False horn of plenty What we don't know about genetically altered food may hurt us, writes Charles, Prince of Wales The debate about the use of genetically modified technology continues, with daily news of claims about the safety or the risks. The public's reaction shows instinctive nervousness about tampering with nature when we don't know all the consequences. There are unanswered questions which need to be asked - about the need for genetically modified food, its safety, the environmental consequences, consumer choice and the usefulness to feed the world's growing population. Many food producers and retailers have clearly felt the same overwhelming anxiety from their consumers who are demanding a choice in what they eat. A number have banned genetically modified ingredients from their own-brand products. But the debate continues to rage. Not a day goes by without some new piece of research claiming to demonstrate either the safety or the risks of genetically modified technology. It is very hard for people to know just who is right. Few of us are able to interpret all the scientific information which is available, and even the experts don't always agree. But what I believe the public's reaction shows is that instinctively we are nervous about tampering with nature when we can't be sure that we know enough about all the consequences. I believe that there are still a number of unanswered questions which need to be asked. * Do we need genetically modified food in this country? On the basis of what we have seen so far, we don't appear to need it at all. The benefits, such as there are, seem to be limited to the people who own the technology and the people who farm on an industrialized scale. We are constantly told that this technology may have huge benefits for the future. Well, perhaps. But we have all heard claims like that before and they don't always come true in the long run - look at the case of antibiotic growth promoters in animal feedstuff. * Is genetically modified food safe for us to eat? There is certainly no evidence to the contrary. But how much evidence do we have? And are we looking at the right things? The major decisions about what can be grown and what can be sold are taken on the basis of studying what is known about the original plant, comparing it to the genetically modified variety, and deciding whether the two are "substantially equivalent.'' But is it enough to look only at what is already known? Isn't there at least a possibility that the new crops (particularly those that have been made resistant to antibiotics) will behave in unexpected ways, producing toxic or allergic reactions? Only independent scientific research, over a long period, can provide the final answer. * Why are the rules for approving genetically modified foods so much less stringent than those for new medicines produced using the same technology? Before drugs are released into the marketplace they have to undergo the most rigorous testing - and quite right, too. But genetically modified food is also designed in a laboratory for human consumption, albeit in different circumstances. Surely it is equally important that we are confident that they will do us no harm? * How much do we really know about the environmental consequences of genetically modified crops? Laboratory tests showing that pollen from genetically modified maize in the United States caused damage to the caterpillars of Monarch butterflies provide the latest cause for concern. If genetically modified plants can do this to butterflies, what damage might they cause to other species? More alarmingly perhaps, this genetically modified maize is not under test. It is already being grown commercially throughout large areas of the U.S. Surely this effect should have been discovered by the company producing the seeds, or the regulatory authorities who approved them for sale, at a much earlier stage? Indeed, how much more are we going to learn the hard way about the impact of genetically modified crops on the environment? * Is it sensible to plant test crops without strict regulations in place? Such crops are being planted in this country now, under a voluntary code of practice. But English Nature, the government's official adviser on nature conservation, has argued that we ought to put strict, enforceable regulations in place first. Even then, will it really be possible to prevent contamination of wildlife or crops, whether organic or not? Since bees and the wind don't obey any sort of rules - voluntary or statutory - we shall soon have an unprecedented and unethical situation in which one farmer's crops contaminate another's against his will. * How will consumers be able to exercise genuine choice? Labeling schemes clearly have a role to play. But if conventional and organic crops can become contaminated by genetically modified crops grown nearby, those people who wish to be sure they are eating or growing natural, non- industrialized, real food, will be denied that choice. This seems to me to be wrong. * If something goes wrong with a genetically modified crop, who will be held responsible? It is important that we know precisely who is going to be legally liable to pay for any damage, whether it be to human health, the environment or both. Will it be