The Prairies’ second largest genetically modified canola family should be approved for import into the European Union within weeks, industry sources say.
What would the approval of the InVigor line of MS8RS3 hybrids mean for prairie farmers in this year’s high-priced market?
“Nothing,” said Canola Council of Canada agronomy vice-president Joanne Buth. “We’re still at the same point we were. We haven’t really moved ahead in any commercial sense.”
That’s because there is still a giant pit lying in front of all Canadian canola, and it will be bridged only after a pygmy-sized amount of canola can get over it.
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“We need to get approval for T45,” said Buth about the last remnants of the Liberty Link open pollinated varieties. These have not been commercially sold since 2005, but traces of the seed can still be found on the Prairies in old seed stocks or in farm-saved seed.
The problem for prairie canola growers hoping to tap into the European market, which has been paying the highest prices for canola this year, is that the EU has a zero tolerance policy for unapproved GM “events,” so any trace of T45 is a deal breaker.
“Any shipment would be rejected,” said Buth.
T45 varieties are Exceed, 2631 LL, Swallow, SW Legion LL, SW Flare LL and LBD 2393 LL.
Although seed growers no longer commercially produce this line of canola, the canola industry wants to get T45 approved in the EU so that its presence in a shipment of other varieties wouldn’t doom that cargo.
Unfortunately for the industry and farmers, that approval will likely take until early 2008, Buth said.
Bayer’s MS8RS3 InVigor varieties, which make up about 35 percent of the canola grown on the Prairies, were expected to get EU approval this week.
Monsanto’s GT73 event, which is the genetic basis of the Roundup Ready varieties, has already been approved and could be imported into Europe as seed if no other varieties are present in a shipment. Since that is practically impossible, no Canadian canola seed has yet moved to Europe, although oil from Canada and oil from Canadian canola crushed in Turkey and Dubai have been shipped to Europe in the past year.
The string of approvals in Europe is coming in the face of continued hostility from anti-GM groups and from European politicians.
The EU system allows its political level to block approvals made by its bureaucracy, but after a certain amount of time a default system kicks in and approvals can occur unless the politicians take extraordinary measures.
Since those extraordinary measures have not occurred, canola approvals have been slowly appearing.
