Possible introduction of Roundup Ready alfalfa brings GM fight to Canada
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
With a U.S. company considering launching RR alfalfa in Ontario and Quebec, and a co-existence plan in development for organic, conventional and biotech crops, the debate is fast heating up over the merits and shortcomings of marketing GM foods
by DON STONEMAN
When Mark Lynas, the British journalist, author and one-time activist against Genetically Modified crops, went public at a January farm conference in Oxford, England, and apologized for his role in the campaign against GM crops in the 1990s and early 2000s, his presentation spread through the farming industry in Europe via the Internet, and around the world, including here in Canada.
John Cowan, vice-president of Strategic Development for Grain Farmers of Ontario, describes Lynas' coming out as "one of the best speeches I've seen about GM and it probably has more power considering where it came from."
The apology, no matter how heartfelt (if indeed it is), comes late in the day for many Canadian farmers. "Eventually," Cowan says, it will have an effect in Europe, where progress to introduce GM products has been slow, the debate has been heated and the trade is restricted.
Changes in European attitudes can't come quickly enough for Joan McKinlay, the communications assistant for the Ontario Forage Council and a forage producer herself. The possible introduction of Roundup Ready alfalfa brings the GM fight back home and to her sector, one that hasn't been involved before. The council took part in a Canadian Seed Trade Association (CSTA) stakeholder workshop in Kitchener last October, working towards development of a co-existence plan for all parts of the widespread and diverse sector. A draft of that plan is expected to be completed shortly.
According to CSTA president Steve Denys, co-existence planning provides producers with the freedom of choice and opportunity to pursue diverse markets, including organic, conventional and biotech. The standards the CSTA proposes are not meant to address health and safety of food, feed and the environment, which is the focus of regulation by government.
When improved pastures are included along with cultivated fodder and seed production, there are more than 27 million acres of forages grown across Canada according to the 2011 census. The council remains unsure what the introduction of genetically enhanced alfalfa means for farmers here, McKinlay says. "There certainly is concern."
The proceedings of that October 2012 workshop are available on the Internet and a scan of them shows that the dispute is heated. Because GM crops are rejected by some trading partners, such as the European Union, millions of dollars worth of forage product sales to markets in Europe and Asia are deemed to be at stake if GM alfalfa is introduced here.
Canada, especially the Prairies, grows both forage and forage seed, with the lion's share marketed overseas. Organic organizations are equally concerned. Certification programs forbid feeding GM crops to livestock. Food politics in Europe begets politics here.
At press time, stakeholders were still reviewing a draft of that co-existence plan circulated after the October workshop. (The proceedings can be found at: http://cdnseed.org/coexistence-in-alfalfa-hay-production-workshop-proceedings/).
The finished plan will also be posted on the above website. Seed trade association CEO Patty Townsend says it is unlikely that the best management practices will be ready at the same time.
With the impending release of that plan, the opposition to GM alfalfa is ramping up. Lucy Sharratt, co-ordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, based in Ottawa, says that registration of a Genetically Modified alfalfa is imminent. The company that planned to introduce Roundup Ready alfalfa to Canada maintains it has not decided if the introduction will go ahead at all.
"There is certainly demand out there," says Mike Peterson, lead-global traits for Forage Genetics International (FGI), based in Janesville, Wis.
Canadian growers were surveyed last year in both Ontario and Quebec, where FGI plans to market GM alfalfa to dairy producers. "Canadian farmers typically are fairly receptive to traits, certainly in other crops," Peterson says.
But before FGI can make its Canadian move, two things must happen. A variety must be registered and that co-existence plan with the Canadian Seed Trade Association must be dealt with. Peterson says FGI agreed to go by that agreement several years ago.
Roundup Ready alfalfa received full regulatory approval for seed, feed and environmental release in Canada in 2005, according to Trish Jordan, public and industry affairs director for Monsanto Canada Inc. Monsanto licensed its RR technology to FGI, which markets Roundup Ready alfalfa in the United States. Jordan says that, if FGI introduces the crop to Canada, Monsanto will be responsible for regulatory enforcement and stewardship of the finished product. While Monsanto is planning to register some of its U.S. DeKalb brand alfalfa varieties in Canada, they are not genetically modified.
