Five years after a genetically modified variety nearly lost Canadian flax growers their largest export market, the industry is finally ready to revisit the idea of GM crops.
“The industry wants to take a look at what should we be doing, if anything, to discourage or encourage some of the potential that this has,” said Barry Hall, president of the Flax Council of Canada.
Hall was instructed at the council’s last board of directors meeting to organize a workshop to discuss the GM crop issue. The meeting will take place some time this fall.
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The topic has been largely ignored since the attempted commercialization of CDC Triffid, a herbicide-tolerant flax variety from the University of Saskatchewan that set off a firestorm of controversy in Europe, where 60 percent of Canadian flax is exported.
Federal regulators approved the GM variety in 1996 and it was sold to farmers for a brief time before the industry withdrew it from the market in 2001 to appease angry customers.
Hall said the negative backlash shook the industry to its core and many are “still highly sensitive” to the topic.
“It’s a very go-slow approach from the Canadian industry at this point.”
The coming workshop is intended to gauge the industry’s mood to see if it is time to devote resources to GM flax, a neglected area of research and development.
The workshop will provide the industry with an opportunity to formalize a position on biotechnology.
“Since the Triffid incident we have never put together a statement or a policy,” Hall said.
On the agenda will be an exploration of how biotechnology research has evolved from a focus on crops that offer benefits to farmers to ones that could appeal to consumers.
An example is a GM variety developed at the University of Hamburg in Germany that contains an enhanced profile of omega 3 fatty acids.
Consuming omega 3 fats can help reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer and arthritis.
Flax seeds and oils are the richest sources of alpha-linolenic acids, which are essential omega 3 fats. However, crops do not contain two other key omega 3 fatty acids commonly found in fatty fish such as herring, salmon, mackerel and blue fin tuna.
Researchers at the University of Hamburg were able to create a GM plant that contains ALA in addition to the long chain omega 3 fatty acids found in fish by inserting genes from algae and moss into flax plants.
Hall said there is significant consumer potential for such a crop considering that global fish stocks are on the decline and that concerns have been raised about trace amounts of mercury and PCB contamination in certain kinds of fish.
“It is something we would certainly follow with interest,” he said.
