The whole rotten corrupted GMO thing is slowly blowing up in the faces of these Canadian wheat farmers; under these circumstances, they will grow increasingly furious at how they have been lied to over decades by Monsanto, now subsumed into Bayer. Will they and their government be angry enough to dump the agribusiness GMO takeover and revert to the prior 8000 year history of agriculture by getting rid of Bayer? We'll see, eh?

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The commentary: Personally, I think the whole rotten corrupted GMO thing is slowly blowing up in the faces of these Canadian wheat farmers; under these circumstances, they will grow increasingly furious at how they have been lied to over decades by Monsanto, now subsumed into Bayer. Will they and their government be angry enough to dump the agribusiness GMO takeover and revert to the prior 8000 year history of agriculture by getting rid of Bayer? We'll see, eh?

The news: South Korea followed Japan's lead on Monday, June 18th. Canada is one of the world's largest wheat exporters and is South Korea's No. 3 wheat supplier after the U.S. and Australia. A few Roundup Ready wheat plants discovered in southern Alberta in 2017 have caused another country to ban Canadian wheat imports.

On Friday, June 15th, Japan banned Canadian wheat imports after it was announced genetically modified wheat plants were discovered along an access road in Southern Alberta. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency "proved" there's no genetically modified wheat in commercial production in Canada. The Canadian Grain Commission has also confirmed there's no trace of the unapproved trait in any Canadian wheat shipments. Genetically modified wheat is not approved in any country.

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A different more analytical spin from coverage in the Ukraine, another large wheat exporter

This all stems from Canada's own admission, when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) on June 14 released a statement indicating it has discovered genetically modified wheat in southern Alberta.

"The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has recently completed testing of a few wheat plants found on an access road in Alberta that survived a spraying treatment for weeds. When the CFIA was notified of this finding, CFIA scientists conducted tests to determine why the wheat survived. The CFIA's tests confirmed that the wheat found was genetically modified and herbicide-tolerant. Since GM wheat is not authorized in Canada, the CFIA worked collaboratively with partners at all levels to gather as much complete, accurate and credible information about this discovery as possible."

The CFIA said it was notified of the GM wheat by the government of Alberta on Jan. 31. By Feb. 12, the CFIA's Ottawa Genotyping/Botany Laboratory had received samples of wheat seeds from Alberta and began conducting DNA-based analyses. Following the analysis, the CFIA narrowed the wheat line down to two possible companies before ultimately determining on April 8 that the Alberta wheat sample was a match for a Monsanto GM wheat line that was used in multiple confined research field trials in the late 1990s and early 2000s in both Canada and the United States. The locations of the confined research field trials were approximately 200 miles or more removed from the GM wheat plants found in Alberta, the CFIA said.

The CFIA noted that no evidence was present to suggest that the GM wheat was present anywhere other than the isolated site where it was discovered. In addition, Health Canada has concluded that the finding does not pose a food safety risk.

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From the Edmonton Journal, by CLARE CLANCY Updated: June 18, 2018

Ottawa has confirmed that both countries had launched a temporary suspension of Canadian wheat. "South Korea is a much smaller buyer of Canadian wheat, but they still are a customer," said Alberta Wheat Commission chairman Kevin Bender. "We'd like to get this corrected as quickly as we can."

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Alarmed but reassuring (and even sometimes thorough) coverage from the Canadian Broadcast Network raises questions of how much wishful thinking and die hard hope has pervaded their coverage...

It's standard protocol in both countries to temporarily close markets in such cases, Global Affairs spokesman Jesse Wilson said Monday. "The Government of Canada is working with foreign trading partners to ensure they have all the necessary information to make informed decisions and limit market disruption," he said in an emailed statement.

Japan is one of the top importers of Canadian wheat at around 1.5 million tonnes a year and tends to buy the highest-quality grain at premium prices, said Cereals Canada president Cam Dahl. South Korea imports around 235,000 tons a year.

"I am confident that we have the answers that Korea is looking for just as I'm very confident that we have the answers that Japan is looking for," Dahl said, adding he's hopeful the suspension won't last for long, and that there have been no indications so far that the European Union and China would be making similar moves.

A contractor spraying for weeds along an access road last year informed local authorities that a few plants were not killed by Roundup herbicide, the CFIA said in an incident report, tests finding plants were genetically modified to tolerate the weed killer.

Business consultant Gary Mar was the province's representative in Asia from 2011 to 2015. He told CBC News the ban should only last a matter of "two or three months," similar to what happened in 2013 when genetically modified wheat was found in the U.S. "It took a couple of months of testing to make sure the GMO wheat didn't get into the supply and it was resolved and I expect the same thing will happen here with Korea and Japan as it relates to Canadian wheat," he said.

Tests have concluded the wheat did not make its way into the food supply and was isolated to a few plants in the ditch where they were found. Health Canada said there are no safety risks. The CFIA said the genetically modified plants in Alberta were not a match for any of the 450 registered wheat varieties in its database. It confirmed the Alberta sample was a match for a genetically modified wheat line used in research field trials two decades ago in Canada and the United States.

U.S. agriculture company Monsanto Co. did the tests between 1998 and 2000 making up 0.1 per cent of total Canadian wheat plantings at the time, said company spokesman Jeff Neu.

"Given the passage of time and large distances involved, there is no evidence that would explain how or if the current GM wheat finding is linked with a previous trial," the CFIA said in the incident report.

Japanese scientists coming to Alberta

Deron Bilous, Alberta's economic development and trade minister, said Japanese scientists are en route to Alberta.

"We're working very closely with CFIA and are confident that similar to other examples in the past, that this will be resolved quickly."

Alberta Wheat Commission general manager Tom Steve says he is not concerned that the actions taken by Japan and South Korea might set off a domino effect.

"We know from our discussions with the Federal Government and Canadian Food Inspection Agency -- which is part of the federal government -- that they've reached out to all our significant customers. We haven't had any indications from our other major customers that this will interrupt the normal flow of grain. But we also will be working hard to ensure they have faith in our regulatory and quality control system and that we won't have any other disruptions. The U.S. is also a premium market and we don't have any indication they're going to stop exports."

Japanese officials were en route to Alberta to work with the CFIA, said Alberta Economic Development and Trade Minister Deron Bilous.

"This is their standard protocol as for wanting to ensure that Canadian wheat is safe," he said at a news conference. "We know that our farmers produce the highest quality and safest wheat in the world. We recognize it's in everyone's best interest to get this resolved in a very timely manner."

The value of Alberta's total wheat exports in 2017 was about $2.1 billion. The province's largest trading partners for the product are the U.S., Japan and Indonesia.

Japan bought $203 million worth of wheat last year from Alberta, according to provincial agriculture statistics. South Korea imported about $20 million in Alberta wheat last year.

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Authors Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/

Authors Bio:

Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.

We added "2020" to the title.


I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.


I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.


Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).


For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....


My highest accomplishments thus far are

1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.


2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.


These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!

This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.


In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev