World grain trade could become a disaster if Europe and not the Americas sets the standards, a U.S. expert told the annual meeting of the Canada Grains Council.
“We think it necessary that this be done yesterday,” said Paul Green, chair of the North American Export Grain Association, about efforts to harmonize North, South and Central American approvals for accidental levels of genetically modified material in non-GM grain shipments.
“I just can’t tell you how urgent this is,” he told a panel discussing North American efforts to minimize the problems caused by trace amounts of non-approved GM material in shipments.
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Participants in the conference were alarmed to hear about the European Union’s severe restrictions on unintended traces – called “adventitious presence” or AP by the industry – for GM crops in non-GM shipments.
The EU is introducing rules that will restrict the amount of AP GM material to 0.9 percent in non-GM grain shipments, but that is only for GM material that has been approved for entry into the EU.
The EU has now approved a small number of GM crop modifications, such as a few varieties of corn, that can be shipped into the EU as long as it is labelled as being genetically modified. No canola modifications have been approved, so GM canola from Canada is still banned.
Trace levels of GM substances that have not been fully approved, but have been given a safety approval by the EU, have an AP level of only 0.5 percent.
For traces of GM substances that have not yet been given a preliminary safety review by the EU, none is acceptable.
A panel of industry experts from Canada, the United States and Mexico discussed their efforts to forge an agreement between those three countries to allow unanimous and quicker approvals of GM substances in crops. Right now, border problems occur when one country has approved a GM product but another hasn’t.
Paul Haddow of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said his organization now forces crop developers to seek approval in both the U.S. and Canada at the same time so these kinds of problems don’t occur in Canada-U.S. trade.
Mexican authorities are also trying to find a way to avoid trade snarl-ups because of different GM approvals on each side of the border.
U.S. government representative Lloyd Day said the North American governments are also working with governments throughout Central and South America to find a way to stop AP problems from blocking trade.
A number of industry representatives said countries need to be more willing to accept each other’s approvals for GM products until they have time to do their own assessments.
Simply saying there is zero tolerance for trace amounts of substances that have not been fully approved puts huge obstacles before the grain trade, Green said in an interview.
“I can do (identity preservation) to make sure no significant amounts (of GM substances) occur in my shipments,” said Green.
“I cannot guarantee that zero is there. We cannot deal with zero tolerance.”
Green said countries like Canada, the U.S. and Mexico need to start accepting each other’s tests even if their own aren’t completed.
“You can tell other people that they ought to have science-based AP models, but we don’t have one yet.”
He said developing nations have not yet decided how to deal with this issue, and it’s up to North American governments and industries to develop a reasonable system for AP acceptances before they adopt an unreasonable one.
“Without one, people will follow the European model, where hysteria is the guiding light, rather than a science-based true risk,” said Green.
“We need clarity on what a science-based risk assessment and science-based AP process would look like.”
