saturated fat content falls between those extremes. If it does, that's considered to be part of the variation the plant is capable of depending on, on the environmental and fertilizer conditions and so on. We need that when we compare the modified organisms as well. But to imply that this is the only tool is incorrect. There are other tools.

    Quite frankly, the work on tomatoes... The first genetically modified plant was the tomato. Calgene, who developed this, published an enormous catalogue of information, this thick. They did every type of chemical analysis you could think of: vitamins, minerals, micro-nutrients, solubility. This was published in Euphytica, a scientific journal that's been out for several years. It's there, and we cannot ignore it. We have to be able to use this information. We have a scientific base we can build on.

    I'll simply close by saying this is evolutionary. We develop new tools and we have to integrate them. If we had waited when we developed our first computer, those monsters that we had to put into a refrigerated room that we thought were so effective in the sixties, you could not have the Pentium if you used the precautionary principle. It would have been too big, too this, too that. So we have to advance. We are a creative species. We have to have vision. I think it's important for Canadians to have vision and leadership in this very interesting area of science, and not sit back and wait. Let's lead.

    Thank you.

  (1240)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Thank you, Mrs. Wasylycia-Leis.

    I believe Dr. Castonguay has a question.

[Translation]

    Mr. Jeannot Castonguay (Madawaska--Restigouche, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

    This is a fine example of the ongoing disagreements between members of the scientific community. Obviously, this is not an exact science, which probably explains the differences of opinion. We're not dealing with mathematics and there will always be differences. Maybe that's the challenge we have to contend with today.

    There has to be some kind of advantage for consumers. Are there any benefits, such as eliminating certain proteins which might be allergens? Is that possible? Could you give us any other examples of potential benefits?

    Of course, Health Canada maintains that when these products are brought to market, they have been evaluated beforehand and deemed safe. However, everyone has questions about follow-up actions. How can we be certain that genetically modified products are monitored ?

  (1245)  

     As far as labelling is concerned, isn't it more important to label those products which pose a health risk, instead of simply wanting to label genetically modified products? The process becomes so diluted that people will say that after all, it's only a label. Ultimately, the focus is not really on products that pose a health risk.

    I welcome responses from all of the witnesses.

[English]

    The Chair: Could you try to keep your answers a little bit short, because I have another questioner coming along.

    Dr. Wildeman, I'll start with you.

    Dr. Alan Wildeman: I will answer in English, just a very brief response.

    As Dr. Commoner pointed out, we can look at a protein and we are at a point in increasing our understanding of genetics and proteins... We're nowhere near there yet, as I think other panelists have pointed out. We only know small amounts so far, but the more we know the better we get at predicting whether or not a particular gene that is going into a plant or a particular protein that it makes is in fact going to be a problem.

    I think your point about stopping all of it is in the absence of information. But at the same time, information that there is some benefit in these technologies... I come back to the fact that for the people who are growing it and for the land base, it is important to look at it. I think your point is a good one. You don't want to throw out everything, and you want to get better at being able to predict what individual proteins will do. I think that will happen over time.

    The Chair: Dr. Commoner.

    Dr. Barry Commoner: Let me go back to your original point: what good does this do for the consumer?

    In my opinion, biotechnology did not develop with the consumer in mind. When you stop to think about it, the huge influx into U.S. agriculture, in the case of soybeans, ties the buying of seeds to buying a particular Monsanto herbicide. That's what it does. It's a terrific economic manipulation.

    Now, you can say the farmers are helped because they don't have to do as much tilling and so on, but on the other hand, they are hurt by the export problem. I don't see that consumers have gotten any gain from the changes in soybean, corn, or cotton in the United States. I don't think that's been the motive for it.

    I don't know of any study that has said that the kinds of crop plants that we grow for food in the United States need to be improved in the following ways for reasons of human health. No one has ever said that.

    Dr. Alan Wildeman: I would like to add one point on that. Except for the state of Alabama, every state in the U.S. has used fewer insecticides sprayed from airplanes to treat cotton. If you want to keep on spraying insecticides from airplanes, it has been reduced by a minimum of fivefold, Alabama being the exception.

    Dr. Barry Commoner: There is a very simple way to use fewer pesticides, and that is to stop using them. It's called organic farming.

