The Canadian and European Union Impacts from the Detection of GM Flax

Tolerance levels exist for many undesirable attributes in food where there is a general consensus regarding the potential food safety hazard: insect fragments, stones, livestock antibiotics, chemical residues, weed seeds, manure, etc. Yet much of the current debate about zero tolerance relates to the presence of genetically modified (GM) material, with far less consensus regarding the acceptability of traces of GM material and the role of science and technology as the arbiter of a safety threshold. The result has been international trade tensions, and increased complexity in supply chain relationships. Embedded in zero tolerance for GM material are divergent perceptions encompassing what constitutes ‘high’ and ‘low’ quality and an extension of the use of zero tolerance requirements beyond food safety to encompass different notions of food quality. Thresholds exist for a variety of materials that are commonly found in not only food but also in the trade of agricultural products. Even while knowing that trade in agricultural products cannot function at zero percent, it was decided by European legislators that if any GM variety was detected in agricultural product imports, or found growing in the European Union (EU), and if the variety was not approved for import or feed production, its use would be illegal and therefore the tolerance threshold was established at zero. Zero tolerance standards for GM material in international food markets and the discovery in 2009 of trace amounts of a deregistered GM variety of Canadian flax in bakery goods in Germany lead to the closure of the EU market to Canadian flaxseed.