A Canadian sugar company refuses to bow to pressure to stop growing genetically modified sugar beets.
Lantic Inc. says its growers will continue planting Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beets in 2011.
“There’s nothing holding us back,” said Doug Emek, Lantic’s general manager of western operations.
Earlier this month, the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN) sent a letter to Lantic asking the company to reverse its 2009 decision to grow GM sugar beets in light of a recent U.S. court ruling.
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On Nov. 30, 2010, a U.S. district court judge ordered the destruction of Roundup Ready sugar beet seedlings.
Monsanto appealed the decision and has received a temporary stay of the ruling from the United States Court of Appeals, while it considers briefings to overturn the injunction issued by the district court.
CBAN used the court case surrounding the U.S. approval of Monsanto’s GM sugar beets to reissue its call for Lantic to stop contracting GM sugar beets in Canada.
“We request that you take urgent action to ensure that sugar in Canada is reverted to its previous non-GE status. We trust that Lantic will want to avoid being isolated globally as the only producer of GE sugar,” CBAN co-ordinator Lucy Sharratt wrote in a Dec. 1 letter to the company.
Emek said Roundup Ready sugar beets have full regulatory approval in Canada and Lantic has no intention of discontinuing production of a crop that provides benefits to growers and the company processing their sugar beets.
He said by switching to Roundup Ready sugar beets, growers have improved their weed control while using less herbicides and making fewer passes across their fields. And they are generating better yields.
Emek estimates 98 to 99 percent of Alberta’s 30,000 sugar beet acres were sown to Roundup Ready varieties in 2010.
The product the growers deliver to Lantic’s processing plant in Taber, Alta., is more weed-free than it used to be, which means the sugar beets store better while awaiting processing.
“That is really a key benefit for us,” said Emek.
He takes issue with CBAN’s assertion that Lantic is contaminating its brands with GM sugar.
“The sugar is not changed. There is absolutely no difference down to a molecular level. There has been many tests done on that,” he said.
The Roundup Ready gene is contained in the protein, not the sugar. If any protein somehow accompanied the sugar, it would be eliminated in the purification and crystallization processes.
Emek said another misleading comment from CBAN is the suggestion that there is “a strong possibility” pollen from the GM sugar beets could contaminate other crops.
Sugar beets are biennials that do not produce seed during the first year they are grown, which is when commercial crops are harvested for their roots.
“There is no danger, none whatsoever, of pollen flow from commercial Roundup Ready soybean fields. They don’t flower,” he said.
The only time the plants flower is when they are being used to produce seed, which mainly happens in Oregon.
CBAN has also suggested that some Canadians will stop buying Lantic sugar, which is primarily marketed under the Rogers label in Western Canada.
Emek said that has not occurred. “No one has stopped buying sugar from us and that has been the experience in the U.S. as well.”
