Did anti-GMO groups plant ‘rogue’ GMO wheat in Canada to deliberately disrupt markets to manipulate public opinion?

Henry Miller, Rob Wager | Genetic Literacy Project | July 20, 2018

In the summer of 2017, a contractor applied the popular weed-killer glyphosate (brand name Roundup®) to clear some weeds along an oil and gas service road. (Glyphosate is a very effective herbicide that controls hundreds of different weeds.) When wheat plants did not die after the contractor applied the herbicide, he contacted the authorities. 

The Alberta government determined the wheat was an herbicide-tolerant variety that had been genetically engineered (GE) with molecular techniques. GE wheat had been field-tested (not in recent years, however), but no developer has ever applied for or received regulatory approval for cultivation or sale of a GE wheat variety in Canada or the United States. 

Detailed investigation by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) uncovered some very strange facts. The GE wheat found in Alberta contained the same herbicide-tolerance (HT) gene (designated MON71200) that was field tested by the Monsanto Company (now Bayer) between 1998 and 2000, but those field trials were no closer than 180 miles from where the sample was found. 

Most puzzling to the investigators, however, was that the genetics of the newly found wheat plant itself not only didn’t match any of the approximately 450 registered varieties of wheat allowed to be grown in Canada, but it didn’t match any wheat plant anywhere of which the Canadian authorities were aware. 

Could the newly discovered GE wheat have escaped from a field trial and survived for nearly two decades? The findings of the CFIA don’t support that thesis.........To Read More....