First commercial season for biotech beets

by MARY BAXTER

“None whatsoever,” he said today, Tues. Mar. 26.

Created by Monsanto, the sugar beets are engineered to tolerate applications of the company’s glyphosate herbicide Roundup Ready. They have already received the green light from federal authorities on both sides of the border. In Canada, the beets were approved in 2005 for use in foods, animal feeds and unconfined planting. But until this year, the variety was still undergoing field tests. The summer ahead marks its first season as a commercial crop.

Jack said he doubts the beet will cause much of a stir on this side of the border because the biotechnology has been around for more than a decade and is commonly used in corn and soybeans. There is no scientific evidence to prove that it is harmful for the public, he said.

A Fall, 2007 newsletter from Michigan Sugar Company, the cooperative to which Ontario’s 91 sugar beet growers belong, estimated more than half of the cooperative’s total of 150,000 acres of beets will make use of the new variety this year. (Ontario growers annually provide 10,000 acres of the beets and the cooperative’s total membership is 1,100). There will be growers on this side of the border who plan to use the biotechnology this season, Jack said.

The variety came under fire in the U.S. earlier in January when The Center for Food Safety, the Sierra Club and two other organic seed groups took issue with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to approve the biotechnology. The groups, which have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in California, argue there is potential for the beets to cross-pollinate and contaminate not only conventional varieties of the beets but also table beets and organic chard crops. They have also expressed concern that the variety will speed the spread of weeds resistant to conventional herbicides.

In March, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of nearly 300 faith-based institutional investors, added its voice to the protest and launched a web-based campaign urging major companies such as McDonald’s, Campbell Soup, Kellogg and Kraft Foods to oppose the use of the beets.

“We are concerned as ICCR members that consumers are not getting a choice,” said center spokesperson Leslie Lowe during a Mar. 4 news conference.

Michigan Sugar Company representatives presenting at this year’s Ontario Sugarbeet Growers Association’s annual meeting told those attending it was unlikely the protest would disrupt this year’s crops, said the association’s administrator, Mary Lynn Lister Santavy.

Last year, in the course of a similar lawsuit, a U.S. federal judge banned the commercial release of alfalfa seed with the same glyphosate-resistant trait.

Jack noted that Michigan Sugar is consumed in the U.S. eastern seaboard and is not directly imported to Canada. Formerly a common crop throughout Canada, sugar beets are now grown for sugar only in Lambton County and Chatham-Kent in Ontario and in Alberta. BF