Maintaining Canada’s leadership in the development and adoption of agricultural biotechnology requires a science-based, internationally competitive approach to regulating these technologies. As new plant and animal-based biotechnology applications are developed our regulatory system must be able to adapt to changes in technology so Canadians can continue to reap the significant productivity, environmental and nutritional benefits of agricultural biotechnology.

Plants with Novel Traits:

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) regulates plants on the basis of novelty in the environment and use as animal feed. This product-based approach to regulation has served Canada well over the past 12+ years and has approved over 80 biotech crops. As plant biotechnology moves into new areas of nutritional enhancement, drought tolerance, disease tolerance and specialty applications the environmental and feed assessments will need to adapt to these new uses and potentially to new crop species. BIOTECanada works with CFIA and Health Canada to ensure that the regulation of plant biotechnology remains science-based and internationally competitive.

Animal Biotechnology and Cloning:

Canada is a leader in the development of animal biotechnology with applications in the livestock and aquaculture industries. Regulatory systems for animal biotechnology are taking shape around the world and if Canadians are to benefit from our own innovations we will need a robust and predictable process for the regulation of these new technologies. Likewise, Canada must adopt a competitive position on the regulation of cloned animals and their progeny that conforms with that of our major trading partners and confirms that these animals pose no additional safety issues in comparison to non-cloned animals.

Current Highlights

Access and Benefit Sharing

BIOTECanada recently submitted perspective on Canada's potential signature of the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources. Read the full letter here.

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Government of Canada consultations on proposed policy approaches to manage low-level presence (LLP)

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BIOTECanada submits letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding labeling of Food made from AquaAdvantage Salmon.
Click here to read our letter.

BIOTECanada Comments on Possible Canadian - EU Agreement.
Click here to read letter from V.P. Philip Schwab.

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Setting Agricultural Policy for the Future

During its inaugural meeting, the National Grains Innovation Roundtable (GIRT) established key priorities and success factors for the sector. As part of the executive of the Grains Innovation Roundtable BIOTECanada provides expert advice to the government in setting agricultural policy in Canada, based on the recommendations in the growing forward report. Click here for more information.

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New crops and crops with abiotic stress traits pose new challenges for the CFIA and USDA APHIS.  To date, regulators have not identified how to measure invasiveness, nor defined appropriate comparators. As new sources of biomass become needed by companies across industrial sectors for third generation biofuels, biomaterials and processes, BIOTECanada is proactively working on a solution to prevent the delay in approvals.  Working with the University of Alberta, has created a national research network made up of industry leaders and academics in this field to develop a common metric for invasiveness, based on the species ability to increase in the following year. The Association would like to thank NSERC, who will fund up to fifty percent of the research. Thanks to newly secured NSERC funding, this leading collaboration will bring business and science together to develop a common metric for invasiveness.