We've done a lot of work. In fact, next week I will be at a conference in Vancouver on coexistence of genetically modified and non-genetically modified crops in the agricultural supply chains. I'm currently working on a report with the USDA on this issue as well in regard to a variety of crops.
There are a number of things to note. One thing very important thing that we learned is whether or not we are talking about traits that are regulated or traits that are deregulated. If we're talking about traits that are deregulated, it is really an issue of coexistence and cooperation. With deregulation you have unconfined environmental releases. So there are no requirements per se for maintaining any sort of segregation or not.
With traits that are regulated, there is a current regulatory requirement that those traits do not appear anywhere—although there are discussions about whether there would be some international standards for low-level presence, LLP, for example. But my feeling is that there's still quite a long way to go on that. There isn't necessarily a great track record in international agreement on these issues.
On what farmers do, there are examples in the marketplace of people maintaining segregation as long as a threshold is set. That is key. If somebody sets a threshold, you have something to work towards. In an ideal situation, it's the person who wants to maintain something free of GM and there's a premium, they can roll the cost of the maintenance into the premium they have in the GM-free product. If there's no premium, there's really no point in doing it, as you're going to lose money doing it.
We have also learned that when you start getting below 1% of that threshold, things become expensive and challenging. In Ontario, for example, the non-GM soybean market is typically working somewhere between 1% and 5%, depending on who's buying. Again, the cost for that is rolled into the buyer who wants the non-GM label. These are all practical considerations. It can be a very practical thing and we have lots of experience with it.
I know that the International Seed Federation and CSGA have been looking at this situation in terms of seed purity standards. There isn't a necessity per se of maintaining a seed's purity in regard to traits that have achieved deregulation. It's not necessarily fair to seed growers or companies to be penalized for the presence of those traits, if those traits were not required to be kept segregated in the first place. That goes back to my first point on whether it's a requirement to segregate it or not.
If we go into a world where we are going to semi-deregulate some traits, we would want to think long and hard about what those traits would be, why we needed to segregate them, and what crops and systems we would work with so we would have a very realistic perspective on the costs and capabilities of that segregation. There, I think, farmers have a lot of experience and could provide excellent advice in that regard. I think the first thing they would ask is, “What's the threshold?”
I'll stop there. I'll go on and on, if you let me.