As an example of the federal government’s ability to pick economic winners, the nuclear experience should have been a lesson learned in humility.  But no, after squandering billions on nuclear, the federal government, first under the Liberals and now under the Conservatives, have decided to shovel tens of millions into biotechnology.   Without any prudence or sense of return on investment, biotechnology has been decreed a priority for subsidies.

It’s ironic, because, otherwise, one would think the philosophical bent of Stephen Harper would eschew intervening in the market place, pushing tax dollars to favoured corporate welfare recipients.  The nuclear industry never justified the investments, and now Harper has continued Chretien’s subsidies to the oil sands and biotechnology.

In the 2013 budget, when we were supposed to be experiencing restraint, tens of millions of federal dollars were committed to biotechnology.  On top of previous spending, a further $165 million was dedicated to Genome Canada while a $225 million went to Canada Foundation for Innovation, its press release highlighting its potential for biotech. The $121 million (over two years) is potentially available for biotech as well.

Yet what has biotech produced?  While the blind assurance that GMOs are good for our economy persists, it is not matched by empirical data.

As an example, one only has to look at Murray Rankin’s motion for GMO labeling.  As have Green efforts before him, Murray Rankin (Victoria MP)’s effort (a motion for mandatory GMO labeling) is strongly supported by the vast majority of Canadians — if not by other parties.  We need to recognize that the overwhelming majority of Canadians, between 80-90%, want labeling to ensure consumer confidence in our food by mandatory GMO labeling.

The demand for mandatory labeling has been growing.   Yet Health Canada has rejected the call for mandatory labeling of food products containing genetically modified ingredients. It has long been Green Party policy and I look forward to supporting Murray Rankin’s motion whenever it comes up this fall.

Meanwhile, the science is beginning to tell us that GMOs are not delivering on their promises of better and more robust agricultural strains and varieties.  A recent article in Nature pointed out that good, old fashioned cross-breeding was succeeding in developing maize crops better able to handle extreme conditions, such as drought.

In a September 16, 2014 article in Nature reported that GMO technology was not as successful in developing drought –resistant strains as selective breeding.  In the article “Cross-bred crops get fit faster: Genetic engineering lags behind conventional breeding in efforts to create drought-resistant maize,” Nature reports on an extensive study of efforts to develop Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa. The project, with a $33 million investment, unintentionally has provided undeniable evidence that GMO crops are no match for cross-breeding in developing resistant maize.  As conventional cross-breeding has shown incredible potential, outstripping any GMO technology:

An analysis published earlier this year reported that by the project’s end in 2016, the extra yields from drought-tolerant maize could help to reduce the number of people living in poverty in the 13 countries by up to 9% (R. La Rovere et al. J. Dev. Areas 48(1),199–225; 2014). In Zimbabwe alone, that effect would reach more than half a million people. (from Nature)

As the climate crisis increases extreme drought (as well as sudden deluge rain events) crops need to be drought resistant.  It turns out that cross-breeding in local environments is having a far greater success than GMO splicing in the laboratory.

This research is a healthy reminder that we need to examine the so-called miracle new technologies.  Before betting the farm on such high-tech, over-promoted new approaches, let us not forget to allow all approaches to compete on a level playing field.  Let’s not waste billions on biotech as we did with nuclear before pulling the plug.  Let’s ask biotech and conventional agriculture to compete against objectives that deliver results for our well-being – not just corporate profits of Monsanto.

Originally printed in the Hill Times.

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It is in this sense that “life sciences” has become a hot commodity. While the Harper Conservatives seem allergic to any kind of science to monitor and expand our knowledge of life on earth—whether fresh water ecosystems (through the killing of federal support for the world-renowned Experimental Lakes Area), the nature of polar atmospheric chemistry in terms of ozone and greenhouse gases (through the closing of the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory), the build up of toxic chemicals in marine mammals (shutting down the DFO marine contaminants program), to name a few, pressing for the commercial advantage of the global pharmaceutical industry is a “life science” Mr. Harper likes.

When contemplating the proposed, and now fast-tracked, Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), many Canadians are concerned with the reality that the agreement will assist the pharmaceutical industry in retaining patent protection longer, undercutting generic drugs and driving up prices for critical medicines.

Trade agreements still masquerade as though they were about trade. Little wonder. They still get away with being described as “trade agreements.”   The term “trade agreement” should be reserved for agreements, like the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT); one of the last agreements actually about trade in goods. Ever since the Uruguay Round of the GATT, leading to the creation of the World Trade Organization, agreements have shifted from the focus on elimination of tariffs and other barriers to trade in goods, to the greater economic integration of national economies in the interest of corporate profits. And the shifting of balance away from national policies designed to improve the health of a domestic economy to assisting transnational corporations in deriving ever-higher profits is well demonstrated in the CETA provisions to aid Big Pharma.

