TVO The Agenda: Agricultural Biotech At Home And Abroad (2018.09.18)

Duration: 35m35s
Resolution: 640x360
Video Format: AVC
Audio Format: AAC

With the recent European Court of Justice ruling that gene-edited foods will be treated as GMOs, and with new health-focused versions of soybeans and wheat entering the food market, how should Health Canada, Canadian farmers, and Canadian consumers deal with the new food biotech landscape?

CBAN on TV: Your Voice & the Industry Voice

On 2018.09.18 CBAN’s Coordinator Lucy Sharratt participated in a panel TV program, The Agenda with Steve Paikin on TVOntario, about the regulation of genetic engineering. The three other panel members are funded by the same biotechnology companies.

The show was prompted by the international controversy over regulating new genetic engineering (genetic modification or GM) techniques called genome editing or gene editing. Corporations are arguing that these new techniques are safer, aren’t really GM, and don’t need regulation or labelling.

The panel members were:

1. Ian Affleck of CropLife Canada, the lobby group for all the major GM seed companies including Bayer (which bought Monsanto), Corteva (the new Dow-Dupont), Syngenta, and BASF. These four companies now control around 65% of the global commercial seed market and more than 70% of global pesticides.
2. Crystal MacKay of the Canadian Centre for Food Integrity, a new non-profit organization funded by Bayer and Syngenta. Its mission is “To help Canada’s food system earn trust”. Its affiliated with a US group of the same name.
3. Stuart Smyth, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Saskatchewan and “Industry Funded Chair in Agri-Food Innovation” funded by Bayer, Syngenta and CropLife.
4. Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN), a coalition of environmental, social justice and farmer organizations funded by your donations, some foundation grants, some health food companies and some small organic farm businesses. Click here to see the full list of donors in our Annual Report 2017.

Corporate Campaign to Build Public Trust

Gaining “public trust” is the new goal of the biotechnology and pesticide industry because public concerns are increasingly influential.

Corporations want consumers to stop questioning how food is produced. Companies need a high level of public trust, to create what they call “social licence”. This means industry would have an unofficial “licence to operate” - instead of facing ongoing public controversy along with the possibility of more regulation, companies would be confident that they could carry on with business as usual.

In fact, companies are running a national public trust campaign together, including by funding organizations like the Canadian Centre for Food Integrity. This campaign is also government funded.

For example, the video License to Farm was funded by the federal government, the Government of Saskatchewan and SaskCanola. The film says “Farmers face a new challenge. Consumers and activists groups have called into question: Has technology made our food different? Is our food safe?” The film narration continues:

“Public fears about food safety are putting pressures on government and decision-makers to restrict the approval of GM foods and to ban the use of certain pesticides.”

The video views public concern as a problem.

More on gene editing

Last night, Professor Smyth said we need to “dial down regulation” and make sure regulation was as “minimal as possible”.

It was not explained in the show but our current regulatory system for “Novel Foods” will catch most of, though maybe not all, the products of these new GM techniques.

The first gene-edited food product has already been approved by the Canadian government. It is a herbicide-tolerant canola.

For an in depth explanation of gene editing, read the new report from Friends of the Earth USA.

The development of new genetic engineering techniques should be an opportunity to have a democratic debate about the use of genetic modification in food and farming. Do we need it? If we use this technology, what is it for and how should we regulate it? Who makes the decisions?