GE Alfalfa: Will Ottawa Follow the US Ban?

Written by Josh Brandon
Wednesday, 09 May 2007
From: www.ACTvistmagazine.com

Each time a jurisdiction, anywhere in the world, lowers its environmental standards, the plea from the trans-national business elite for harmonization is renewed. If we do not join the race to the bottom, we will lose our competitive advantage and trading opportunities will vanish. However, when standards elsewhere go up, the reaction from government and business is more muted. However, the costs, let alone the environmental impact, of not keeping up with globally accepted environmental practices can be severe. A ruling in a California court banning Monsanto’s GE alfalfa provides a case in point. Canada risks becoming a dumping ground for GE seeds now banned in the US. The impacts to organic and non-GE farmers will be devastating, and environmental contamination by untested GE alfalfa is certain unless the Canadian government steps forward to harmonize standards for regulating GE crops to the highest level. Canada needs to follow the US lead and ban GE alfalfa before the irreversible effects of widespread commercialization are felt here.

Monsanto’s GE alfalfa was created using bacteria genes to give the product resistance to the company’s Round Up brand herbicide. The GE alfalfa was approved for use in Canada in 2004 and in the US in 2005. Last week, a federal court judge, Charles Breyer reaffirmed his preliminary decision of last February and found that the US Department of Agriculture’s approval of the crop was illegal. He called for a complete ban on any further planting and gave biotechnology companies 30 days to disclose the locations of any crops that already have been planted. The judge noted that contamination has already occurred. Most disturbingly, he writes: “Such contamination is irreparable environmental harm. The contamination cannot be undone."

This historic ruling marks a turning point in the US where until now the USDA’s approvals of risky GE crops have not even been checked by its own laws and procedures. Here in Canada, as was pointed out by the Royal Society of Canada’s 2001 report on biotechnology, our regulatory process is devoid of even the basic principles of scientific independence and scrutiny. The expert panel of the Royal Society of Canada included the most pre-eminent scientists in biotechonology. In language echoed by Judge Breyer, they found that GE posed serious and irremediable risks to the environment, biodiversity and to human health. With no labelling of GE food in Canada, it is impossible for consumers to know if the food they eat contains GE ingredients or not. To date the RSC’s 58 recommendations have yet to be implemented. If they were, the Canadian government would be forced to revoke its approval of GE alfalfa, just as the USDA was in the United States.

In the US, Judge Breyer ruled that the deregulation of GE alfalfa was illegal due to the lack of a thorough Environment Impact Assessment. Here in Canada, rules that give priority to corporate profits over public safety deny independent access or review of the documentation Monsanto used to gain approval of the GE alfalfa in 2004. We can only assume, that if a proper environmental assessment was not available in 2005 for the USDA, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency also lacked a definitive indication of its safety. Indeed, scientific evidence is mounting that no amount of testing can guarantee the safety of any GE crop once it is released into the environment. Scientists can never predict how a GE organism will react across the infinite variety of ecological niches into which it may entrench itself. Particular hazards of GE alfalfa include the possibility that the herbicide resistant trait may escape into the environment and create herbicide resistant ‘superweeds’.

GE alfalfa poses serious risks to GE free and organic farmers, due to the risk of contamination and because of the ease with which alfalfa crossbreeds and spreads throughout the environment. Farmers risk losing export markets or their GE free and organic certification. Some organic farmers feel under attack from Monsanto since they routinely use organic alfalfa as a rotational crop as an alternative to fertilizing and for its ability to out-compete weeds. Moreover, the idea of herbicide resistant alfalfa makes no sense since even conventional farmers rarely use herbicide when growing alfalfa.

Last week’s ruling in the US gives farmers there a chance to avoid some of the effects of contamination. Disclosure of alfalfa growing sites will give farmers the opportunity to test if they have been subject to contamination. Farmers in Canada lack even these minimal protections. This is good news for Monsanto. Their surplus GE seed stock will need to be offloaded somewhere if the costs of research and development are to be recouped. Lax Canadian regulations ensure Canada will be an environmental dumping ground unless we raise our standards to those of the US. The precautionary principle demands we elevate them even higher.

Action Item:

Let the Canadian Food Inspection Agency know you want Canada to withdraw its approval of Monsanto’s GE Alfalfa. Call CFIA director Stephen Yarrow at 613-221-4390. In Quebec and BC, Greenpeace also has campaigns for mandatory labelling of GE foods. To learn more about these and other campaigns, go to www.greenpeace.ca/gepetition where you can download a petition to sign and pass around in your community.

Josh Brandon is a campaigner for sustainable agriculture and against genetic engineering with Greenpeace