While Canadians bemoan the “health-care crisis,” the single fastest rising component of health care is the cost of pharmaceutical drugs. The costs are “justified” by claims that the pharmaceutical industry invests an enormous amount in research that can only be captured through drug prices that far exceed the actual cost of production of the drugs in question. That allegation is false. Recent studies from around the world have debunked this claim. (Light, et al., “Will lower drug prices jeopardize drug research: a policy fact sheet,” American Journal of Bioethics, 2004.)

Meanwhile, the regulation of pharmaceutical products is failing Canadians. The excellent work by the Therapeutics Initiative at University of British Columbia is well worth replicating across Canada (www.ti.ubc.ca). Using an objective, evidence-based approach, the Therapeutics Initiative (TI) has saved lives and dollars by advising the B.C. government of drugs, approved by Health Canada, which, in their assessment, posed more risks than benefits. Due to the TI assessment, British Columbia did not approve Vioxx or cholinesterase inhibitors for Alzheimer’s patients. In fact, the TI approach was so successful that it was targeted by Big Pharma and pressure was brought to bear on the B.C. government to cease its funding.

This is not the time to abandon scientific rigour when it comes to pharmaceuticals. It is one of the largest corporate profit-centres on the planet, and its ethics are not squeaky clean. GlaxoSmithKline agreed in July to plead guilty to fraud and to pay $3-billion in the United States for illegal promotion of Paxil in what is the largest settlement ever with Big Pharma.

Giving the pharmaceutical industry more power to drive up drug costs faster is not in the public interest—not in Canada and not in Europe. The fact that we are in the midst of negotiations operating on the assumption that this is a worthy policy goal is evidence of just how unhinged the public good has become from public policy.

While discussing life sciences, we need to bring to bear actual evidence-based science in the interest of protecting life. What a novel approach.

Elizabeth May is the Leader of the Green Party of Canada and Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.
Originally printed in the Hill Times.

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We believe that the process should be transparent. This agreement has been negotiated behind closed doors with a level of secrecy that is completely unacceptable in a democratic society.

The Right to Set Our Own Laws

The governments of Australia, Canada and New Zealand traditionally have the right to set down their own laws for the good of public health, consumers, workers and the environment.

Leaked details of the TPPA reveal that, foreign investors and firms could sue Canada or New Zealand in a private international tribunal if their parliaments or local councils pass laws that reduce their profits or adversely affect their businesses. This could include laws such as:

• a requirement for large graphic warnings or plain packaging of cigarettes and other tobacco products (such as in Canada and Australia, and forthcoming in NZ);
• laws requiring labelling of genetically-modified food and drink (NZ); and
• retention of agricultural regulations such as Canada’s supply management system for dairy, which aims to preserve farmers’ livelihoods.

The Australian government has indicated it will not agree to these clauses intended to protect multinational businesses from the impact of policy decisions, but New Zealand and Canada’s leaders refuse to do the same (even after Canada was on the receiving end of costly lawsuits under NAFTA).

The End of a Free Internet

We believe the TPPA is being used to sneak in measures to bind its member countries to extensive and harsh laws on Internet use that wouldn’t be acceptable at the domestic level – including harsher criminal penalties for minor, non-commercial copyright infringements, a ‘take-down and ask questions later’ approach to pages and content alleged to breach copyright, and the possibility of Internet providers having to disclose personal information to authorities without safeguards for privacy. The European Parliament voted 478-39 against the international ACTA treaty, which was trying to create similar standards. Now, the same type of regulation is being attempted under the TPPA.

More IP Rights for the Big Players

The Intellectual Property Rights chapter of the TPPA was leaked in draft form in February 2011. We anticipate that unless a more moderate and balanced version is adopted, NZ, Canada and Australia’s shoppers, schools and libraries would end up paying more for their books and DVD’s  because it would let copyright holders veto parallel importing. Small and medium-sized software and IT businesses would have their innovative visions stifled by constraining patent laws. Finally, large pharmaceutical companies could use the legislation to deny state drug-buying agencies like those in Australia and NZ access to reliable, low cost medicines.

Behind Closed Doors

Almost everything we have learnt about the TPPA’s contents comes from leaked documents that the negotiators didn’t want the public to see. No agreement this important should be finalised without the informed input of the ordinary people it will affect.

Yet while representatives of AT&T, Verizon, Cisco, major pharmaceutical companies and the Motion Picture Association of America have access to the text, democratically elected members of parliament, advocacy organisations for healthcare and the environment and ordinary citizens are being left out in the cold.