    Dr. Alan Wildeman: And then the price will go up and then the consumer will complain.

    The Chair: Let Dr. Commoner finish, because I want time for Dr. Fagan and Dr. Keller.

    Dr. Barry Commoner: The point I want to make is we have to understand that the growth of the biotechnology industry is in many ways motivated by particular economic circumstances.

    What you get from new biotechnology companies is a promise to do wonderful things about improving food production and so on. The reason they do that is that you can sell stock. It is no accident that this is an industry that was born in the midst of the IPO hysteria in the stock market. It is not really related to consumer requirements.

    The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Commoner.

    Dr. Fagan, would you like to comment on this question?

    Dr. John Fagan: Yes, on a couple of things.

    Following on with what Dr. Commoner was saying, if you look at the impact of these crops on the consumer, to date the impact in terms of positive benefit is zero. They're all agronomic in their orientation. And if you look at the future, we hear it's going to do this, it's going to do that, but in fact those are blue-sky promises.

    Now, there's one example they bring up, which is golden rice, which is going to feed children so they don't get blind from vitamin A deficiency. That is a promotional tool, not a reality. You would have to eat actually somewhere around nine kilograms of cooked golden rice to get the minimum daily requirement of beta carotene, a precursor to vitamin A, from that material. It's being promoted around the world as an example of what biotechnology can do, and I think it's a good one, because it's an artifice; it is not a reality.

    So what's good for the consumer in this is still open. I'm not saying that good cannot come. If you look at the impact in medicine, there are some very beneficial things. If you look at consumers around the world, they've accepted medical applications of genetic engineering, such as for insulin or for other things like that, and yet they ask, do I want my foods engineered? And that's where the question is.

    The other question you raised was whether we should stop all of this. Obviously, no. There is science here. There's the progression of knowledge. But the key thing really links back to a point that Dr. Commoner made, which is that everything that is discovered in the laboratory should not necessarily go into the marketplace. We should have a filter there that allows only what is going to be beneficial to really get out that way.

    Finally, I come back to one point that is really key. We've heard at least three times in this particular session that the experience with existing genetically engineered crops shows that this is a safe technology. This is not the case. Each genetically engineered crop is different. It has different genes in it. We can't say that because the Calgene tomato was researched very carefully, other tomatoes will be safe. Using Calgene tomato as an example is not a good one, because in fact in the work that was done by Calgene they took a different strategy in their corporate approach to the safety assessment from what the other companies have. They went out there saying, “We know we're going to have to sell this to consumers; therefore we're going to do more than is required.” The others are taking quite an opposite approach, which is, “How can I get by with the least?”

    If you look at what has been done in terms of allergy testing, Dr. Keller said allergy testing has been done. Even the Royal Society points out that the tools to test the potential allergenicity of GMOs are not available today.

    Thank you.

  (1250)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Dr. Keller, did you want to comment on this?

    Dr. Wilf Keller: Thank you. I will just make a brief comment on the issue of the moratorium.

    I certainly believe that we need to move ahead with this science. There is a solid science base to this. I agree that the science inputs have to be developed and grow with the new products so that we can manage and regulate them. We have a knowledge base that allows us to proceed, and we have to keep investing as a society to also add to that knowledge base to regulate and understand new products as we go.

    I do not believe that putting a stop to this will accomplish what we need to do as a society. We need to be open. We need to invest, and we need to use this science. It's not going to be used everywhere. Certainly there is a big difference between what is done in the research laboratory and what eventually ends up in the field. That can often be misconstrued accidentally. You see a scientific publication and then it's possible to say they're putting a spider gene into my food crop and so forth. There may have been a basic genetic rationale for publishing that. There are a lot of filters between the basic knowledge that's generated in the lab and the commercial product, and that can be overlooked or ignored, sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally.

    We have a good base. We need to build on it, for sure, and we need to be more transparent and public with it with our citizens.

    Thank you.

    The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Keller. Thank you, Dr. Castonguay.

[Translation]

    : Go ahead, Ms. Thibault.

    Ms. Yolande Thibeault (Saint-Lambert, Lib.): I'll try to be as brief as possible, Madam Chair.

    Dr. Wildeman, I'm sure no one here questions the good intentions of workers in your field of expertise. No one believes that you would willingly bring to market products that pose a health risk. Forget that hypothesis. Nor do I think the public believes anything of the sort either.