the company which sells the seed or the farmer who grows it? Or will it, as was the case with BSE, be all of us? * Are genetically modified crops really the only way to feed the world's growing population? This argument sounds suspiciously like emotional blackmail. Is there any serious academic research to substantiate such a sweeping statement? The countries which might be expected to benefit certainly take a different view. Representatives of 20 African states, including Ethiopia, have published a statement denying that gene technologies will "help farmers to produce the food that is needed in the 21st Century.'' On the contrary, they "think it will destroy the diversity, the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems...and undermine our capacity to feed ourselves.'' How much more could we achieve if all the research funds currently devoted to fashionable genetically modified techniques - which run into billions of dollars a year - were applied to improving methods of agriculture which have stood the test of time? We already know that yields from many traditional farming systems can be doubled, at least, by making better use of existing natural resources. * What effect will genetically modified crops have on the poorest countries? Christian Aid has just published a devastating report, entitled "Selling Suicide,'' explaining why genetically modified crops are unlikely to provide solutions to the problems of famine and poverty. Where people are starving, lack of food is rarely the underlying cause. It is more likely to be lack of money to buy food, distribution problems or political difficulties. The need is to create sustainable livelihoods for everyone. Will genetically modified crops do anything to help? Or will they make the problems worse, leading to increasingly industrialized forms of agriculture, with larger farms, crops grown for export while indigenous populations starve and more displaced farm workers heading for a miserable existence in yet more shanty towns? * What sort of world do we want to live in? This is the biggest question of all. I raise it because the capacity of genetically modified technology to change our world has brought us to a crossroads of fundamental importance. Are we going to allow the industrialization of life itself, redesigning the natural world for the sake of convenience and embarking on an Orwellian future? And, if we do, will there eventually be a price to pay? Or should we be adopting a gentler, more considered approach, seeking to work with the grain of nature in making better, more sustainable use of what we have, for the long-term benefit of mankind as a whole? The answer is important. It will affect far more than the food we eat; it will determine the sort of world we, and our children, inhabit. n This article by Charles, Prince of Wales, first appeared in London's Daily Mail newspaper, June 1, 1999© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Tories to rebuild farm team
Ontarians sent Mike Harris and 58 other Tories back to Queen's Park June 3. But despite a strong majority, the Tory farm team was wiped from the political map.Agriculture Minister Noble Villeneuve lost the new Stormont-Dundas-Charlottenburgh seat to long-time Liberal John Cleary (see page 8).
Agriculture parliamentary assistant Barb Fisher, the former Bruce MPP, was - like Villeneuve - a victim of riding redistribution. The new riding, Huron-Bruce, pitted Fisher against another Tory MPP, Helen Johns, who won the nomination and eventually the seat.
Villeneuve's other parliamentary assistant, Hasting-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington MPP Harry Danford, lost a tight race to Liberal Leona Dombrowsky. "We have a clean slate to deal with," says Ed Segsworth, co-chairman of industry lobby group Farmers of Ontario and president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
The Villeneuve years will be remembered for a swift ministry makeover: the launching of AgriCorp, the crown corporation responsible for safety nets and other programs; fewer field offices; the amalgamation of ag colleges with the University of Guelph; and the tightening of government purse strings.
What awaits Ontario farmers in the next millennium? It's no secret that Harris would like to see all sectors in the food chain have a closer working relationship - a philosophy that would see farmers, processors and retailers working together to crack new markets and boost Ontario's growing farm export numbers.
Segsworth says the industry lobby has already laid the groundwork for such an endeavour, but it doesn't want the ministry to lose touch with farmers. The Farmers of Ontario has asked the province to spend $350 million over five years on its blueprint for agriculture, which includes spending for risk management, research and technology transfer, environmental issues, food safety and market development.
"It's pretty much a gate-to-plate strategy," says Segsworth, who notes that "the primary sector is looking at what it can do to further the industry as a whole." But for the plan to work, the government has to support all aspects of the plan, Segsworth says. It can't throw money at market development and food safety and sacrifice research and technology transfer to farmers.