Governments, including the US, have opened up to the public in the past by releasing the draft text of agreements. In 2001, all nine chapters of the Free Trade Area of the Americas Agreement were released. At the time, this was called an ‘important step’ that would make the trade negotiation process ‘more transparent and accessible’. If this was the standard for public accountability in 2001, it is disconcerting that similar standards are not in play in 2012.

Together, we Green Parties are declaring that we will only support a fair, genuinely progressive trade agreement that promotes sustainable development and the creation of new jobs alongside the protection of the environment and human rights (including freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining). We call on our current governments to remove the veil of secrecy surrounding this agreement and to open these negotiations to public input and comment.

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Seconded by Elizabeth May on September 20, 2012

Click here for the full document. 

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Seconded by Elizabeth May February 1, 2012

Click here for the full document.

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Jerry Mander dealt with the problem created by wildly over-optimistic assessments of all that is new in his classic In the Absence of the Sacred (Sierra Club Books, 1991). New technologies are announced with fanfare and down- sides are down-played—from nuclear technology’s early claims (‘too cheap to metre’) to DDT (‘miracle chemical’) to the boosterism for new GMO applications. Mander argued that we had swallowed a ‘pro-technology paradigm’. ‘In a truly democratic society,’ he wrote, ‘any new technology would be subject to exhaustive debate.

That a society must retain the option of declining a technology—if it deems it harmful—is basic. As it is now, our spectrum of choice is limited to mere acceptance. The real decisions about technological introduction are made only by one segment of society: the corporate, based strictly on considerations of profit.

Reports that the US Food and Drug Administration is ready to approve a genetically modified Atlantic salmon brings that problem into sharp relief. If approved, this will be the first genetically-altered animal approved for human consumption in the US or Canada.

The booster is a GMO company called AquaBounty Technologies. Ronald Stotish, the CEO of AquaBounty boasts, ‘This is an Atlantic salmon that is identical in every regard to wild Atlantic salmon. The nutrition is the same, the texture and so forth. … If we were to prepare our fish and other fish of the same size from other sources, you could not tell the difference.’ (Globe and Mail, Sept 20, 2010)

The only difference is that the GMO salmon grows twice as fast as a wild salmon. It has the introduced growth hormone of a Chinook salmon.

AquaBounty has been trying to gain approval through US regulators for a decade. Strangely, the US Food and Drug Administration decided to review the GMO salmon through the process used for veterinary drugs, and not the process for a new food. The Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee is in charge of the review. If approved in the US, it would be up to the Canada Food Inspection Agency to decide if it was acceptable in Canada. There is no word on whether Canada would treat the GMO salmon as a fish or a veterinary drug. Health Canada is just beginning its review.

The review process by the FDA has drawn criticism from public interest scientists. AquaBounty provided data related to only six fish, and significant allergenic effects were seen in that small group. The key issue for many is the question of health risk to consumers. Michael Hansen, senior scientist at Consumers Union points out, ‘Data from a mere six salmon, which is all FDA presents, is not sufficient nor rigorous enough to conclude that no problem exists.’

Meanwhile, the idea of fish farming with GMO fish has raised concerns even from the usually anti-environmental government in the State of Alaska. Even Alaska doesn’t like the idea of farmed GMO salmon mixing with the wild salmon fishery.

AquaBounty is ready with its response. They promise never ever to grow their fish in the wild. They promise to keep their super-sized GMO salmon in swimming pools far away from our coastlines. They also promise that since they only raise female fish and that since 99% of the fish are sterile, even if they did get into the wild, there would be no problems. Other studies demonstrate that up to 5% of the fish can be fertile.

And, of course, they promise this is all about feeding the world—conveniently ignoring the fact that carnivorous salmon are fed on fishmeal which could be fed to the hungry people who will never be able to afford poached salmon at a restaurant.

This issue is worth watching closely. Genetically modified animals raise even more concerns than GMO corn and canola did. The risk of interbreeding in the wild cannot be dismissed. Even if one believes the hand-over- heart pledges of AquaBounty, once approved and being developed commercially, it is impossible to ensure that there is never a coastal operation.

It is also a precedent for other GMO animal products. And if this fish can be approved pretending it is a veterinary drug, what regulatory processes will be used in future? There is no public policy reason to raise GMO salmon. There is only the profit for AquaBounty.

Elizabeth May, Order of Canada, is the nominated candidate for the Green Party of Canada in Saanich Gulf Islands and leader of the Green Party of Canada.

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Keynote speaker was Salt Spring Island poet and rebel farmer (or farmer and rebel poet?) Brian Brett. His book Trauma Farm is emerging to be, to sane agricultural policy, what Silent Spring was to raising awareness of pesticides. His observations were echoed by other farmers through the day.

In Trauma Farm, Brian Brett writes about ‘progress traps’. The term, he says, was coined in A Short History of Progress by fellow Salt Spring Islander Ronald Wright. Referring to weapons technology, Wright used the term to describe a narrowness of focus that leads to logical failure.