    You talked about hazardous products such as automobiles and cell phones. I'd like to steer you back to the focus of today's discussions, namely labelling. Obviously people want to know which products are good for them, and which ones are not. Until they have proof, one way or another, they will continue to be worried and I understand their concerns. People aren't interested in long speeches on the nature of GMOs. What they want, and what they are entitled to know, is whether or not the food they are about to consume contains GMOs. That's all.

    Speaking on the subject, the Royal Society of Canada stated that until such time as people had proof of the safety of the foods they consume, it would perhaps be wise to label products.

    I'd also like to talk to you further about your comment to the effect that retail prices would increase by 5% or 6% if product labelling was enforced. Several weeks ago, an official from either Health Canada or International Trade told us that according to a Guelph University study, labelling would lead to price increases of 40% to 60%. I understood that to mean that labelling would lead to a 40% to 60% increase in retail prices.

    Would you care to comment on this?

  (1255)  

[English]

    Dr. Alan Wildeman: First of all, to address your second point, about what the actual percentage value is, I refer to two numbers. The second number is what the cost of labelling would be as a percentage of the value of the commodities the producers are selling. That's where the second number came from. I think it is a very important number to bear in mind, because the farmer doesn't win in that scenario.

    Secondly, whether there should be labelling, I take your point: everything else aside, what's in the best interest? I would suggest that mandatory labelling provides a venue for fearmongering that is not in the best interest of knowledge.

    A volunteer labelling process would, I suspect, result in most things being labelled, because it will then be in everyone's best interest for the free market to operate. The ability for people growing genetically engineered foods to sell their products... They can then label it. If they choose not to label it, it's probably not in their best interest, because the public will see other things being labelled and will start to be aware of it. So I think a volunteer labelling process will drive that middle road that I think Canadians have come to expect in many of their policies.

    The Chair: Dr. Fagan.

    Dr. John Fagan: Yes, I have two points.

    On the cost of labelling, I think this can be taken as a philosophical issue or it can be taken as an empirical market-based question. Studies by KPMG have been done in Australia and they've been done here in Canada. And similar studies have been done, often commissioned by the biotechnology industry to come up with numbers that argue that labelling would be a disaster for the marketplace, for consumers, for farmers, and everybody in between.

    But I urge you, as members of Parliament, to look at the empirical evidence around labelling, which is that 35 countries around the world have functional labelling regulations. Europe has had functional, effective regulations for a period of three or four years now. Now it's in place for everything; for some time it was just for part of the things. It works. Farmers haven't had a problem. Consumers haven't had increased levels. In fact, if you talk to the retailers in Europe, what you see is that their goal has been to deal with the labelling issue without raising the costs, and they have been able to successfully do that consistently in every country.

    So the argument is obvious on the basis of the empirical evidence that labelling is feasible and is economically not harmful on that level.

·  (1300)  

    The Chair: Dr. Keller.

    Dr. Wilf Keller: Labelling policies are being developed. There are hardly any countries where they've actually been implemented and used. And Europe has a ban on growing GMOs, so how can we say that they have an effective labelling policy? You can't grow them there.

    I think the Canadian system is based on a scientific rationale. We have mandatory labelling now for compositional changes. The Canadian General Standards Board is doing a lot of good work trying to develop consensus and move toward a voluntary labelling system, which will indeed help us move toward labelling where we can verify. We haven't discussed the reality of the fact that you can't label canola oil, soybean oil, corn starch, and all these derivatives, and those are actually what are found in most of the products when you shop. Those are going to be exempt anyway, because you can't verify. So I think we have to be very careful as Canadian society to move ahead with a scientific rationale for these things.

    The Chair: We've heard conflicting evidence on that point, whether or not you can identify. I know I am going back to Dr. Wildeman in a minute, but I would like Dr. Fagan to talk about that question of identifying in the oilseeds whether or not they've been genetically engineered.

    Dr. John Fagan: Good question.

    There are some grades of oil that can be tested. There are many grades of starch, for instance, in processed corn and potato materials that can be. There are some that cannot be tested. They could in principle, but it would be very hard work to do that and require very large samples to do it.

