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CANADA: Greenpeace, Farmers Shut Down GE Wheat Research Centre

Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Jun 6 2003 (IPS) - Greenpeace activists joined with farmers to shut down a Canadian government research centre in the province of Manitoba on Thursday to protest open-air trials of genetically engineered (GE) wheat.

The self-styled ”quarantine” of the research farm, in which five protesters were arrested, lasted only four hours but it signalled the diverse opposition to pressure from multinational Monsanto to introduce GE wheat into the country, a move many activists say would ruin farmers’ livelihoods because many overseas markets reject GE grain.

Canada is subsidising Monsanto’s research by providing wheat cell material, scientists and research facilities for a technology that might destroy the country’s wheat markets, says Greenpeace Communications Co-ordinator Andrew Male.

Since no scientific data exists on the environmental impact of GE wheat, Ottawa should take a precautionary approach and end all open-air tests, Male told IPS.

Monsanto’s attempt to market the world’s first GE wheat could be labelled ‘the wheat no one wants’.

In Canada, an unlikely coalition of more than 200 anti-GE activist groups, small and large farmers, grain handling and food processing companies and the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) – which markets all of the country’s wheat – have been standing shoulder to shoulder against GE wheat for two years.

Two organic farmers from the province of Saskatchewan – next to Manitoba on the central plains – filed a lawsuit last year to prevent Monsanto from commercialising GE wheat. They fear GE seeds and pollen could blow onto their fields and contaminate their crops, ruining their livelihoods.

”Farmers are not prepared to allow Monsanto and the federal government to introduce permanent and costly changes to agriculture and to the environment with the forced introduction of GE wheat,” Fred Tait, a farmer from Rossendale, Manitoba who participated in Thursday’s Greenpeace protest, told reporters.

Canada is one the world’s largest wheat exporters, averaging 12 million tonnes, worth between three billion Canadian dollars (U.S. dollars) and five billion dollars annually. The mainly high-protein varieties are in high demand, especially in Europe where anti-GE feelings run high.

Wheat is one of the few crops than can be successfully grown in the harsh climate of the Canadian prairies.

The anti-GE wheat coalition has warned of losing overseas markets and asked Ottawa to delay approval of GE wheat. Advocates of the technology say that it can be farmed without contaminating non-GE fields if precautions are taken.

Earlier this week, the UK’s biggest flour miller, Rank Hovis, reaffirmed that it would stop using North American wheat if the United States or Canada began commercial planting of GE varieties, because they might contaminate non-GM grain during shipment.

The CWB, one of the world’s largest grain traders representing 85,000 farmers, has told Monsanto that GE wheat would have a ”devastating economic impact” on Canadian grain farmers. With a government decision on Monsanto’s request expected by the spring of 2004, it has taken the extraordinary step of asking Monsanto to withdraw its application.

”Monsanto has said in the past it would not introduce RRW (GE Wheat) unless it was beneficial to farmers,” CWB chairman Ken Ritter stated in a letter sent to Monsanto president Peter Turner in May. ”Well, there are no benefits. So we’re asking Monsanto to put the interests of their customers, western Canadian farmers, ahead of their own commercial interests.”

”GE crops pose an imminent threat to organic and conventional growers,” said Marc Loiselle of the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate.

Canada’s booming organic sector has the most to lose from GE wheat. Saskatchewan has 1,000 organic growers whose farms represent about one million acres (405,700 hectares). Over 75 percent of organic wheat is exported, mainly to the European Union (EU).

The planting of millions of acres of GE oilseed rape has already ended the organic oilseed rape and honey markets for Canadian farmers.

”We cannot put faith in a post-harvest segregation system for GE wheat, when it can’t even be segregated in the field when it’s growing,” says Loiselle, who farms 1,440 acres. Frequent windstorms, including tornados, can move pollen and seeds long distances, he adds.

”What we are seeing is a government bent on a path that may prove completely destructive to Canada’s farm community.”

Activists and others have charged that the Canadian government is in a conflict of interest position. It is the sole regulator of GE crops and, in the case of GE wheat, Monsanto’s business partner. Government genetic engineers have worked for at least five years to put the company’s proprietary technology into the country’s best wheat varieties.

Because of that partnership, ”how can we trust the government regarding the health and environmental safety of GE wheat?” asks Holly Penfound, Greenpeace environmental health campaigner.