Richard Phillips at the Canadian Young Farmers Forum AGM in Winnipeg. The CYFF event is taking place in Manitoba February 11-15.

 

 

 European governments are moving closer to adopting low level tolerance policies for genetically modified material.

"There will always be a small amount corn dust, or canola dust, or soybean dust in a vehicle and zero tolerance will simply not work, or the EU will be short of feed stocks, quite frankly," says Richard Phillips, executive director of the Grain Growers of Canada. "So we're starting to see a willingness of the EU to start moving on allowing a small, low level presence amount of GM traits within regular shipments."

He says low level tolerances are needed to ensure we don't experience another sudden border closure, as was the case when traces of the genetically-modified Triffid flax variety was found in Canadian shipments of flax exported to Europe.

"The EU Commission actually has a proposal in front of it right now to allow a fairly satisfactory low level presence policy for all feed coming into the EU. I think it's the first step, with food probably next," he says. "Of course we would like to see higher amounts, but we can probably live within that.

"So we look forward to having that in place, and no more trade disruptions like what we saw with flax."

Bill C-474, which would have required an analysis of potential harm to export markets be conducted before a new GM seed could be commercialized, was defeated in the House of Commons last week. The bill was sponsored by NDP ag critic Alex Atamenenko.

"We work with all the opposition parties very closely and I've worked with Mr. Atamenenko on many files. He is indeed a genuine individual and a good person. On this bill however, we simply disagreed with his goals and his intent. It really was not much more than an attempt to end all the new technologies, in fact all GM technologies in Canada," says Phillips. "I know he meant well but it was just a step in the wrong direction and so we strongly applaud the defeat of Bill C-474."

~ Tuesday, February 15, 2011 ~