Guest Entry: Does anyone know about Bill C-474?

By: Emmalea Davis

Does anyone know about Bill C-474, because it just broke a record in Parliament this past Wednesday, when it passed its second reading in the House? The Bill is a Private Members Bill, proposed by an NDP representative from British Columbia’s Southern Interior, Alex Atamanenko. Titled “An Act respecting the Seeds Regulations”, it proposes that all genetically engineered organisms are subject to a market analysis as part of the approval process undertaken by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) under the Seeds Act. On Wednesday after a close – 153 to 134 – vote, the Bill became the first proposing changes to the rules regarding genetically engineered (GE) organisms to make it past a second reading in the House.

Since 2001, more than ten Private Members Bills have been set before the House of Commons, with only two even being selected for debate (2001 and again in 2008). Both of these were regarding mandatory labelling of GE foods, and both were defeated (126-91 and 156-101, respectively). Wednesday was the first time a Bill regarding GE foods was voted on, and supported, twice. It has now moved on to the Agriculture Committee, for study and likely amendments, before it will once again be voted on in the House. 

If approved, the Bill would move onto the Senate for review and voting, and hopefully pass into law. Fingers crossed that Parliament doesn’t get prorogued again, before the House has time to consider the final draft coming out of the Agricultural Committee, which is what happens to far too many Bill these days.

Whether you are for or against, or don’t even care, about GE organisms, this Bill should interest you. Not only is it breaking Parliamentary records, but it is also the first time Parliament has acknowledged (through their support for a Bill like this) that perhaps Canada’s regulatory system regarding these “Novel Foods” isn’t perfect. 

The call for a market analysis before approving these new organisms comes out of the current problems faced by Canadian flax farmers. In September of 2009, Germany discovered GE contamination in flax shipped from Canada. By November over 34 countries were reporting contamination from our flax, and Europe and Japan (our largest and third largest flax export markets – with the US in second) closed their markets. Today, though the markets are open again, farmers have to pay for 3-tier testing, once in Canada and then again when the shipment gets to Europe. If any contamination is detected, the shipment is sent back. Canada is the world’s largest flax exporter, and flax farmers have seen prices drop over 1/3, while at the same time are having to pay for multiple tests to certify their seeds and harvest are contamination-free. 

Even worse, 2009 was a record year, and Canada now has a ridiculous surplus of flax which no one (aside from the US) wants. This same scenario played out in 1998 for Canadian canola farmers, and due to huge contamination issues Canadian organic canola farmers lost their certification – for good.

The scariest piece about the flax issue is that the source of contamination (CDC Triffid Flax) was deregistered and thought to be entirely destroyed in 2001, when flax farmers protested its approval for sale in Canada due to fears that just this sort of scenario might take place. Though the flax was determined to be “substantially equivalent” (and therefore safe) to conventional flax, flax farmers were so upset that its creator, the University of Saskatchewan, agreed to its deregistration. (Call me cynical, but if it had been Monsanto or Dupont the farmers would likely have had a much bigger fight on their hands.) Regardless, eight years later, no one knows how the contamination by a strain thought to be eliminated has managed to ‘infect’ so many farmers’ fields – especially considering the seed was never sold commercially.

Bill C-474 is not about opposing GE technology, nor placing unnecessary red-tape in the approval process. It is about ensuring that farmers will be protected from this happening again, by forcing the CFIA or the proponent of the new organism to ensure that there will be a market for both crops (conventional and engineered), even if contamination occurs. If this assessment had been done in the case of flax, it is likely it would never have been approved for field testing (in open fields in Saskatchewan from 1989-1995). 

We know that pollen and seeds can’t be contained. We know that Canada is far more permissive with this technology than most of our trading partners, and we know that we are likely not going to change either of those facts anytime soon. The most important thing we can do, at this point, is to make sure our farmers, who are already under severe economic burdens, are protected. And that they no longer are responsible for paying the price when our technology gets away from us.

For anyone interested in seeing how their MP voted on Wednesday, click here. And you can find out more about the Bill and the flax issue here or from a more anti-GE perspective here.