    I would point out that the European Union's new regulation on GMO labelling--which is now in the process of being revised, and will be implemented within the next six months, they expect--actually is moving from saying they're not going to require labelling of oils and highly processed starch products to a position that those shall be labelled as well. And they are doing it not simply on the basis of testing, but on the basis of a traceability system. This is how they are going forward. Again, they have quite a lot of evidence that such traceability systems, in conjunction with testing early in the chain, can reliably deliver products to the consumer that are honestly labelled as to being genetically modified or not.

    So there are two sides. Testing can be done, and it has its own limitations. But linked with traceability systems, you can provide a uniform system for the whole food chain, and this is what's being done in Europe. And I would point out that labelling is not a theoretical thing in either Europe or Japan. These programs have been operating effectively for years. And the data I showed earlier show just how effective they've been in controlling what is entering the marketplace. The products that were tested are products that were not labelled as GMO. What they are showing is that labelling is very accurate.

    The Chair: Dr. Wildeman.

    Dr. Alan Wildeman: I just want to make one brief comment on the labelling issue as well, which relates to the identity preservation, being able to track the identify of things all through the food chain, which is a very important thing to do.

    One of the real deceptions in the food system around labelling comes from so many examples. I showed one about apple juice. You go into the grocery store and you buy a tin of corn that says “Product of Canada”; well, it was not grown in Canada. So how are you going to know what a label actually means? And I say this not in contradiction to anything you've said about the labelling issue, but more as a point about labelling will become a bigger issue. The politics of labelling and the marketing around labelling I think will become a bigger issuer than the actual content of the droplet of oil or the bean in the tin.

·  (1305)  

    The Chair: I have one question for Dr. Wildeman. The example you used so well, which is the apple juice can example, considering the deception of the consumer that this particular example represents, and therefore the motivation of the industry, which is trying to sell that juice, how can you have so much faith in the marketplace to sort this all out, as you suggested in your position, when in fact your own example shows the marketplace is not to be trusted?

    Dr. Alan Wildeman: Because as I think Dr. Fagan pointed out, and probably all the people on the panel know, if you actually have the product in your hand, you can either do a DNA test to see if a gene is present or a protein test to see if it's present. If it's an oil, you can look at a profile of all the hydrocarbons and see whether in fact it did likely come from a genetic plant. You can track it. I think the apple juice in the tin is a tough one to track.

    I think around genetically modified foods, you don't want to make a mistake, because somebody will catch you with very sensitive technologies.

    The Chair: No, you're missing my point.

    You seem to be suggesting that voluntary labelling will catch on because industry will feel the pressure of consumers and do it, and therefore the marketplace will demand it and they will respond. But I'm saying the marketplace, which put those labels on those tins, was primarily to deceive the public, as opposed to inform the public. If you had a mandatory scheme--not that I've decided in favour of one or the other--the government could say what it was that had to be on the label.

    Dr. Alan Wildeman: I guess I see the voluntary labelling as the lesser of two evils, because with the voluntary labelling it provides an opportunity for identity preservation from the farm all the way through the system, in which the farmer has a better chance of getting some value back out of it.

    Mandatory labelling sends out the message that by default, everything else is better, which I think is a real risk.

    The Chair: Dr. Commoner, one last comment.

    Dr. Barry Commoner: Yes, I just want to make a comment about the point you made about the marketplace.

    There's an interesting historic situation here. Certainly in the United States, the Reagan-Thatcher era raised the level of the marketplace as a good thing to do.

    The Chair: Magic elixir.

    Dr. Barry Commoner: That's exactly the point at which the biotechnology industry was created, and I think it was very unfortunate, because the industry stands out as having a much lower level of regulation than had occurred in industries generally. Really, that's what we're battling with.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Well, this has been absolutely fascinating.

    We are novices in this field. We've had a series of meetings and a series of opinions. A lot of the people we had hoped would bring us scientific information instead came and told us their views about international trade, in which some of them were not experts. So it was really confusing. But we had you as a scientific panel, and I think you really expanded our knowledge of the science and also went beyond that into some of the politics and some of the players. So we're really very grateful to you, and we may ask you for more information or opinions through our three researchers, or perhaps our clerk.

    Thank you for your generosity of time in coming and your thought, and thank you for the work you do as part of your daily lives. Thanks very much.

    This meeting is adjourned.