Canadian officials expect good news when European Union officials meet this month to consider whether to amend its virtual ban on feed containing trace amounts of genetically modified material.
There is a proposal to lift the threshold from .01 percent of GM material to 0.1 percent.
The material in question would be approved in the exporting country but not in the EU .
Canadian crop sector officials in Europe on a trade mission last week with agriculture minister Gerry Ritz wish the threshold was higher, but they see it as the beginning of European change.
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Canadian Grains Council secretary Dennis Stephens told council members in a Jan. 28 memo that it will reduce the risk that dust from a GM crop could contaminate a non-GM shipment in a cargo container.
Last year, soybean shipments were blocked because of corn dust contamination.
Stephens said there has been “a dramatic turn in EU regulatory policies concerning products produced through modern biotechnology.”
He credited Ritz for some of that change.
Ritz used an international agriculture ministers’ meeting in Berlin and EU meetings in Brussels last week to insist that GM varieties are an answer to world hunger.
He also said countries should not use regulations to disrupt trade, including unrealistically low threshold levels for unapproved GM content.
Europe should increase the threshold for food products as well as feed, he added.
“As the world population grows and consumers look for more nutritious and protein-packed foodstuffs, countries must embrace sound scientific principles,” he told a late January news conference from Morocco at the end of the trade mission.
“By using cutting edge biotechnology, farmers can better deal with difficult weather or disease and continue to provide an abundance of quality foodstuffs to consumers around the world.”
Stephens praised Ritz for raising the low-level tolerance issue at “the highest of levels in Europe.”
Grain Growers of Canada executive director Richard Phillips travelled with Ritz and told reporters that low-level tolerance was a key demand in every conversation.
He too praised Ritz and said he hopes the issue is reflected in a Canada-EU free trade agreement later this year.
Grain Farmers of Ontario chair Don Kenny travelled to Brussels for Ritz’s visitandsaidtheEU ’sintoleranceof low-level presence is a threat to the almost one million tonnes of soybeans expor ted to Europe from Ontario each year.
“Allowing a low-level presence of unapproved GM in future grain shipments would be a great benefit to our soybean farmers,” he said.