Although the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario is not part of the Farmers of Ontario lobby effort, president Bob Bedggood supports the strategy. But he says the government has to make sure it doesn't lose sight of what farmers look for most from the ministry.
"It's a good idea, but when I go to meetings, people are a little quiet when it comes to talking about the farmer's share of the finances on the plate," says Bedggood, a pork farmer who endured record low prices last winter.
"I worry about redefining OMAFRA," he continues. Will primary producers have a "much smaller effect on the overall scheme of things?" Bedggood asks. Will the ministry become more of a "trade-type ministry? "That scares me. We have to be aware." - Bernard Tobin
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Europe braces for Mad Cow II
Feed fiasco creates food chain fears Just as the mad cow scare fades, European consumers and farmers have another food crisis on their hands. Late May, Belgian TV reported that dioxin-laced fat had been used to make poultry feed.Dioxin is a carcinogenic byproduct in the manufacture of some herbicides and pesticides, among other substances. Early June, there were fears the toxic contamination had spread to pigs and beef.
By June 7, the feed fiasco had led Belgium to ban chicken- and egg-based foods originating from more than 400 farms; the European Commission to impose EU-wide emergency restrictions on Belgian pork, beef, dairy, chicken and egg products - including fresh pasta, mayonnaise and cakes; the French to quarantine dozens of poultry, beef and dairy farms in their country and ban all animal meat for human consumption coming from Belgium; and Canada and the U.S. to block all imports of chicken, pork, eggs and animal feed originating in EU countries. Other countries aroundthe world had also banned EU animal and dairy products, though a senior EU official in Moscow was cited as saying food aid deliveries from the EU to Russia were arriving as normal. The crisis has led to the resignations of the Belgian government's ministers of health and agriculture, who admitted knowing of the contaminated feed since April.
The saga apparently began in January, when some 1,000 farms in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands received feed shipments from 10 mills that had bought fat from Flemish fat processor Verkest, which buys fats from a number of sources and processes them for sale to feed mills. By the end of February, poultry farmers noticed hens were laying fewer eggs, a decline in ratio of hatched eggs, and health troubles in newborn chicks. March 3, Brabander - a Belgian animal feed firm that also raises chickens - asked its insurance company to investigate. Finding no evidence of heavy metals or vitamin or protein deficiency, March 18 the insurance expert sent a sample to a Dutch lab and notified the Belgian ag ministry the following day.
March 24, Belgian authorities raided Verkest offices and took samples from three tanks for testing. April 26, the Dutch lab confirmed dioxin in the feed and informed Belgian agriculture and health officials the following day. Belgian officials immediately quarantined 15 Belgian poultry farms and began inspections of nine feed mills and 350 other farms that had received the tainted feed, but kept the case confidential. May 11, the Belgian ministry of agriculture ordered another round of tests for dioxin in chickens, eggs and feed, and high levels were confirmed May 26, at which point the EU was notified and the TV news story broke.
As of June 8, the source of the dioxin-laced fat had not been discovered, but Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene was confident that the list of 1,000 farms that received the 176,000 pounds of dioxin-laced feed was complete. Two Verkest officials originally arrested on fraud charges were conditionally released after investigation couldn't pinpoint Verkest as the single provider of tainted feed.
The dioxin scare led European Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler to call for greater EU co-ordination and harmonization on food safety standards. He told German TV "[The EU] can only act when the problem has already arisen. It cannot be that 15 standards apply across Europe."
The cost to Belgium's food industry will exceed US$510 million, according to Chris Morris of Food Industry Federation FEIVA. "The damage is hard to estimate," he said early June, " because it grows every day." The EU said Belgian chicken- and egg-based foods made between Jan. 15 and June 1 should be found and destroyed to eliminate any health risks. - Staff, with files from Reuters, AP, Irish Times, Dow Jones, AAP, PA News
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Chicken changes
Tom Posthuma is the new chairman of Chicken Farmers of Ontario following a board election held at the end of May. Posthuma replaces Mike Scheuring, who has retired from the board.Posthuma, who farms in the Dundas area, was first elected to the CFO board in 1997 after serving as the District 6 rep for 10 years.
