GUELPH, Ont. – It is becoming almost impossible to guarantee an absence of genetically modified presence in Canadian crops because of the spread of GM varieties, says a plant researcher.
Rene Van Acker, associate dean of the University of Guelph’s plant agriculture department, told a meeting of the House of Commons agriculture committee Feb. 8 that it is impossible to stop GM genes from migrating to fields where they are not wanted.
And that creates huge problems for Canadian exporters trying to get product into markets where there is zero or little tolerance for GMO presence.
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“When crops of novel traits are grown commercially outside for any length of time, the movement of those traits beyond their intended destination is virtually inevitable,” he told MPs on a national tour to study the biotechnology industry.
“The risk of escape increases with scale of production and associated equipment and as the number of participants in the production and handling increases.”
Once the gene “flows” to places it is not supposed to be, the contamination cannot be reversed.
“Once a given trait has escaped into the environment, which includes the agricultural supply chain, retraction is difficult, if not impossible,” said Van Acker.
In a later interview, he said the food chain is close to reaching a tipping point when GMO content in food is inevitable and must be accepted at low levels.
“I think a lot of people wonder at what point will it be completely ubiquitous in the food system and I know the organic sector wonders that as well.”
He said it means the world must come to grips with this by making regulations that accept a low-level presence of GMO content in virtually all food.
New Democratic Party agriculture critic Alex Atamanenko, who had sponsored a bill to make it more difficult to approve GM varieties, said in an interview Feb. 9 he does not accept the view that GM genes are so universal as to be unstoppable.
“I think the horse is still in the barn,” he said. “This is not inevitable. We can still protect individual crops from the threat of contamination. The organic industry can survive, but we have to take action.”
Van Acker saw another looming problem.
Given the unavoidable migration of genes, he said governments also must deal with containment when plants are developed that contain pharmaceutical traits that should not be allowed into the food chain.
“It’s not realistic to claim absolutely zero and that is the thin edge of the wedge,” he said in an interview.
“It is the case there may need to be absolute containment in some cases and I would argue we do need absolute containment for regulated events.”
It would mean that when plants with pharmaceutical traits reach the production stage, they must be grown and processed in contained industrial sites where gene escape is not possible.
The idea of farmers becoming involved in lucrative “pharming” is impractical, he said.
But at the moment, Canada has two categories: not approved and general release.
He said little is known about how an “in between category” of confined production would be designed.
“What is the structure of an in between category?” he said.
“What’s the jurisdiction, what are the laws, where is the liability and what is the recourse? This is a whole new frontier. I scratch my head on how to set it up.”
