Regulation, Procedures, and Rules for Triffid

[parsley]

charlie posted the following comment about the Triffid Flax fiasco on the thread called "Triffid Bites a Hunk out of Pocketbooks" if you want to catch up on whatt was said:

"On your last comment, your targets will be CFIA, Health Canada and Environment Canada. They had ultimate authority over the decision to release triffid. Everyone else had followed the rules through the 1990's until its release into the breeders seed multiplication system.

From the European Union standpoint, the issue is an unregistered genetic event. I am not aware (maybe wrong) that European Food Safety Agency reviewed or that triffid flax went through the political process to get a genetic event approved or registered.

How the genetic event got imbedded into flaxseed genetics is something that will be review for a long period of time.
"

[parsley]

Questions are asked about Triffid flax ownership.

Who owned Triffid seed? Who sold Triffid seed?

Just a bit of information gleaned from the "Father of Triffid's comments in his own book:

As with most new eligible varieties in Canada, once the Canadian Food Inspection Agency approved a new genetically modified flax variety for registration and issued the certificate in the name of the ag minister, "CDC FP967 Triffid" seed could then be purchased.

Triffid was approved first, by the registration committee in 1994: thus, tenders were put out so that seed marketing companies were provided with the oppotunity to buy Triffid seed.

However, the final "Decision Document 98-24" approval from CFIA was not officially stamped and issued until May, 1996.

According to the man who fathered Triffid, and who should know, and who documented the details in his book called "Pandora's picnic basket : the potential and hazards of genetically modified foods", Alan McHughen shares the following:


"Triffid had several bidders, including one of the largest seed companies and some of the smallest.

An 'arm's length" committee considered the bids and eventually awarded the marketing rights to Value Added Seeds, Inc. (VAS), a small local seed company operated by a group of co-operative farmers.

In addition to buying the rights to market the variety, they also bought the actual seed."

Considering that two Value Added Seeds Inc. representatives, Bill Hetland, and Shane Johnson sat on the Oilseeds Committee, they were in a unique position to confidently and reliably update their peers sitting on the Oilseeds Committee, with first hand information on the progress of the very first genetically modified flax in the world.

McHughen ironically writes:

"VAS arranged for their farmers to grow a seed increase of Triffid for the summer of 1994, blissfully unaware of the difficulties that lay ahead." Pars

[wd9]

Parsely, do you ever take any medicine?

[parsley]

Stick with your remedial reading. Good lad. You'll be able to comprehend better as your reading improves.

The gist of the discussion is:

What can farmers learn from past flax mistakes?

Good lad. Pars

[wd9]

Doesn't matter because farmers don't make the industry. They are only under the illusion they are and pay for the mistakes of all others.

Pars, as an organic consumer, will you ever take medicine?

[parsley]

McHughen also states:

"VAS also arranged for their farmers to grow a seed increase of Triffid for the summer of 1994...."

"When Triffid recieved its' approval for registration from the official registration committee in February, 1994, Canada still had not finalized its' regulations dealing with the GMO's, so Triffid had to await those new regulations prior to full commercial release."

Pars

[parsley]

Folowing rules.


John Allen was Manager of VAS at the time of Triffid.

The farmers co-op had to end up waiting for final CANADIAN regulatory GMO hoops to be be finalized which took a long long time from what I've heard, even though they had already obtained Triffid-hoops approval.

Allen says:

"With all the unrestricted release approval, we started giving away sample seed in small envelopes to anyone interested who wanted to try growing Triffid in their gardens."

Pars

[parsley]

Maybe farmers can learn a thing or two.

One of the unintended consequences that happened concerned the EU.

Everyone in the trade and government knew that the EU did not want GM flax.

Period.

But Triffid flax was shipped to them, in spite of the fact they did not want it.

The market dried up and there is a LOSS. tremendous loss of income.