Roundup Ready alfalfa was launched in the United States in 2005 and then taken off the market when a judge ruled the U.S. Department of Agriculture had not conducted a proper environmental impact assessment. The controversial variety was again launched for the 2011 growing season.
Alfalfa is considered different from other Genetically Modified crops because it is a perennial crop and very widely distributed, according to a report commissioned by the Canadian Forage and Grasslands Association dated last July. (http://www.canadianfga.ca/research-projects/completed-projects/)
Widespread opposition
Outside that Kitchener seed trade association workshop in October, there were protestors on the sidewalk. A review of the proceedings shows that, inside, there was nearly universal opposition from seed-growing organizations on the Prairies, along with organic groups across Canada.
Seed growers in Manitoba take a hard line against RR alfalfa. In 2010, the provincial association passed a resolution warning that members will hold Ottawa "directly responsible for any economic loss experienced as a result of trade injury incurred due to loss of export markets for alfalfa seed and other legume and grass seed crops related to the introduction of Roundup Ready alfalfa into Canada."
Quebec's union de producteurs agricole (UPA), representing all of agriculture in Quebec, took a similar line. Last December, citing an unnamed study by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada that showed GM alfalfa can contaminate neighbouring organic alfalfa crops over long distances via cross-pollination, the UPA Congress asked the federal government to forbid commercialization and registration of GM alfalfa in Canada "until the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada have proven that the introduction of GM alfalfa can never compromise the production and market access of the diverse agricultural sectors." Supporting this were Quebec's organic sectors and, perhaps more telling, the dairy sector.
In a Feb. 22 letter, Dairy Farmers of Canada president Wally Smith asked CFIA's variety registration office to delay registering Genetically Modified alfalfa for at least a year, until a co-existence plan is completed and best practices are well established. "Within the dairy sector, and in the scientific community, there are many who have expressed the view that the necessary goal of maintaining pure, non-GM strains of alfalfa is not achievable in the event of a commercialization of the Roundup Ready version."
Dairy Farmers in Ontario (DFO) straddled the fence. "We are referring the matter to Dairy Farmers of Canada," says Graham Lloyd, DFO's communications director and general counsel. "We also think the matter is well addressed by the Ontario Forage Council."
Last November, Mark Wales, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, cited "lack of demand by Ontario farmers for GM alfalfa" when he wrote to the seed trade association asking for "due diligence in the process of reviewing GM alfalfa."
That Canadian Forage and Grassland Association report noted there is a small benefit for growing Roundup Ready alfalfa in the United States of US$10.87 per acre due to slightly increased yield and reduced herbicide use. That's in spite of higher seed costs and a royalty fee. The economic study was conducted by Prof. Dan Undersander of the University of Wisconsin's forage extension department.
According to that impact report, Roundup Ready alfalfa could appear in unintended places via physical contamination of seed supplies, cross-pollination of seed fields and "hard seeds" germinating several years after planting. This is problematic for the seed industry since the EU has a zero tolerance policy in place for non-approved Genetically Enhanced seed. The honey industry is also concerned because of the possible contamination of honey with Genetically Enhanced pollen.
Wisconsin experience promising
Ontario has successfully developed an identity-preserved, non-genetically Enhanced soybean export market. The canola industry segregates Modified and non-modified seed and no new varieties are marketed unless they receive regulatory clearance first in major markets.
Roundup Ready alfalfa is acceptable in both Japan and the United States, which account for 92 per cent of Canadian forage exports. Organic and seed production each constitute about two per cent of the 27 million acres of improved pastures and fodder and seed production. The seed industry doesn't want Roundup Ready alfalfa seed and neither does the organic livestock industry.
