The Canadian Food Inspection Agency intends to review the rules governing genetically modified wheat trials in the wake of discovering unapproved volunteer Roundup Ready wheat growing in Alberta.
“We will take some time to contemplate what we’ve seen and how it has unfolded and see if it’s necessary to make changes to either program directives or regulations,” said David Bailey, director of the CFIA’s plant production division.
He said Canada’s regulatory regime is respected for its rigour by international trade partners partly because it incorporates a process of continuous improvement.
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“As we learn things we will make adjustments as we go forward,” said Bailey.
The National Farmers Union wants to see one big change.
“The only way to prevent these incidents happening in the future is to ban outdoor testing,” said Terry Boehm, chair of the NFU’s seed committee.
He said trait escapes are inevitable despite all the precautions companies are forced to take.
“Nature is pretty promiscuous and, in spite of what are considered tight protocols, escapes happen,” said Boehm.
Bailey said it is incorrect to conclude that the discovery of Roundup Ready wheat growing in a ditch along an access road to an oil rig in southern Alberta had anything to do with research trials conducted between 1998 and 2000.
“I want to make it clear that there’s no direct link between this find and any field trials,” he said.
The trials occurred too long ago and too far away to make that link and the germplasm of the plants found growing in a ditch in 2017 is different than the germplasm used by Monsanto in its trials. It is an unknown variety of wheat.
Bailey said the CFIA is still managing the incident but when things calm down the agency will look at the latest science and talk to people managing field trials and others to see if any rule changes are required.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service took steps starting in 2016 to enhance its regulatory oversight of GM wheat field trials after three separate cases of volunteer GM wheat occurred in that country.
It instituted new requirements for additional record keeping and reporting and extended post-harvest monitoring periods.
GM wheat trials in Western Canada came to a halt after Monsanto announced in 2004 that it was shelving its Roundup Ready wheat program.
But there has been a resurgence of trials starting in about 2013. Last year,11 trials were carried out in Manitoba and 43 in Saskatchewan. There were more GM wheat trials in Saskatchewan than GM canola trials in 2017.