A loss that can be estimated. Pars

[charliep]

Just to make sure you get the facts right, the market didn't dry up. New rules, new risks, lower volumes but there is still flaxseed moving to the EU.

China is a larger market that stepped up to plate to crush more - some for the linoil market Europe but quite a bit for the internal market.

[URL="http://www.grainscanada.gc.ca/statistics-statistiques/ecgwf-egcfb/2010/exports-exportations-10-07-eng.pdf"]page 11[/URL]

<a href="http://www.grainscanada.gc.ca/statistics-statistiques/ecgwf-egcfb/2010/exports-exportations-10-10-eng.pdf">page 9</a>

Flaxseed prices today are $13/bu plus if you shop.

bucket asked why Canada doesn't value add for the European industrial linoil market. I don't have an answer other than it would be un Canadian. Do you?

[wd9]

Like canola it was not a problem at that time.

In CFIA's DD 98-24 issued in 1996, free for anyone to read, the acceptance on full description of process namely:

The flax cv. Norlin was transformed using the disarmed A. tumefaciens Ti-plasmid vector pGV3850. The vector contained the T-DNA region of an A. tumefaciens plasmid from which oncogenic regions had been deleted and replaced with the mutant als gene and the kanamycin resistance gene.

Easy enough to test for.

However Europe changed their mind on GMO after events in general were grown.

So i guess farmers can learn that industry and customers change and that we as an industry need to adapt and fight and follow a smart and at times ballsy path to success.

An even bigger question, this problem has never really gone away in flax but EU waited a decade to complain that their linoleum was GMO? Why? Because the price was too high? A card well played.

[parsley]

"EU waited a decade to complain that their linoleum was GMO?"

They had ordered non GMO and I expect they thought they had purchased GMO.

Why would they doubt it?

After all, they had listed their specs as non GMO and paid for the order.

Wasn't it Canada that did the testing and er, lied? I believe sophiscticated negotiaters call that kind of slight of tongue, "mis-spoke", don't they?

Was that the way it worked? You'll know. Or does the explanation "what happened in Vegas stays in Vegas" apply in this case? Pars

[charliep]

Why would a linoleum manufacturer care whether GMO or non GMO
flaxseed was used? If they are importing linoil, do they care about
GMO? For that matter, how much genetic material is vegetable oil
in general and linoil in particular. From what I know, genetic
material is tied up in proteins. Impossible to remove all the protein
material/solids but likely almost will be gone (most valuable part of
flaxseed).

Its a political decision based on Canada breaking EU rules in the
case of the industrial market. Human consumption markets would
have a different answer.

[parsley]

I recall a spell when the bottom fell out of the flax market.
How soon we forget.

I really read these Flax stats wrong if you are claiming the market is sunshiney:


Number of cargoes represented
October 2010
#1 flax 1 cargo
#2 flax 2 cargoes

Crop year to date
#1 flax 2cargoes
#2 flax 5 cargoes

Previous year totals
#1 flax 16cargoes
#2 flax 66cargoes

Tonnes represented
October 2010
#1 flax 848 tonnes
#2 flax 20146 tonnes

Crop year to date
#1 flax 1614 tonnes
#2 flax 59910 tonnes

Previous year totals
#1 flax 101228 tonnes
#2 flax 395844 tonnes

So sorry for missed-understanding. These are great numbers Pars

[charliep]

Just curious the source. Don't add up with CGC statistics.

[URL="http://www.grainscanada.gc.ca/statistics-statistiques/gsw-shg/gswm-mshg-eng.htm"]CGC[/URL]

[parsley]

If flax in an area, is sold or grown which causes Triffid germination, or contamination, regardless of how isolated, all flax growers in that area have been affected.

Any area, where a farmer is testing Triffid positive, is being treated as one contiguous whole.

Does the flax webpage refer to infected areas? Is a 'no sale' nmerely a grain financial loss or also future market loss? Always good to use numbers, some of you were saying.

Pars