Brian Brett’s talks of progress traps in relation to the industrialization of agriculture. Brian writes: ‘Progress traps are what happens when scientists and health officials convince themselves that they can control the natural world within whose glow we walk.’

Since reading Trauma Farm, I have been spotting modern agriculture examples of ‘progress traps’ at an alarming rate. From local organic growers on the Saanich Peninsula, I heard about the latest rules for organic growers in California. To control that pesky natural world, organic farming is being converted into something alien to the earth. The FDA wants the food grown in ‘safe’ conditions. The threat that field mice or other critters that might bring disease or feces within the rows of lettuce has resulted in a requirement that several metres on all sides of the field be converted to a dead zone—herbicided out of existence so that no living creature can cross that barrier to contaminate the crop. Trapped by their own crazed logic and the idea that the natural world must be brought to heel, the FDA will undo one of the essential virtues of organic growing—that it is compatible with the biodiversity that surrounds it.

The most chilling of industrialized agricultures progress traps may be the Enviro-pig. These pigs are being raised in isolation at the University of Guelph in hopes that they will be approved for human consumption. The problem Enviro-pigs are supposed to solve is water pollution from hog manure.

Due to the latest craze in inhumane treatment of pigs: raising tens of thousands of animals in single barns— indoors for their whole lives in cages over metal slotted floors—a new water pollution threat has been created. Liquid hog manure in the millions of gallons is being created in these mega-hog factories across Canada. The ‘disposal method’ is to spray the hog manure on farm fields as fertilizer. But the liquid hog manure is rich in phosphorus. The over-fertilizing effect of this manure in water courses causes eutrophication, choking the life out of lakes and rivers.

A sensible solution would be to return to more traditional ways of raising hogs. I met one farmer in Saskatchewan who had found an ideal solution, even in settings where thousands of animals are raised in the same barn. Allow pigs to move indoors and outdoors and have cement floors covered in alfalfa. Collecting the manure and alfalfa from the floor and composting it created safe, non-noxious compost.

But those caught in progress traps are not likely to think alfalfa represents a solution when the brave new world of bio-engineering is within our reach. So Enviro- pig was born. It is a transgenic pig, with genetic material from Ecoli bacteria spliced into its DNA, reducing phosphorus in manure by up to 65%. Environment Canada has approved continuing work at the University of Guelph. It is still a long way from isolation facilities in Guelph to the hotdog at the Fall Fair, but proponents of Enviro-pig are sold on its benefits.

Against this mad, mad world stand a growing band of farmers, activists, and citizens (with a nod to Salt Spring Island’s John Wilcox, another speaker, who spoke out in frustration at having the actions of responsible citizens denigrated as ‘activists.’) This movement is growing across Canada—motivated for health, slow food, low- carbon strategies, food security, protection of biodiversity, and healthy sustainable communities.

The Galiano Island conference “From Table to Field” (sponsored by the Galiano Community Food Programme) attracted over 80 people from every one of the southern Gulf Islands and from the Saanich Peninsula and Victoria. The number of innovations, workable models and creative experimentation was breath-taking and inspiring.

People are trying out various models to find housing for people willing to work on farms: to give young people access to land to grow food on land owned by older people or by those who may not have the time or inclination to put good agricultural land to use. All kinds of models exist—cooperative growing efforts, leases and Community Supported Agriculture.

On Saturna, an olive growing effort is underway (see ad page 15). On Mayne, there is a growers association to share training and labour. ‘Crop mobs’ may be the modern version of a good old fashioned barn-raising.

The networking and emailing, websites, tweets and twitters can barely keep up with the proliferation of new groups, new initiatives. All of the fertile burbling of the fervour for growing healthy, local food suggests a social movement. It is a peaceful revolution in the making.

The 1960s ‘Green Revolution’ directed us into this particular progress trap. It is premised on massive inputs of fossil fuels, irrigation and chemicals. It has given us more food. It has also given us mad cow disease, new strains of avian flu, depleted soil, redundant trade. Its primary beneficiaries are Cargill and Monsanto and other transnationals. The losers are farmers and eaters.

The good news is that the failure of logic in the industrialized food model will require that we shift to tasty local food—and soon. And those places that already know how to feed their communities will be miles ahead and can show the way.

Eat local healthy food, the life—and community—you save may be our own.

Elizabeth E. May, O.C. is the leader of the Green Party, and parliamentary candidate for Saanich Gulf Islands. Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress, House of Anansi Press was the basis for the 2004 Massey Lectures. Trauma Farm, Brian Brett, D&M Publishers Inc; Galiano Community Food Program can be contacted at: www.galianofoodprogram.ca/contact.

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