On the plus side for genetically enhanced alfalfa, the Ontario Forage Council's McKinlay says Wisconsin's experience in segregating Roundup Ready alfalfa from the conventional crop is promising. Wisconsin, the forage capital of the United States, has been dealing with RR alfalfa for several years and organic, conventional and Roundup Ready growers have found ways of co-existing. Like Wisconsin, "we don't produce alfalfa seed" in Ontario and the climate is the same, McKinlay says. As far as registering a Roundup Ready product here, "we recognize at some time it will happen," McKinlay says.
Farmers adopting the new technology have to make some changes, she notes. Most forage mixes in Ontario are alfalfa and grass. "You can't spray Roundup on it," she says, without killing the susceptible grasses.
The threat of cross-pollination is minimal, McKinlay asserts. Honey bees won't go near alfalfa and pollination is done only by leafcutter bees. Even then, alfalfa "is not the plant of choice for a pollinator." Most bees, given a choice, would go elsewhere.
McKinlay cites a couple of possible upsides to Roundup Ready alfalfa. One is better weed management and the other is a more competitive crop, economically, for land against other crops. Corn and soybeans have gone ahead in terms of yields and returns per acre while forages have languished.
Half a million acres of forages were lost to other crops between 2006 and 2011 censuses, and likely more since, says McKinlay, with resulting loss of ground cover and water retention ability associated with forage growing. She describes it as "an economic issue." Forage hasn't been making yield and management advances, as have corn and soybeans. Dairy farmers are feeding corn silage to their cows rather than perennial forages. (Corn silage yields twice as many tonnes per acre as alfalfa.)
"I'm not saying (Roundup Ready) is the answer but we do need some help," McKinlay says.
Maybe more important is the attractive genetic enhancements that will follow Roundup Ready. "There are some intriguing traits out there," McKinlay says. FGI has plans for a low lignin alfalfa that would allow a plant to retain digestibility while growing another 10 days, making that hard-to-hit late May or early June first cutting date less critical.
"Lower lignin means fewer cuttings per year," and more volume per cutting, McKinlay says, a definite management advantage for both dairy and beef cattle. (The advantages of higher quality hay for beef production are often understated, she says.)
Lignin content increases as alfalfa matures and a higher level reduces fibre digestibility. According to a presentation FGI made last fall, reduced lignin alfalfa testing will start in 2013. It could be commercially launched in 2016, at least in the United States.
Traits that are also in the pipeline, according to the Grasslands study, are drought, salt- and cold-tolerant alfalfas, improved efficiency of protein utilization and delayed flowering.
"Successful introduction would also encourage biotechnology companies to continue developing other GM alfalfa traits adapted to the Canadian market," says the Grasslands report.
There's a need to make room for organic and seed producers to exist, McKinlay says. On the other hand, they shouldn't keep conventional agriculture from moving ahead. And ahead it must move, McKinlay says. BF
Anatomy of a conversion
In Mark Lynas' 52 minute, 4,900 word speech (http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013/) the activist/journalist/author described the anti-GM campaign as "the most successful I had ever been involved with" and "explicitly an anti-science movement" that turned people and governments in Europe and also Asia and Africa, where food is in short supply, against genetically engineered crops and closed borders to North American products such as RR corn and canola in 1999.
While Lynas says he campaigned vigorously against GM crops, it wasn't until 2004, he asserted, that he learned "how to read scientific papers, understand basic statistics and become literate in very different fields from oceanography to paleo-climate, none of which my degree in politics and modern history helped me with a great deal."
Trish Jordan, public and industry affairs director with Monsanto Canada Inc., says many farmers have brought the speech to her attention. "I think many people are intrigued by it because he is being honest and admitting he was wrong . . . That doesn't happen very often in today's society, let alone by a previous activist. The other thing he has done is look at it from a moral viewpoint and ask, ‘Is it morally acceptable for food-plentiful North Americans or Europeans to denigrate the technology when it holds so much potential to enhance overall world food production and help resource-poor farmers and those who don't have excess disposable income to spend on higher priced trendy food options?' His answer is clearly no, and I think that likely drove him to speak out."
