The GM genie is out of the bottle
You’d think we’d poisoned them.
The European media is headlining news that conventional hybrid canola seed imported from Canada turned out to have a slight contamination of genetically modified seed.
Although the seed company followed plot isolation rules, pollen from GM canola apparently got in and gave some of the seed the Roundup Ready trait. European measurement puts the contamination level at 0.4 percent or less.
Environmental groups, anti-GM activists and opposition politicians are demanding the crops be ripped up and destroyed. This is despite the fact that the European Union’s own rules say a food product containing less than one percent GM material can be labeled non-GM.
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Also, vegetable oil and margarine produced from these crops will contain no GM material by the simple fact that processing removes the protein and protein is where the altered gene shows up.
The fact that there is no food safety problem has not stopped the anti-GM movement from fanning hysteria.
Its argument is simple: European governments say the safety of GM foods is unproven and have ordered that no GM canola be grown in the EU. The canola at the centre of this controversy has GM seed in it, therefore the safeguard system failed and consumer safety was endangered.
The seed company, Advanta, says the affair shows the need for clear purity measures for what is and isn’t GM-free.
Zero-tolerance, the level wanted by anti-GM activists, is impractical because of the difficulty of proving it.
It would also eliminate trade in seed, at least between North America and the EU, because it would seem impossible to grow non-GM canola here under such exacting standards.
With the majority of canola grown in North American being GM varieties, the “polluting” pollen will move either by the wind or by bees.
GM seed can also spread by humans, like in ostensibly GM-free Brazil where there are allegations that some of the soybean crop could already be genetically modified because of smuggled seed from Argentina.
The genie is out of the bottle. Whether through natural migration or by illegal action by farmers, GM crops are spreading.
So long as GM crops are freely grown in many parts of the world, efforts to create zero-tolerance “GM-free islands” will be a losing battle.
Government efforts would be better directed at setting reasonable definitions of what constitutes “GM-free” and a practical food labeling system that allows consumers to make their own choices.
