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Product stewardship
Bayer CropScience has indicated that they do not have commercial quantities of seed of the InVigor Hybrid variety available for 2008. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready® canola will be grown on a small-scale in 2008.
Monsanto has developed plans to ensure product stewardship as per below:
- The Roundup Ready® Canola Crop Management Plan outlines the on-farm management practices required to prevent the evolution of herbicide resistant weeds, manage volunteers, minimise risks to the grain supply chain, ensure good crop agronomy and meet regulatory requirements. This includes training and accreditation, communication initiatives, implementing a resistance management plan, keeping paddock records, paddock inspections and coexistence practices to ensure product integrity.
- The Roundup Ready® Canola Resistance Management Plan outlines strategies aimed at ensuring the long-term sustainability of the GM product, such as implementing different weed control options, utilising herbicides with different modes of action and different herbicide tolerant crops in the rotation.
Industry stewardship
In order to manage the introduction of Australia’s first domestic GM product (canola) into the grain supply chain responsibly, the grains industry have developed approaches which aim to contribute to an economically and environmentally sustainable grains industry, minimise risks to the Australian grain supply chain, and encourage the longevity of the new technologies.
The grain supply chain encompasses all users of grain, from plant breeders and the seed industry through to the marketers, processors, product manufacturers, animal industries and consumers.
Documentation outlining the components of the 2008 GM canola stewardship approach includes:
- Delivering Market Choice with GM Canola, was launched by the Australian grains industry in 2007. This document outlines the grains industry’s ability and commitment to incorporate GM canola into the supply chain with a certainty and confidence that it can be managed to meet market and customer requirements. This report is supported by the document below which details all the principles and protocols available to the industry to deliver products which meet market requirements.
- Principles for Process Management of Grain within the Australian Supply Chain, covers all phases of the crop process from research, breeding, on-farm, storage, transport, marketing and exporting to manufacturing and the consumer, and the management practices required to meet market specifications for both GM and non-GM crops.
One area which has received much attention in the GM canola debate is that of liability relating to presence of GM content in non-GM crops. This issue has been considered in developing stewardship systems. For example, pollen flow and cross-pollination studies and established international thresholds for GM crop content in non-GM crops were utilised to scientifically develop separation distances between GM and non-GM crops to be implemented by farmers.
At the local level, farmers have been managing new and competing varieties of crops for generations. Keeping feed crop varieties separate from food crop varieties, and preventing spray drift from conventional farms to organic systems are just some of the areas managed between farmers without complication.
A report titled, Managing GM crops in Australia concluded that “The use of legal remedies by farmers or the grains industry has been rare…The ability of farmers to manage spillovers, and the ability of those damaged to seek redress through the courts if necessary, strongly suggests that special legal regimes, and strict liability in particular, are not warranted for GM crops in Australia. This is also the view of legislators in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand.”
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