WINNIPEG - Countries opting to grow transgenic crops for export will likely face more regulatory hurdles but those obstacles could be overcome if genetic modification produces a direct consumer benefit, a Canadian agricultural analyst predicted.
"We've had a paradigm shift where we've moved from no evidence of risk in terms of what consumers were looking for, to evidence of no risk," Dale Adolphe, executive director of the Canadian Seed Growers Association, told the Canola Council of Canada's annual convention in Vancouver earlier this week. "You can also define it as, we were innocent until proven guilty and now we're into a paradigm where we're guilty until we prove ourselves innocent," said Adolphe.
Canada is the world's largest producer and exporter of canola, a variant of rapeseed. While the annual crop is about 60 percent transgenic, because of the country's bulk grain handling system, genetically modified and non-GM canola are seldom separated, making all exports classified as genetically modified.
Adolphe's comments come at a time when billions of dollars worth of Canadian canola and U.S. soybean exports to China have been halted or slowed as Beijing developed a strict new certification process for many genetically modified organisms (GMOs)..
Canadian canola exports have been closed to Europe since 1998 due to a moratorium on GM crops that followed a wave of public and political concern about food and environmental safety. Last year Japan, another major canola market, toughened its labeling requirements on GM imports.
Adolphe, a former president of the Canola Council of Canada, said that while proponents of GM crops are losing the regulatory battle, despite a lack of scientific evidence that they are a risk, there still may be a way to win the public relations war.
"The consumer is already being hypocritical, from the standpoint that they accept pharmaceuticals produced through the science but don't accept food produced through the science," Adolphe told Reuters.
"What we really need is a genetically engineered product that has direct consumer benefit that the consumer can see."
The problem, said Adolphe, is that no such GM crop - for example, one that reduces cholesterol or boasts other nutritional benefits - is yet in the development stage, which means the chance of such a product reaching the grocery shelf is still years away.
In the meantime, several countries are moving toward labeling products that are simply derived from biotechnology, even if they do not contain any of the GM material. Canola oil is just such a product.
"There's not an analytical procedure to determine whether or not it's present. If that procedure isn't available then you get into paper trails and affidavits and traceabilities and IP (identity preserved) systems, the integrity of which is only as good as the paper," said Adolphe.
Despite these potential regulatory red flags, Adolphe said as long as Canada's main export markets - Japan, Mexico, China and the United States - continue to accept GM canola, farmers, citing better weed control and cost savings, are likely to continue to grow it.
"If there is a group of society that wants non-GMOs, that (market) may develop. But it'll develop at a cost," he said.
"If those consumers aren't concerned enough to pay for that cost, the farmer is not going to absorb it.":
