Canada’s attempt to become a world leader in implementing a policy to deal with contamination from unapproved genetically modified crops is dragging out.
“We would have hoped things would have moved a lot faster and we would have expected it, but this is where we are,” said Conor Dobson, director of public and government affairs for Bayer CropScience. “We’re almost three years into this now.”
Agriculture Canada initiated industry consultations on developing a low level presence (LLP) policy in the fall of 2011. There have been a couple of draft policies and further consultations since then but no action.
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“The grain industry and our industry is certainly interested in seeing this progress much faster.”
Dobson recognizes that setting acceptable contamination limits for unapproved GM crops is a politically sensitive subject that has to be handled carefully.
“We’re very familiar with the products here in Canada, but I think when you get to setting a policy that has international and trade implications, I think there’s a bit of caution,” said Dobson. “You have to be cognizant of the importance of getting this right and the sensitivity this does bring maybe to some trading partners.”
Will Hill, president of the Flax Council of Canada, said it is a complex and politically sensitive issue.
“The government has been working as diligently and as hard as they can to bring a conclusion to the project but those complexities make it very, very difficult to do.”
Canadian farmers know only too well how important it is to get LLP policies in place around the world.
It would have prevented the estimated $30 million in damage caused to the flax industry by CDC Triffid, a discontinued GM flax line that found its way into the Canadian handling system, causing a shutdown in trade with the European Union.
That is a pittance compared to the damage caused when China began rejecting U.S. corn shipments last November for containing trace amounts of Syngenta’s Agrisure Viptera corn, which has been approved in the United States but not in China.
The National Grain and Feed Association estimates the incident has caused up to $2.9 billion US in economic losses to the agriculture industry. It is forecasting a further $3.4 billion in losses in 2014-15 when Syngenta starts selling its new Viptera Duracade corn.
“We’re adding cost. We’re adding burden. We’re adding uncertainty,” said Hill.
Most of those costs occur because approvals of GM crops take longer in some importing countries than they do in exporting nations.
The purpose of an LLP policy is to prevent trade disruption when commingling occurs during those delays.
Agriculture Canada’s proposed policy has two main components.
The first objective is to redefine zero tolerance for unapproved events where there is no data package in front of Canadian regulators for approval.
It would mainly apply to products such as Triffid, which are no longer in the commercial stream.
The government proposal is to allow .2 percent of those events in a shipment as long as they were GM traits that were once approved by a country with a similar regulatory approach as Canada, such as the U.S., Australia or Japan.
The other component of the policy is to establish a threshold for products in the commercial stream that have been approved in another country and are under review in Canada.
The grain industry is proposing a five percent threshold for those products but there is no consensus on that. The unapproved trait would be subject to a risk assessment conducted by Canadian regulators.
Hill hopes Canada’s LLP policy will be implemented by summer or fall. It would be precedent-setting policy for other countries to follow.
“Once you have a model in place, some of the concerns and fears and hypothetical situations go away.”
Canada is leading a global LLP initiative with other countries. Three meetings have taken place and a fourth is scheduled for the fall of 2014.
