In the hype around genetically modified foods, environmental groups often raise the spectre of herbicide tolerant plants spreading their genes to wild relatives, creating super weeds.
Such claims are the bread and butter of the anti-GM crowd, but in reality, worries about super weeds are groundless.
The super weeds claim was made a few weeks ago by Greenpeace and several Japanese consumer and environmental groups, who took the opportunity of an international meeting in Montreal on the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to chastise Canada for creating genetic pollution.
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The groups said they had proof of canola growing in Japanese ports where seed from Canada is unloaded. Canola was also found in ditches in roads leading from the ports.
They raised the worry that these herbicide-tolerant plants could spread their genes to native relatives, creating super weeds, and said the situation was proof that GM crops present an uncontrollable danger.
Greenpeace said the situation requires urgent action to clean up the contamination and is reason enough to halt import of canola from Canada.
It should come as little surprise that ports that receive grain will have spillage and some of the seed will find cracks and bare soil in which to germinate. There no doubt has been canola growing in Japanese ports ever since the first boatload was imported decades ago, just like there are soybeans, corn and wheat growing from spilled grain.
But this is hardly an uncontrollable environmental problem.
Indeed, just last week the Canola Council of Canada released a survey that found most prairie canola growers report that herbicide tolerant canola volunteers are as easy to manage as conventional canola volunteers.
As farmers know, herbicide tolerant does not mean the plant is tolerant to all herbicides, rather only one herbicide specific to the system in use: Roundup, Liberty or Smart. It doesn’t take a super potent herbicide to kill a herbicide tolerant canola plant. A simple, cheap broadleaf herbicide like 2,4-D will do the job.
This all might seem to be a tempest in a teapot, but this kind of issue could boil over into major trade disruption if the biosafety protocol that was being negotiated in Montreal goes the wrong way.
The broad goal of the protocol is to protect diversity within the environment by exchanging risk assessment information, making sure governments know when GM seeds are being imported for cultivation and spelling out the information that needs to accompany GM seed and plants. But the protocol appears to be moving toward a more restrictive structure that could block trade and stymie GM research and development.
The negotiations are causing a deep split, with Canada, the United States and the world’s other major food exporters arguing against such restrictions while several major food importers and the developing world are on the opposite side.
Although the biosafety protocol is little known now, there is a serious potential for it to generate many trade frictions and headlines in the future.
