Canadian consumers who want all genetically modified foods labeled should brace for higher food prices, says a top executive at the Western Grain Elevator Association.
Ed Guest, executive director of the WGEA, said food prices and farm production costs will rise significantly if Canada opts for a policy requiring mandatory labels for foods containing genetically modified ingredients.
Under existing regulations, GM foods don’t need special labels unless Health Canada deems that they pose a health or safety risk to consumers.
“If the buyer is willing to pay more for the product and the farmer’s willing to take less … then maybe the costs (of a mandatory labeling system) could be shared,” said Guest.
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“One way or the other, there is a cost to be borne.”
To ensure that GM contamination hasn’t occurred, crops would have to be tested at every stage in the supply line including production, storage, delivery, transportation, processing, distribution and retail sale, he said.
In Australia, a mandatory labeling policy on foods containing detectable traces of GM material is expected to cost between $300 million and $1.5 billion per year.
“There are costs to (segregating) anything,” said Guest, whose organization represents major grain companies in Western Canada.
“We have not done a study that says it would cost this much or that much to segregate GM products but we do know that identity preservation costs more … and it’s not cents per tonne more, it’s dollars per tonne.”
Restructuring costly
Grain handling companies already deliver segregated crops such as malting barley, specialty oilseeds and special wheat varieties that are grown under contract. But developing a bulk handling system that requires frequent testing and assigns liability for contamination would amount to a massive restructuring that is neither efficient nor economical, Guest said.
Patty Rosher, Canadian Wheat Board spokesperson for biotechnology issues, agrees that establishing an efficient segregation system would be a costly and time-consuming exercise.
The board opposes introduction of GM wheat varieties until global customers accept it and Canada’s grain handling system is equipped to handle segregated crops.
“There’s a lot of things that have to be done before we’re ready to market GM wheat to the world,” Rosher said. “If we lose the market to Japan for example, the loss would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Rosher and Guest agree that reasonable tolerance thresholds are essential, as are rapid, portable testing units that can detect GM contamination at all stages of production and delivery.
Len Seguin, chief grain inspector for the Canadian Grain Commission, said developing those systems is difficult because different machines and crops produce different results.
Seguin said tolerance levels for GM contamination should be defined and liability issues must be addressed before detection systems are designed.
“In practical terms, we know that zero percent tolerance is unrealistic,” Seguin said. “Bulk handling systems are not
designed to deal with absolute purity.”
