As the House of Commons agriculture committee held its inaugural December meetings to launch a protracted 2011 study of the biotechnology industry, MP Frank Valeriote reached an early conclusion.
The debate is divisive but the two sides should be able to talk through the disagreements.
The Liberal from Guelph, Ont., who jointly proposed the investigation with Saskatchewan Conservative Randy Hoback, had just listened to the opposing views of an industry promoter and a critic of genetic modification.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two different solitudes and that based on the information I’ve had, that these solitudes can co-exist if people have the will to sit down and discuss common ground and discuss those matters that are of deepest concern,” he said.
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CropLife Canada president Lorne Hepworth and Canadian Biotechnology Action Network co-ordinator Lucy Sharratt agreed that more discussion is a good thing, but they exchanged barbs about which side is responsible for failure of past efforts at consensus.
The committee has agreed to hold weeks of hearings on the potential for biotechnology and the potential pitfalls when the House of Commons resumes Jan. 31 after a six-week Christmas break.
MPs plan visits to laboratories at biotech hotbeds such as the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Guelph.
They will hear arguments from GMO boosters who argue that using genetic modification to change plant varieties or create new ones will be an essential part of growing more food to feed an expanding world population and help farmers cope with climate change and environmental challenges through better drought and salt resistance and more efficient use of soil and atmospheric nitrogen.
Proponents will also promise use of plants to produce life-saving pharmaceuticals.
Critics will caution that Canada’s regulatory system and its science-based decisions cannot protect farmers from migrating GM genes that contaminate non-GM crops and make weeds herbicide-resistant.
They will also support the idea now before Parliament in NDP MP Alex Atamanenko’s private member’s Bill C-474 that because of consumer opposition to GMOs in many countries, approval of new varieties should include assessing potential market harm if the proposed variety is approved for market.
When the hearings kicked off in Ottawa in mid-December, Hoback said both sides of the argument must be aired, although he is an industry booster.
“I just look at it and I get really excited but there are some questions, there are some hurdles that we need to answer,” he said.
“I want to see this industry grow. Regardless of what we think personally, it has to happen. If we want to feed our world, this is where we have to go.”
The initial meetings also gave MPs a glimpse of the political divide they will be exposing and in the end will try to reconcile.
Hepworth warned MPs that injecting market, economic or public opinion elements into variety approval would undermine the biotech industry.
“Our industry will be asking whether Canada has upheld its commitment to science-based regulations,” he said.
“Without a solid science-based regulatory system, our industry will not be able to invest in this country to the same degree that it has in the past, particularly when there are options to invest in countries where the criteria for success are clear and predictable.”
Gord Surgeoner, president of Ontario Agri-Food Technologies, said MPs should not begin their study with the assumption that current regulations are not adequate.
“The Canadian regulation of biotechnology is not broken,” he said.
“We have arguably the best and most respected regulatory system in the world. There should not, therefore, be wholesale change but we can, as with anything that we do in society, continue to improve.”
Sharratt argued that the ability of science to create new products is outstripping government’s ability to regulate, at the potential peril of farmers and consumers.
“We really don’t think that the segregation systems were given enough thought or really invested in before the technology was allowed onto the market,” she said.
Ian Mauro, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Victoria’s School of Environmental Studies who wrote a thesis based on extensive research into the attitudes of 2,500 prairie farmers toward GM varieties, agreed.
He said farmers see the potential for the technology but also worry about market disruption, gene flow to unintended crops and corporate control of seeds.
“Parliamentary intervention is required to expand the CFIA’s (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) mandate to regulate biotechnology in Canada more effectively,” he said.
Unintended spread of pharmaceutical genes into food plants would lead to a collapse of Canada’s food system and exports, Mauro added.
