Canada Approves GM Potatoes in spite of field test results

[MichaelP <papadop@peak.org>]

Canadian Government Approves Monsanto's GE Potatoes Despite "Extremely
Poor"
Field Tests; Will Be on Market Soon in U.S.

The Toronto Star Jan. 23, 2001
	Stuart Laidlaw	
Genetically modified spuds cleared

Inspectors had blasted 'extremely poor' field trials

The Canadian government approved a new line of genetically modified
potatoes despite "extremely poor" field tests that federal inspectors
feared would undermine the legitimacy of Canada's regulatory system, The
Star has learned.

But despite objections by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA,
the Monsanto Co. potatoes - modified to fight potato beetles without
pesticides - were released on to the market without further testing under
pressure from farmers and Monsanto.

Among the numerous deficiencies cited by the federal inspectors, parts of
the test fields that were supposed to be left free of all insecticides
were in fact sprayed with a powerful bug killer. These areas - dubbed
"refuges" and planted with unmodified potatoes - are meant to slow the
rate at which bugs develop resistance to the powerful toxins in the
modified potatoes.

But while the agency at the time called the use of insecticides "not
compatible" with the environmental controls it required for such tests, it
is now considering allowing companies to routinely use insecticides on
test fields, The Star has learned.

In all, Monsanto had about 1,170 hectares, or 2,900 acres, of potato test
sites in Ontario, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Alberta and
Manitoba in 1998, and wanted to expand to 10,000 acres in 1999. But an
October, 1998, audit by the CFIA's Fredericton office revealed numerous
problems - including the use of Admire, an insecticide made by Bayer Corp.
to control bugs such as the Colorado potato beetle.

The beetle is the most feared bug in any potato farmer's field.

The documents, released to Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin under the Access to
Information Act, show the CFIA wanted the Monsanto trials scaled back and
warned that giving in to industry pressure to press ahead would
"compromise the integrity" of Canada's regulatory system.

Monsanto stood by its potatoes and field trials throughout several
meetings with the CFIA and letters exchanged with the agency, the
documents show.

It instructed farmers conducting the offending trials to keep those
potatoes separate from the rest "until such time as the non-registered
product attains registration status."

Adele Pelland, Monsanto Canada's manager of public relations, told The
Star her company has since scaled back its potato research in Canada and
imposed more strict controls on all its test sites to address the concerns
raised in the audit.

"We've tightened our procedures," she said in a telephone interview. CFIA
spokesperson Steve Yarrow said the agency is satisfied that Monsanto is
doing a better job of running its test sites, which are now restricted to
no more than one hectare per site and five sites per province.

The Monsanto sites, with about 1,100 hectares at dozens of sites in four
provinces, proved too large for the company to ensure that procedures were
being followed properly, Yarrow said.

"If they become too large, they become difficult to manage," he said in a
telephone interview from Ottawa.

The agency, concerned about the quality of the environmental controls in
Monsanto's test fields, asked the company for additional information to
assess the potential environmental and health impacts of the new potatoes.

The company, however, refused the request, saying it believed it had
already submitted enough data showing that the potatoes presented "no
significant environmental, feed or food safety risk."

In a deal brokered by potato growers, who called government officials and
Monsanto to a meeting on March 2, 1999, Health Canada and the CFIA agreed
to rule on approving the new potatoes within 30 days if Monsanto turned
over the data.

Monsanto instead reformatted the data it had already submitted to address
the CFIA's concerns, Pelland said.

And the potatoes were approved in time for the April planting season a
month later - adding another product to the company's line of potatoes
that have been genetically modified to fight beetles.

The potatoes are now marketed in Canada under the NewLeaf Y and NewLeaf
Plus brand names.

Questions to Health Canada were referred to the CFIA.

Colorado potato beetles kill potato plants by eating the leaves. Plants in
a badly infested field can be stripped of their leaves by the bugs,
rendering the field virtually incapable of producing a crop.

