As the House of Commons agriculture committee kicked off what will be a lengthy investigation into the agricultural biotechnology sector, MPs heard starkly different messages about what must be done.
Promoters of the technology insisted genetically modified varieties that contain genes to promote drought resistance or more efficient nitrogen use are at the core of increasing production to feed a growing world population and meeting climate change challenges.
And they pleaded for regulatory certainty that does not undermine “science-based” decisions with political or economic calculation.
“Our industry will be asking whether Canada has upheld its commitment to science-based regulations,” CropLife Canada president Lorne Hepworth said Dec. 16.
“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.”
MPs heard that the lack of social and economic calculation in regulations, as well as the dangers that migrating GMO genes present to other crops, threatens the industry.
Lucy Sharratt, Ottawa-based coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, said farmer fear of losing export markets because of GMO “contamination” of non-target plants is justified.
“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 in the School of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, told MPs that his PhD thesis prepared for the University of Manitoba involved a study on attitudes to GMO varieties among 2,500 prairie farmers.
He said many saw the value in the new varieties but there also were concerns about market reaction, corporate control of the new variety seeds and gene flow to unintended plants.
He said regulations should consider socio-economic risks of newly approved varieties, citing the proposal in Alex Atamanenko’s Bill C-474 that would require the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to incorporate a market impact assessment in its approval process.
“Parliamentary intervention is required to expand the CFIA’s mandate to regulate biotechnology more effectively in Canada,” he said.
Mauro said the inability of the biotechnology industry to control the inadvertent migration of the GMO gene is a potential industry killer, particularly as researchers work to include pharmaceutical traits in plants.
“If we’re talking about pharmaceutical-trait crops, all it takes is for pharmaceuticals to get into the food supply for the entire food system to collapse,” he told MPs. “These are the types of issues we are talking about when we talk about increasing our regulatory system to protect Canadians and also to protect the very industry that is developing these crops because as soon as that happens, Canadian biotech is over.”
Ontario Agri-Food Technologies president Gord Surgeoner said science-based and predictable regulations are required.
He suggested the approval process for new GMO varieties could become more transparent with more information released.
But he also said that critics complaining that seed companies will have more corporate control over the seed supply through patents forget that corporate concentration affects most parts of farming from the availability of inputs and equipment to financing, product transportation and export agents.
In all cases, a handful of companies control the market, he said.
