Many of those projects are being funded by the BioProducts AgSci Cluster, brought together as part of BioIndustrial Innovation Canada with funding from Growing Forward 2.

The Sarnia, Ont.-based cluster aims to help new bioproducts get to market through funding, creating networks and supporting bioproducts companies.

At the cluster’s annual meeting in Toronto last week, several companies and researchers with funding from the cluster explained how they derive from and use agriculture products.

Flax is one of the stars of bioproducts research, both because of the health effects from its seeds and the strength and usefulness of its fibres.

At Prairie Tide Chemicals, president and CEO Dr. Martin Reaney has isolated what he calls orbitides from flaxseed oil.

“Flaxseed is biologically active,” he says. It is high in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. It also contains lignin, a soluble dietary fibre, and the orbitide component that Reaney has found.

He was first introduced to flaxseed oil research when he was approached to figure out how to eliminate the bitter taste in flaxseed.

“Some people who take it think it tastes awful,” he says.

In doing that research, it set him on the road to isolating the orbitide, a cyclic peptide that dissolves in oil.

“Peptides shouldn’t dissolve in oil, but this one does,” he says.

He believes that the health-positive biological activity of flaxseed oil and flax lignin products are derived from the orbitides.

Beyond health improvement, there are other more complex possibilities from orbitides, says Reaney. They include making light-emitting diodes from flax, which allows them to displace metals from diodes. He also believes he can construct lighter, stronger materials for building materials.

Other researchers are working on a more directly practical use of biomaterials for construction materials.

At the University of Toronto, Professor Dr. Ning Yan is combining wood pulp with flax fibres in order to create biodegradable, lightweight sandwich board panels for use in construction and the automotive sector.

She created a skin for the panels with a higher content of flax, as they wanted the skin to be what holds the board together and gives it rigidity, while the inside, made of wood pulp and a lower percentage of flax, is light and insulating. A mix that includes 10 per cent flax fibre and 40 per cent pulp fibre appears to be optimum, says Yan.

Yan says she can work with any agriculture fibre and hopes to try with others than flax. She says it has been difficult to get a clean, reliable supply of agriculture fibres, like flax.

Ken Mak, a PhD student at Queen’s University reported on the work of the group he is part of, led by Dr. Amir Fam.

They aren’t creating new products, but are using bioproduct fibre products and testing their quality, including resins and epoxys and products that can replace fibreglass. They have found that flax-based materials can replace synthetic materials in applications such as re-enforcing degrading bridges.

At EcoSynthetix, they take low-value agriculture feedstock materials and upgrade them to displace synthetic material.

They make use of polysaccharide from corn and upgrade it through a reactive extrusion process.

The company had its first hit product with a more environmentally friendly coating for paper. The paper business is highly competitive, so they looked, along with some funding, for another industry to disrupt.

They found it in wood composites with no added formaldehyde or isocyanate, says Peter Van Ballegooie, vice-president of corporate development at EcoSynthetix, based in Burlington, Ont.

“We’re all surrounded by wood composites,” he said. “The drivers (of demand for their product) are around health and ecological benefits.”

Their DuraBind product found a market last September with one of the world’s largest producers of composite wood products, the Swiss Krono Group. That group had helped EcoSynthetix develop its DuraBind product, and in the process it found that using their product improved the efficiency of the production pro-cess with less gumming up of equipment.

Sellings of composite wood products, whether they be Walmart or Ikea are all looking for options that off-gas fewer chemicals, says Ballegooie, and EcoSynthetics has options for them.

The major projects funded by the BioProducts AgSci Cluster are at various places in their commercialization, but they are all tied together in their potential to make use of agriculture products, some of which is now left on the field or discarded.

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The discovery, made by a team of archeologists that includes University of Toronto Professor Gary Crawford, sheds new light on the origins of rice domestication and on the history of human agricultural practices.

“Today, rice is one of the most important grains in the world’s economy, yet at one time, it was a wild plant… how did people bring rice into their world?” said Crawford, an anthropological archeologist.

Working with three Chinese researchers, Crawford found the ancient domesticated rice fragments in what was probably a ditch in the lower Yangtze Valley. They observed that about 30 per cent of the rice plant material — primarily bases, husks and leaf epidermis — were not wild, but showed signs of being purposely cultivated.

This study builds on Crawford’s previous research into early agriculture in China, in which he has examined the ancient settlements, tools, and plant and animal management efforts that occurred in different regions of the country. He is interested in better understanding the forces that compelled our human ancestors to transition from hunters and gatherers to farmers.

“The question I ultimately want to answer is, what pushed them to move wholeheartedly into the farming regime? Why did they reduce their emphasis on hunting and expand into crop production?” Crawford says. “People did what they needed to do to make their lives more manageable and sustainable, and the unintended consequence was farming. With this rice discovery, we’re seeing the first stages of that shift.”

