There is a nasty pest threatening the flow of agriculture trade and nothing is being done to control it, says the head of one of Canada’s commodity groups.
Gordon Bacon, chief executive officer of Pulse Canada, said countries are using nontariff barriers related to “bogus” food safety issues to restrict trade of crops, livestock and food products.
While agricultural leaders are attempting to negotiate substantial reductions in tariffs by Jan. 1, 2005, through the World Trade Organization, little is being done to address these food safety-based barriers.
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“It’s not on the WTO agenda at all,” said Bacon.
It won’t be a campaign issue in the federal election. But it should be an agricultural priority of whichever party takes office, said Bacon, because it threatens an agricultural export sector valued at $24.3 billion in 2003.
“This is a big concern.”
That’s the message he delivered to Bob Speller when he met with the federal agriculture minister earlier this month.
Bacon said the closure of the American border over the BSE issue showcases how trade barriers based on false concerns can have an enormous impact on the agricultural economy.
“If beef isn’t a good enough example we can cite examples in the grain industry that also point to the same thing.”
Earlier this year, a shipment of beans from southern Alberta was stopped at the U.S. border because it was found to contain 0.021 parts per million of vinclozolin, the active ingredient in the BASF fungicide Ronalin.
Yet American authorities allow vinclozolin residues on lettuce at levels 475 times greater than what was found on the Canadian beans.
Another trade incident surfaced on Jan. 1 when India, Canada’s largest pulse customer, required shipments be fumigated for stem and bulb nematodes, pests that have been found in only one shipment of irrigated peas from southern Alberta three decades ago.
“That one incident is what the Indian government is concerned about,” said Bacon.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has offered to analyze samples from cargoes of peas and lentils destined for India to certify them free of the pests, but the Indian authorities said that will not suffice.
Fumigation is a costly process that cannot be performed when the air or cargo temperature is below 5 C, jeopardizing winter sales to Canada’s biggest pulse destination.
“We believe the Indians are using measures that aren’t justified that amount to restrictions in trade,” said Bacon.
The incident highlights the dangers of these newly emerging science-related trade barriers.
Some progress has been made on the Indian issue. The CFIA has worked out an agreement in principal allowing exporters to use phosphine gas, a cheaper alternative to the methyl bromide fumigation technique, but that is a small concession.
But the Indians still want the CFIA to conduct a two-year survey of prairie pea production to prove the pests don’t exist in Western Canada.
In the meantime, the new phytosanitary measures have already taken a toll on the pulse sector.
“What some companies are telling me is they just quit shipping to India in this period because of the uncertainty,” said Bacon.
He said the Canadian government should start pushing for the establishment of internationally accepted food safety standards and tests.
“We not only need science-based systems, but we need systems that are based on the same science and that’s what we don’t have right now.”