For her part, Nancy Tout, head of regulatory and biological assessment for Syngenta Canada Inc., says: "It is encouraging to see that even some among the most vociferous opponents of the technology can, over time, come to see the benefits of what it has to offer. To the extent that science played a role in that, this is a good thing.
"Mr. Lynas' stated change of mind will not in and of itself end the debate about genetically modified crops and lead to the approval of more technologies and crops, but his is another voice that can perhaps serve as a catalyst for more balanced and rational discussion. That would be a positive and meaningful development for all parties involved."
Lynas is scheduled to speak at the Wm. A. Stewart public lecture in London on April 4. As this issue was going to press, Robert Black, CEO of the Rural Ontario Institute, which manages the fund for the lecture, wrote: "We are hoping that Mark Lynas will share not only the story of why/how his views of GMOs have changed and what they now are, but also focus his remarks more specifically on his own personal leadership journey. The leadership lessons learned as he has had this very dynamic shift in fundamental beliefs, all the while being very much in the public eye, will surely be something our attendees will find value in hearing about." BF
GMO war heats up again in Europe
Any signs that the war over genetically modified food is cooling in Europe have gone the other way since Mark Lynas' speech early in the New Year.
In February, GM slamming made news in Europe again. A study conducted by Gilles-Eric Séralini, a professor at the University of Caen, published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, immediately resulted in several politicians calling for a reversal of GM corn approvals in Europe. The authors of the study claimed the results of trials over two years proved feeding Roundup Ready-treated crops to rats caused cancer in mammals, including humans. The study was quickly cut up by critics. "The study appeared to sweep aside all known benchmarks of scientific good practice and, more importantly, to ignore the minimal standards of scientific and ethical conduct, in particular concerning the humane treatment of experimental animals," according to one critique by the European Food Safety Authority.
To no one's surprise, there is vehement disagreement in Canada over the value of the Séralini study. The Biotechnology Coalition Network's Lucy Sharratt charges the critics were not unbiased themselves, and there is simply a lack of scientific information in the public realm. It is all done by Monsanto and locked away, and the federal government has not done its own studies, she claims.
Nonsense, says Stephen Yarrow, vice-president of plant biotechnology with Croplife Canada, also in Ottawa, who asserts there's lots of science about GMOs in the public realm. The criticism of the Séralini study comes from a wide range of scientists who question how it was conducted, and some "seem insulted," Yarrow says, because the way the study was published "turned it into a show."
Sharratt, however, insists that the tide is not turning on GM food. "I see that there is increased public relations activity promoting GM food, which is what Mark Lynas is all about. That just means the industry is more desperate to get their story told." BF
GM ban boosted Canadian IP soybean sales
It's an ill wind that blows no one good. In that respect, soybean growers in Canada, and Ontario in particular, were the beneficiaries when the European Union restricted trade in genetically modified soybean seed and products. While the majority of soybeans grown in Ontario were Roundup Ready for the crushing market, a strong identity-preserved marketing system grew up, serving markets in Europe and in Asia.
"I always speak about Canada," says Jim Gowland, who farms 2,000 acres north of Teeswater in Bruce County. The cash-crop farmer was the founding chairman for the Canadian Soybean Council, starting in 2005 and retiring in 2011. He spent as many as 100 days a year working for the organization, making markets for soybean growers in Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island and, later on, the Prairies.
Gowland grows hundreds of acres of GM-free soybeans and hundreds of acres more of biotech corn, not out of ideology, but because that is where the markets are. Gowland says the GM ban was good for Canadian soybean sales to Europe. Canadian farmers do identity preservation well, their American counterparts not so much, and Canadian sales soared.
"The Canadian IP systems that developed in soybeans have been moved along into other crops and the livestock sector. We've been able to come along to where the world has sat up and taken notice of our leadership and our advancements in segregation and traceability."
It doesn't matter if GM becomes accepted in other countries, Gowland says. There is still going to be a demand for segregated and traceable product. Gowland describes Mark Lynas' apology as "a huge boost for the science sector of the world. It's a reality check." BF