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“The fact that it was done by the prime minister makes it look like a party political stunt and that leaves a bad taste,” Arthur Schafer director of the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics said in an interview last week.

Normally pardons, as well as prosecutions, are done at arm’s length from the government, said Paul Thomas, professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba.

“There’s undoubtedly some partisan politics involved,” he said in a separate interview.

“That is a worrisome thing. Harper has played fast and loose with a lot of political conventions that surround the exercise of prime ministerial power.

“It fits in with a pattern where he has taken direct, personal control through his office and made things happen in a way that isn’t consistent with the prevailing norms of behaviours from the past.”

Celebrate

Harper announced the pardons Aug. 1 at a farm near Kindersley, Sask., where farmers gathered to celebrate legislation ending the wheat board’s monopoly on the sale of western Canadian wheat destined for export or domestic human consumption.

Government officials declined to name the farmers getting pardons or the number, citing privacy concerns.

Open-market supporters welcome the gesture.

One of the pardoned farmers, Jim Chatenay, told PostMedia, it felt as if a “black cloud” had been lifted away.

Some, as Harper said in his speech, only drove a few loads of grain across the border — acts that were “purely symbolic.” However, at least one of the farmers exported more than $300,000 worth of grain.

There’s a time-honoured tradition of citizens using civil disobedience to draw attention to laws they believe to be unjust, Schafer said. But lawbreakers have to be prepared to pay the penalty, he added.

Farmers who broke the law for economic gain are akin to thieves, he said.

The Royal Prerogative of Mercy had its origins at a time when English monarchs had absolute power. Now that authority rests within cabinet. But invoking that authority feels like an attack on the rule of law, Schafer said.

“It feels like Harper is saying — and not for the first time — ‘L’Etat, c’est moi,’ — ‘the State is me,’ as Louis XIV, the Sun King, famously said. It’s not true. He’s one man.

“We need the rule of law not the rule of individual men, even if they happen to be prime minister. Favouritism when it comes to the administration of justice, favourtism even to your ideological cronies or sympathizers leaves a bad taste.”

There are also questions about whether the farmers qualified for pardons under the criteria for the Royal Prerogative for Mercy posted on the Parole Board of Canada’s website.

Criteria

It says: “The exercise of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy is not intended to circumvent other existing legislation.

“An act of executive clemency will not be considered where the difficulties experienced by an individual applicant result from the normal consequences of the application of the law.

“Furthermore, the Royal Prerogative of Mercy is not a mechanism to review the merits of existing legislation, or those of the justice system in general.”

When asked if these pardons met the criteria, a government official said in an email that clemency under the Royal Prerogative of Mercy “is a largely unfettered, discretionary power vested in the office of the Governor General… who may grant this exceptional remedy in appropriate circumstances to deserving cases.”

Peter Russell, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Toronto, is also troubled by Harper’s move.

“I find it difficult to accept such a blatantly ideological use of the royal prerogative,” he said in an email. “I have always thought that the Crown and those who act in its name should not use Crown power for partisan political purposes.”

It’s not, however, inconsistent with the Harper government’s actions, especially given its attack on the wheat board, Thomas said.

“In my view they have rigged referenda with questions that were intended to produce certain results and they coerced the board (of directors) and tried to intimidate the board in various ways,” he said. “The minister (responsible for the wheat board) has attacked people who had resisted the campaign to get rid of the wheat board so in many ways it’s not that surprising.”

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“The wheat board is pretty well dismantled, but I think it (the legal challenge) has quite a chance of success,” Russell, one of Canada’s leading experts on Canadian constitutional politics, told the CBC recently.

“There are two sides to it. There’s the illegal introduction of the bill into Parliament and that is Federal Judge Campbell’s ruling, and it’s under appeal. There’s also a charter challenge to taking away the freedom of the expression of the farmers, so their views are before Parliament when the board’s mandate is changed. It’s certainly a very important challenge.”

During an earlier interview with the Manitoba Co-operator Russell predicted the government’s decision to kill the board’s single desk would end up before the Supreme Court.

“It’s a grave public matter,” he said.

Parliament can amend the wheat board act to remove Section 47.1, ending the requirement that farmers approve, through a vote, changes to the board’s mandate, he added.

“But I think there would have to be a full parliamentary debate.”

Debate on Bill C-18, which removes the board’s single desk Aug. 1, was curtailed last fall.

When Parliament passes legislation saying farmers have to vote before changing that law, that’s significant, Russell said. It’s important for democracy that proper process be followed.

“We don’t just have simple majority rule,” Russell said. “It would be very dangerous if it didn’t matter what commitments Parliament makes, because again the honour of Parliament is at stake here.