"It's an honour to serve as chairman," he said in a CFO press release. "This is a very challenging time in our history, but we have a strong team at CFO and together I am confident that we will be up to the challenge."
District 1 producers, who were represented by Scheuring, now have a new rep: Maher Kalaaji, who farms in Simcoe county, was appointed by the board at a meeting of producers in Shelburne in late May.
Jack Van Netten, District 4 producer, has replaced Posthuma as second vice-chair while Paul Karges, District 8, remains first vice-chair. - Christina Selby
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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OFA gets GFO go
The Farm Organizations Accreditation Tribunal has renewed the Ontario Federation of Agriculture's right to represent farmers under farm registration.The tribunal, set up when the legislation was passed by the NDP government in 1993, is responsible for reviewing the activities of general farm organizations eligible to collect the refundable $150 fee set out in the legislation.
In its written decision, the tribunal complimented the OFA on the amount of work it "does for their members and the educational information and leadership training."
The tribunal extended the OFA's accreditation for another three years, until November 8, 2002, but it did request the OFA to clarify its refund process. Some appellants appearing before the tribunal objected to being classified as members of the OFA even though they have requested a refund. OFA president Ed Segsworth explained that cheques sent from OMAFRA's offices are deposited by the OFA and a refund cheque is issued when OFA receives a refund request. Some appearing before the tribunal argued that by depositing the cheque, OFA was granting membership status even though they did not wish to be affiliated with the organization.
Segsworth says due to the volume of cheques that the organization handles and the turnaround time needed, OFA deposits all cheques it receives, and then issues a refund when the request arrives.
"I don't know exactly how we're going to do it yet, but we're going to have to address the issue," says Segsworth. OFA's refund rate has declined every year since farmer registration was launched. Last year, fewer than 14 per cent of farmers choosing to send their applications to OFA asked for a refund, down from 20 per cent five years ago.
The Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, the other general farm organization eligible to represent farmers under the legislation, will appear before the tribunal this week. - Bernard Tobin
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Villeneuve bids farewell
Looking back on his days as Ontario agriculture minister, Noble Villeneuve utters a familiar phrase - "We did the best we could under some very trying circumstances."When all the ballots were counted June 3, the ag minister who'd spent more than 15 years at Queen's Park had lost by fewer than 600 votes to Liberal John Cleary in the new riding of Stormont-Dundas-Charottenburgh. "It was a cliffhanger, but as the rural votes came in, we just didn't have enough votes in the section north of Cornwall to swing it," says Villeneuve.
The city of Cornwall was new territory for Villeneuve, who through riding redistribution was left with only a third of his old riding and had to face a strong incumbent, Cleary, on his home turf.
"When you go from rural to urban, it's a big difference. That made the difference." Trying circumstances, indeed.
But it's not the first time Lady Luck had spurned the minister in recent years. The January 1998 ice storm not only covered his home riding in a sheet of ice, but also walloped his farm ministry. Villeneuve came up with $10 million to help ice storm victims, but extended waits to have claims settled dulled some of the program's lustre.
Then last fall, as Ontario's economy hummed along at a record pace, crisis gripped farmers once again. With commodity prices already depressed, pork prices dived to record lows. "No one could have expected prices to drop that low," Villeneuve says.
The government responded quickly to the crisis, offering a $40 million program to cash-strapped farmers. "We had cheques in their hands in early February and the feds are just starting to pump out money now." But during the election campaign many farm leaders protested against what they perceived as the Harris government's lack of commitment to agriculture, citing budget cutbacks and ministry office closings.
At the same time, Villeneuve "had a fight on in Cornwall and I was being accused by Cleary of only caring for agriculture. So where the hell are you supposed to go?" he asks.
Villeneuve says he's prepared to sail off into the horizon on the Ottawa River "in a nice little pleasure boat that we have and just enjoy the summer."
