More on the flax story

The annual meeting of the Canada Grains Council is underway in Winnipeg and yesterday was devoted to market access issues. Some interesting information came out regarding European market access for Canadian flax. When a German bakery found traces of GM flax in its products last August, this was a lead news story in Europe for a couple of days. With the testing protocols that have now been established, one GM flax seed in 40,000 is enough to give a positive test. About 16,000 tonnes of Canadian flax was rejected after arriving in Europe. This flax is in quarantine and the exporters are having trouble getting it moved anywhere. Canada is now shipping more flax to China than to Europe. Canada also sends flax to the U.S. and the U.S. has somehow managed to continue exporting flax to Europe without restrictions. So great is the European paranoia with GM crops that they won’t accept flooring and ink products made with trace amounts of GM. In fact, in an amazing irony, they even want cigarette paper made from fiber that isn’t GM. While the restrictions have been hard on Canadian flax producers, the market access issue is going to generate lawsuits and bankruptcies among European flax importers and processors. I’m Kevin Hursh.