The beetle is able to quickly adapt to pesticides meant to keep them at
bay, forcing farmers to be on an almost constant lookout for new products
to apply to their fields.

'Fundamental changes to the regulatory system . . . as proposed by the
potato industry, will compromise the integrity of this program.' - Morven
McLean Canadian Food Inspection Agency

One popular product is Admire, which is often sprayed into the soil at
planting time to help non-GM plants fight beetles as they grow. It is not
meant for use on GM fields.

Companies have been able to sell GM seed for about twice the price of
conventional seed because farmers don't have to buy pesticides. In the
Monsanto trials, however, Admire was used in refuge areas of the fields.

Refuges, used commonly in GM farm plots and required by the CFIA in field
trials, are planted with non-GM plants to slow the adaptation of beetles
to toxins in GM crops.

They are supposed to make up about 20 per cent of a field.

"The use of Admire in designated refuges is not compatible with the
function of the refuge," Grant Watson of the CFIA said in a Dec. 3, 1998,
letter to Monsanto.

In documents obtained by The Star, agency staff member Morven McLean said
that the "confined trials" by Monsanto were so poorly handled that the
company should not be allowed to expand its tests to a planned 10,000
acres, or 12 per cent of Canada's total potato acreage.

"The results of this audit clearly demonstrate that Monsanto was not able
to manage confined trials of this size," wrote McLean, who conducted the
audit, in a memo dated Feb. 19, 1999.

"The production of 10,000 acres of transgenic potatoes, as proposed by the
seed-potato industry, would put the CFIA, the minister and the industry at
risk as such large-scale production cannot be grown under adequate
conditions of confinement and the environmental, food and feed safety of
these transgenic potatoes has yet to be determined."

Still, Yarrow at the CFIA said the agency is considering allowing
companies, and the farmers contracted to conduct their trials, to
routinely use insecticides in test fields.

That's because Monsanto told the agency its tests showed that Admire was
not able to kill all the bugs in the refuge area, leaving behind enough
bugs for the refuge to continue fulfilling its function.

Yarrow, while admitting that it would seem "counter-intuitive" to spray
bug killer in a field meant to test potatoes that have been genetically
modified to resist bugs, said the need to maintain an insecticide-free
zone must be balanced against the farmer's need to ensure that his entire
field is commercially viable.

"From the grower's point of view, they don't like the idea of growing 20
per cent of their potatoes vulnerable to the beetle." He said agency staff
have been working with seed companies, including Monsanto, and farmers for
four months to come up with new guidelines for future field trials,
including allowing insecticides in refuge areas.

Despite the earlier warnings, however, the potatoes being tested were
quickly approved by both the CFIA and Health Canada and were on the market
within weeks of the March, 1999, meeting, in time for the start of the
planting season.

The move came amid pressure from both potato farmers and Monsanto, who
said any delay would put the Canadian industry at a competitive
disadvantage to the United States, where Monsanto's potatoes were closer
to being approved and could be on the market sooner.

"However, this is a deficiency, not an advantage, of the U.S. regulatory
system," McLean wrote in her February, 1999, memo. In the same memo,
McLean warned that the reputation of Canada's regulatory system - which,
she wrote, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development had
urged others to copy - could be damaged by approving the potatoes as
quickly as the industry wanted. "Fundamental changes to the regulatory
system . . . as proposed by the potato industry, will compromise the
integrity of this program."

McLean's audit raised several other concerns, including:
 Improper training of farmers involved in the trials, and on whose land
the trials were being conducted.
  The company had not done enough to ensure that the farmers were
conducting the trials properly and was not able to prove it had ever
visited any of the test sites to make sure the trials were done properly.
  The refuges in some of the fields were below the 20 per cent required
under the terms and conditions for CFIA approval of the confined trials.
  Buffer zones, the space left between the test plots and the farmers'
commercial fields, were likewise too small.

======================

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