He says he's through with politics, but if anything is on the horizon it will have ag and food in it. For now he's going to try to relax and steer clear of trying times. "I owe my family that after 151Ž2 years," he says. - Bernard Tobin
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Functional food fight
Lack of regulatory framework seen as holding back agriculture The scientists have done their bit, farmers could free up an acre or two, and aging boomers seeking the fountain of youth are ready to redeem their RRSPs. All eyes are now on the bureaucrats at Health Canada who are still ruminating over regulating a new generation of functional foods and nutraceuticals.Hyped as a million-dollar-an-acre El Dorado for farmers, nutraceuticals and functional foods - health-enhancing foods and food extracts - burst on the farm scene mid-decade. The best-known farmgate product to hit the market is the Omega 3 low-cholesterol egg. Companies such as DuPont tout genetically engineered soybeans in the pipeline, low in harmful fats, for heart-friendly French fries.
For the Canadian companies who will market farmers' new foods, however, the sticking point is in Ottawa, where outdated rules prevent them from making health claims on the new foods. While health claims for diseases such as cancer and heart disease are permitted in the U.S. for 10 ingredients and counting, in Ottawa an expert advisory panel is still deliberating over the definitions of hazily understood terms such as functional foods, nutraceuticals and natural health products.
"The public are the driving engine for change," Robert McMaster, vice-president of Toronto-based health-food company Sierra Health and Nutrition, told fellow natural food executives at a Toronto meeting organized by Toronto-based think-tank the Canadian Institute. "Industry is trying to catch up. Regulators are third in line."
"We're working with definitions that are 20 to 50 years old. There are regulatory blocks standing in the way," said natural products industry consultant Bill Reynolds.
"[These products] offer a great opportunity for Canadian agriculture, and we can't even get them to the market," said Reynolds, citing an incident of a Canadian company forced to launch a Canadian and American version of a health food bar touted to reduce prostate cancer risk: The one in Canada had to be marketed separately with a vial of vitamins because Canadian rules differed for botanical and vitamin approvals.
Gilbert Normand, a Quebec Liberal MP and Secretary of State for Agriculture and Agri-Food, Fisheries and Oceans, reports to federal Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief on new-foods issues. He says he hopes to have simplified labeling regulations in place to allow health claims on the new foods before year end. Farm groups will be involved in the process, he says.
Consumer protection in any new labeling rules will be paramount, Normand says. Current consumer confusion about new foods must be cleared up, to build consumer trust, he says: "We must say to the population that we will try to have good regulations and want to simplify the regulations, but keep in mind that we must protect the consumers, and have a good verification of the quality of the product."
Normand says the government is working with industry to create a flexible, transparent regulatory framework that reflects "sound science," allows consumers "to make reasoned judgments," and is "as consistent as possible" with the U.S., to allow Canadian companies to export.
Currently, there's a wide regulation gap between Health Canada and its U.S.
counterpart the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Kellogg's in the U.S., for instance, can state on the label that psyllium seed husk, a soluble fibre in its new Ensemble line of functional foods, "may reduce heart disease" coupled with a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol. FDA allows similar health claims on 10 ingredients.
Health Canada, meanwhile, does not allow health claims at all. Food safety and nutritional issues, including foods derived through biotechnology, and labeling standards, fall under the Food and Drugs Act.
Normand says Health Canada has already set up an Office of Natural Health Products to review natural health products. "The government of Canada is building a framework for regulating nutraceuticals and functional foods," he says. A department report last November will "pave the way" for companies to make certain health claimson functional foods and nutraceuticals, he says. For "therapeutic claims," Health Canada says products should be classified as drugs and subject to the same regulations. Health food proponent McMaster says the government must move quickly to resolve the current state of anarchy in Canada, where some natural health product companies don't wait for government approval.
"This industry transcends all categories....People want to express their responsibility for their health.
"Until we get full regulatory regime, we are not going to be able to get our products to market. Will this take two more years of uncertainty?" - John Muggeridge
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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