Province steps aside in GM alfalfa debate

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

The Ontario government’s decision to deny a request by farmers and groups opposed to genetically modified alfalfa for a provincial environmental assessment was welcomed by one of Canada’s largest farm groups but panned by the organization involved in preparing the submission.

“We need to let science lead the way and not people’s emotions,” says Jim Facette, executive director of Grain Growers of Canada, which supports the province’s decision. The organization represents 14 provincial and regional grower groups from across the country.

Facette notes the federal government already reviewed genetically modified alfalfa using sound science and, in 2005, approved it.

The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, which works to promote food sovereignty and democratic decision making on science and technology matters, holds a vastly different view. Coordinator Lucy Sharratt couldn’t be reached for comment but in an Oct. 7 press release she says the decision fails both farmers and consumers.

That’s a perspective Chris Litster shares. The Simcoe Country farmer who produces grass fed beef says it was important for the Ontario government to do an assessment because that study would have taken “into account some of the social and economic ramifications of introducing a new seed. That’s more than the federal government did.”

In addition, the federal government’s approval is almost a decade old and “we’ve learned things in the past 10 years that we didn’t know about genetically modified organisms (GMOs),” he notes. The earlier studies didn’t take into account economic ramifications, such as what happens to organic farmers when there is contamination of their crops by genetically modified alfalfa, he says.

Litster, who has been involved with the GMO committee of Ecological Farmers of Ontario, says he wonders what market there is for the engineered forage crop. “It feels to me as though this is being foisted on us and in terms of farmers I don’t know who really wants it.”

The request for an environmental assessment was prepared and supported by the Biotechnology Action Network, other groups and farmers. Two Ontario farmers, Dianne Dowling and Dave Lewington, filed the request July 25 under Ontario’s Environmental Bill of Rights.

The Ontario government decided against doing an environmental assessment because it doesn’t want to wade into the federal government’s jurisdiction. Ontario Environment Ministry spokesperson Kate Jordan says by email the province isn’t reviewing “the need for a provincial regulation making activities on the sale and distribution of genetically modified seed subject to the Environmental Assessment Act as these activities are already regulated by the federal government.”

The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food will participate with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Canadian Seed Trade Association in a working group to create seed handling safeguards, she notes. BF