The European Union recently delivered what Canada’s grain and oilseed sector views as a good news-bad news announcement on biotechnology approvals.
The good news for Canadian farmers is that the EU finally approved 10 new traits for import and renewed seven others.
The approvals were the first since November, 2013. The traits had been pending for 69 months on average. Another 40 GM applications for import have yet to receive approval.
The bad news is that the EU introduced a new proposal that would allow member states to opt out from the Europe-wide approval process in the future.
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Jim Everson, executive director of Soy Canada, said approval of the new traits had been held up by six-month long review of the GM approval process launched by the new president of the European Commission.
“During that period of time all those approvals were put on hold, so they kind of started to accumulate.”
The 10 new authorizations in-clude one canola, one corn, three cotton, and five soybean traits. They add to the 58 GM traits already approved in the EU.
There isn’t much of a market for GM food crops in the EU but there is substantial demand for GM feed crops. More than 60 percent of the vegetable protein fed to EU cattle comes from soybeans and soy meal imported from countries where GM crop cultivation is widespread.
“Any time that there is some new innovation that’s approved in our major markets that’s a good thing for Canadian producers and industry,” said Everson.
There are four traits that should have appeal with Canadian soybean growers: Monsanto’s Omega 3, dicamba tolerant and high oleic traits and DuPont Pioneer’s high oleic trait.
The Commission also approved Monsanto’s TruFlex Roundup Ready canola, which will provide growers with better weed control and a wider window of application.
Monsanto is still awaiting Chinese approval of the new canola trait. Once that happens the product will be commercialized in Canada.
Monsanto and DuPont had been awaiting EU approval of their high oleic soybean traits. The U.S. soybean industry is keen to start competing with Canada’s high oleic canola.
“The European Commission’s approval of the Plenish high oleic trait marks an important step forward in the full commercialization of Plenish high oleic soybeans,” DuPont said in a press release.
A spokesperson for the company said DuPont still requires EU ap-proval of the stacked product, which is the Plenish trait plus the glypho-sate tolerance trait, before it can scale up acres.
That is expected by the end of 2015, paving the way for full commercialization in 2016.
But it wasn’t all good news. Everson is concerned about the commission’s proposal to allow member states to opt out of EU approvals.
“When we negotiated the Canada/European free trade agreement we were negotiating with a single market of 500 million people,” he said.
“What the European Union is saying here is that in this particular instance you’re not talking about the whole market anymore.”
