Alberta and Lantic Sugar meet to discuss genetically-modified sugar beets

Southern Alberta
Officials of the southern Alberta sugar beet industry will meet to discuss the use of RoundUp Ready or genetically-modified sugar beets resistant to the Monsanto Canada-made herbicide. A committee of two each from the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers Marketing Board and Lantic Sugar, which owns the Taber beet factory that produces Rogers Sugar, will meet.

Doug Emek of Taber, supervisor for both the Taber Lantic sugar beet operation and a cane sugar factory in Vancouver, said the company and marketing board have been talking about the crop “for some time.”
A lobby organization, through Cban e-News, sparked the recent move when it issued a news release asking the public to urge Lantic Sugar and southern Alberta farmers to ban the GM beets.

The release says Canadian sugar company Lantic Inc. (Rogers Sugar and Lantic brands) is deciding right now to accept or reject Monsanto’s genetically-modified sugar beet. Lantic Inc. is the only sugar company in Canada which processes sugar beets (grown in Alberta), but the GM sugar beet will only be planted if Lantic allows it. Lantic sugar is currently GM-free.
The issue boils done to competition.
Emek said the American beet sugar industry, with about 600,000 acres, mostly in North Dakota and Minnesota which have three sugar companies operating seven factories, grew about 60 per cent of the 2008 U.S. crop with GM beet varieties.
It is expected the U.S. will plant up to 90 per cent of this year’s crop with GM varieties.

“We all want southern Alberta to be able to compete (with the American industry),” said Emek.

The key to these GM varieties is the ability to find ways to more easily and environmentally-friendly control weeds during the sugar beet growing season, said Emek. They require less cultivation and spraying which reduces the greenhouse gases produced by the tractors.

RoundUp is one herbicide which, upon contact with the soil, quickly breaks down into its component parts.

Emek said several independent tests have been done on granular sugar processed from traditional sugar beet varieties and GM varieties.
“The sugar is not changed at all.”
He said while RoundUp Ready sugar beet varieties are more environmentally-friendly, they also improve the efficiency of producing sugar.

source: prairiepost