The fight over Roundup Ready wheat has moved to a new battlefront.
For months, public discussion about the genetically modified wheat developed by Monsanto has focused on the potential market impact.
But last week, the debate shifted to environmental safety.
The Canadian Wheat Board released a report by three University of Manitoba scientists that says Roundup Ready wheat poses an unacceptable risk to the environment.
“The unconfined release of Roundup Ready wheat will negatively affect the environment and limit farmers’ ability to conserve natural resources on farms in Western Canada,” said the report.
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The researchers say the introduction of the GM wheat would trigger a chain of events that would ultimately lead to a decline in minimum-tillage farming, a practice that provides environmental benefits for prairie agriculture.
That will be bad not only for the environment but for farmers’ pocketbooks.
“This will threaten the ability of farmers to capture the environmental, resource conservation and economic value of low-disturbance direct seeding,” the authors wrote.
They say the unconfined release of Roundup Ready wheat will result in the movement among wheat crops of the transgene that provides resistance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.
That will result in a proliferation of volunteer Roundup Ready wheat, which will in turn increase the cost and complexity of pre-seeding weed control and eventually drive farmers away from low-disturbance direct seeding.
“In this fashion the unconfined release of Roundup Ready wheat would create a movement among farmers towards increased tillage in Western Canada.”
The report also raises other environment-related concerns, including:
- An increased herbicide load on the environment, arising from greater applications of Roundup.
- A heightened risk of selecting out weeds that are resistant to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup).
- Problems for farmers who want to save wheat seed for use the next year, due to the possibility of contamination from Roundup Ready wheat.
Board spokesperson Louise Waldman said a key finding in the report is that the environmental risk of Roundup Ready wheat will be borne by all producers.
“The impact will not just be on farmers who choose to use the product, but on other farmers as well,” she said.
The board submitted the report to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s plant biosafety office on June 19 as part of its effort to prevent the release of the genetically modified wheat developed by Monsanto.
Waldman also repeated the board’s recent call for Monsanto to voluntarily withdraw its application to the CFIA for an environmental safety assessment of Roundup Ready wheat.
However, an official with Monsanto Canada said that’s not going to happen and criticized the CWB report for jumping the gun.
Trish Jordan said the CFIA process is designed to conduct a thorough scientific review of the same issues that are brought up in the CWB-commissioned report.
“Until the data has been collected and analyzed it’s pretty premature to state that the technology will pose a risk to environmental and agronomic sustainability in Western Canada.”
Jordan acknowledged there are risks associated with the introduction of Roundup Ready wheat, but said the issue is whether those risks can be managed and whether they are outweighed by the benefits.
She said many of the report’s conclusions are at odds with mainstream scientific opinion on issues like the frequency of wheat out-crossing.
Waldman defended the study, saying it includes a list of 73 scientific references, with more than half of those coming from peer-reviewed scientific journals.
And she said the report fills a gap in the GM wheat debate.
“It’s important to note that this study is actually looking at the environmental risks, not the benefits,” she said.
“There is a lack of appropriate studies on wheat addressing the issues the scientists raised in this report.”
Monsanto submitted a package of data supporting Roundup Ready wheat to federal regulatory agencies in late December.
