University of Guelph president Alastair Summerlee began a speech to a “feeding a hungry world” conference last week on a sombre note.
“In the next hour (around the world), 200 people will die of starvation,” he said at a conference on animal agriculture sponsored by many Canadian agricultural heavy hitters including Cargill, Maple Leaf Foods and Alberta beef producers.
But he quickly went positive.
With land and abundant fresh water, Canada can be a major player in meeting world hunger and food needs in the next half century, said Summerlee.
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And animal protein will be a major part of that effort.
“There will be a need to double food production in the next 30 to 50 years,” he said. Seventy percent of that increase will come from innovation and technological advances in the agricultural sector.
It includes development of more efficient genetically engineered livestock.
“We have to think about how we create a diverse agri-food sector and that has to include people who only want to be engaged in organic farming or people who only want to be engaged in using genetically modified products,” he said in an interview after his speech. “It has to include using technology to improve the efficiency of the livestock sector. It is a conversation we have to have.”
However, the Ottawa industry-sponsored conference was not the place to have it.
The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network was told it was not welcome.
In a message from organizer Crystal Mackay at the Ontario Farm Animal Council, the anti-GMO lobby group was told it does not “meet the requirements for being an industry stakeholder who supports the Summit’s objectives.”
Summerlee said he was sorry the group was barred. “I think it would be useful to have a conversation and to be able to say directly that GMO, including in the livestock sector, has to be part of the solution.”
Lucy Sharratt, CBAN co-ordinator, agreed on the need for the conversation. She said a University of Guelph application to approve for sale a pig genetically engineered to produce less phosphorous in its manure would be the first GMO animal in the market.
“I was interested in being there to hear what the industry is thinking about introduction of GM animals,” she said in an Oct. 21 interview.
“It is our view that it would create a crisis of confidence among consumers about pork at a time when the hog industry doesn’t need more problems. It apparently is not a message the industry wants to hear.”
She said the ‘enviropig’ is sold as environmentally friendly “but what they are missing is that GM is considered by most Canadians not an environmental solution but an environmental problem.”
