Japan drops ban on Canadian wheat

But genetically modified mystery lingers

EDMONTON •Onedaylast July, a contractor noticed a few stalks of wheat growing by the side of an access road in southern Alberta survived being sprayed with Roundup, a powerful herbicide. By virtue of their hardiness they soon ended up in a government lab, and eventually led the Japanese government to impose a sweeping ban on the import of Canadian wheat, one it finally lifted on Friday.

But even as farmers celebrate the news, the rogue wheat’s resilience has created a lingering agricultural mystery, one for which no solution is in sight.

On July 17, 2017, the contractors notified the county, and four days later staff from the Alberta government visited the site to collect samples. On Aug. 1 those samples arrived at a government lab, and six months later, the province contacted the Canadian Food Inspection Agency with some surprising news: the roadside wheat was genetically modified, engineered to be resistant to a certain type of herbicide. According to the CFIA, while some genetically modified crops like canola are commonplace, genetically modified wheat is not approved for commercial production in Canada, or anywhere else in the world. How the wheat got to the side of the access road — or how the herbicide resistance appeared in it — remains unclear.

“It’s definitely curious,” said Deron Bilous, Alberta’s minister of economic development and trade. “I think we were all surprised to learn about it, but again, we were confident in what our farmers are producing.”

The wheat’s genes tell a confusing story — or rather, one without a conclusion. The CFIA took possession of the samples earlier this year and by April had figured out they matched a known strain of genetically modified wheat produced by the American agricultural biotech company Monsanto.

The site where the wheat turned up in southern Alberta is more than 300 kilometres from where Monsanto had once tested that strain of wheat in Canada (the government has not released the exact locations of where the wheat was discovered or of the original test site). What’s more, the last test of that particular strain of wheat, Monsanto Canada spokeswoman Trish Jordan told the Post, was in 2000. And while the genetics that create the herbicide resistance in the wheat are known, the plant’s broader “DNA fingerprint” — the plant’s genetic makeup as a whole — doesn’t match any of the 450 varieties of wheat known to the CFIA or the Canadian Grain Commission. While there had previously been “escapees” from U.S.-based tests of genetically modified wheat — in Oregon in 2013, Montana in 2014 and Washington in 2016 — none of those strains match what was found in Alberta. In the end, the CFIA’s investigation found “no evidence directly linking the current GM wheat finding with (Monsanto’s) previously authorized trials.”

The roadside where the rogue wheat was discovered neighbours a farmer’s field, which the CFIA tested extensively. However, the CFIA said there was no wheat in that farm’s 2017 crop, and of the 284 wheat heads the agency was able to find in the vicinity of the site, only four tested positive for the genetically modified trait — all located within 15 metres of the road. On Friday, the government of Canada confirmed no other example of the wheat had been found anywhere other than “the isolated site where it was discovered.”

“It makes no biological sense to us whatsoever,” Jordan said. “There’s not really

WHEAT PLANTS DON’T SURVIVE FOR 18 YEARS IN ALBERTA WINTERS.

any plausible explanation for how that could’ve happened. Wheat plants don’t survive for 18 years in southern Alberta winters.”

On June 14 the CFIA announced its discovery: genetically modified wheat, growing inexplicably in the wild, and a day later Japan announced its ban. (South Korea followed suit, though that country relented just eight days later.) For Canadian wheat farmers, it had the potential to be a major headache.

Each year, Japan imports between 1.5 and 1.7 million tonnes of Canadian wheat, said Cam Dahl, president of non-profit Cereals Canada Inc. The Japanese, Dahl said, “are premium buyers, so they buy the highest quality of any customer.”

Said Tom Steve, general manager of the Alberta Wheat Commission: “We’re very pleased obviously and we were optimistic all along that the ban would be lifted. Now we can look forward to the harvest season knowing that we’ll be doing normal business with them, and that’s great news for our producers.”

The mystery of the genetically modified wheat, however, remains unsolved.