CANADA must soon decide whether to continue its involvement in a biodiversity treaty.
Signatories to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety are to meet in Montreal this month to discuss regulating trade in LMOs, or living modified organisms such as genetically altered seed, plants, animals or microbes.
Canada has signed but not ratified the protocol. It has wisely been a wary participant and should remain so until it is clear the protocol will not impose costly and unneeded bureaucracy that could impair this country’s competitiveness.
Broadly, the protocol is laudatory. Its goal is to create international processes to ensure that as genetically modified organisms spread through trade, they do not reduce biological diversity.
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One part of the protocol requires exporters to seek consent from an importing country before shipping an LMO meant to be introduced into the environment. Of greater concern is the part dealing with food and feed shipments.
The world’s key grain exporters are, for the most part, also the major producers of genetically modified crops. Canada, the United States and Argentina are fully committed to LMO production and Brazil has recently followed suit.
But the protocol requires that each shipment of genetically altered crop exported for food, feed or processing carry documentation stating that it “may contain” living modified organisms that are not intended for intentional introduction into the environment.
The Montreal meeting will set requirements for this documentation, including details about identifying the GM trait and determining its level in the cargo.
Decisions are also expected on thresholds for accidental commingling of modified organisms. For example, would a cargo of non-GM wheat carrying an accidental trace amount of GM corn be required to carry documentation?
A report by the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council calculated that representative testing of shiploads of corn to measure the presence of GMOs at loading and unloading could easily cost $25,000 US per ship. Costs would escalate quickly if disputes over test results caused unloading delays or rejection of cargos, leading to demurrage and additional travel time.
This presents an expensive bureaucratic nuisance particularly when corn, soybean and canola pose no practical threat to biodiversity.
There is also the threat that countries might use the protocol simply to block trade and protect domestic industry.
If the Montreal meeting adopts costly testing and documentation regimes, then Canada should back away from the Cartagena process.
Canada likes to be seen as a protector of the global environment and supporter of multilateral initiatives, but that does not mean it should sign bad treaties.
It would be better to work with others that also reject the protocol, including the U.S., Australia and Argentina, to advocate policies that achieve the same environmental goals without damaging trade.