“When I mention the honour of Parliament people’s eyes glaze over and they think it’s a funny idea, but it shouldn’t be a funny idea. We should take some pride in our institutions and not just boil them down to bare power and the power of numbers. Parliament has always meant more than just a numbers game.”

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Two new court actions were launched early in the new year, including a class-action lawsuit claiming $15.4 billion is owed to farmers upon the dismantling of Canadian Wheat Board assets.

“The CWB’s assets include $100 million in cash, 3,402 hopper cars, lake freighters, an office building and intangible assets, which experts have valued,” Regina lawyer Tony Merchant says in a release. “Despite passage of Bill C-18, there is no plan proposed by the federal government regarding compensating farmers for divesting of the substantial assets held by the farmer-owned CWB.

“The value realized from CWB assets has to be returned to farmers. To do otherwise, would resemble a classic case of theft by conversion,” Merchant said.

Meanwhile, eight farmer-elected wheat board directors who were fired late last year want the Federal Court to quash Ottawa’s appeal of a Federal Court declaration that Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz acted illegally by introducing Bill C-18, the Marketing Freedom for Farmers Act, into Parliament Oct. 18.

On Dec. 7, Justice Douglas Campbell ruled Ritz broke Section 47.1 of the Canadian Wheat Board Act by introducing the controversial legislation before first consulting with the wheat board’s board of directors and getting farmers’ approval to end single-desk selling through a plebiscite. Ritz’s failure to do so “is an affront to the rule of law,” Justice Campbell wrote.

The federal government says it will appeal the declaration, which some political scientists incorrectly predicted would prevent C-18 from becoming law. The bill received royal assent and was proclaimed into law Dec. 15.

The former directors argue Ottawa can’t ignore the Federal Court’s ruling and appeal it at the same time.

“They (Ottawa) are acknowledging the legitimacy of the court declaration by appealing it,” Kane farmer and former District 10 director Bill Toews said in an interview Jan. 5. “But they are also ignoring it at the same time by saying it’s not required.”

To appeal the ruling the federal government must first stop implementing the new law, former wheat board chair Allen Oberg said in an interview. That includes not killing the board’s monopoly over the sale of western Canadian wheat and barley destined for export or domestic human consumption. The government has said the monopoly will end Aug. 1, the first day of the new crop year.

Since Justice Campbell declared C-18 was introduced illegally, it follows the law is invalid, Oberg said. That’s what the former directors will argue in a separate action in Manitoba Court of Queens Bench, he added.

Jan. 17 and 18 the former directors will ask a Queens Bench judge for an interim and interlocutory injunction to prevent implementation of C-18. Even if their request is denied the former directors will ask the court to rule on the law’s validity.

Some say the former directors are beating a dead horse, but according to Toews there’s an important democratic principle at stake — due process.

“We feel that farmers, as the rest of the citizens in Canada, have a right to due process and expect the government to act within the law,” he said.

The former directors are appealing to farmers to help pay for the legal action.

“How successful we are on that will perhaps determine how far this does go,” Oberg said. “We’re up against a government that has unlimited resources.”

Twice before — in 1993 and 2007 — the courts prevented the federal government’s efforts to end the wheat board’s single desk for barley. In both cases the Federal Court ruled the change had to be approved by Parliament and not just by order-in-council (cabinet).

This time Parliament approved the change.

Not surprisingly, experts differ on whether Minister Ritz acted illegally.

University of Toronto professor emeritus of political science Peter Russell argues allowing the new law to stand compromises the integrity of Parliament. A former Parliament said farmers would be consulted before changes are made to the wheat board’s mandate, he said in an interview last month.

“Parliament can bind itself as to the ‘manner and form’ of future legislation, a view supported by many constitutional scholars in Canada and other Westminster parliamentary democracies,” he wrote in the Globe and Mail, adding that governments still have the authority to repeal legislation passed by previous Parliaments.

However, that didn’t occur in this case. C-18 was introduced while the wheat board and 47.1 were still the law.

Gerald Chipeur, a Calgary lawyer and a former chair of the Canadian Bar Associa-tion’s Constitutional and International Law Section, disagrees. Only the Speaker of the House of Commons or Senate has jurisdiction to make such a ruling and neither did, he wrote in the Globe and Mail.

Russell’s “manner and form” argument doesn’t stand up either, Chipeur wrote. Manner and form is restricted to the actions of ministers and Parliament. Effectively giving farmers a veto over Parliament is inconsistent with parliamentary and constitutional law, he says.

The post New twist in wheat board legal battle appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

staff / The fine line between the stuff rope and paper are made of, and the stuff Cheech and Chong s movies are made of, has been found on the plant s genome.

A team of Canadian researchers has sequenced the genome of Cannabis sativa, which, depending on the strain, is known for its industrial or illicit recreational uses.

One genetic switch is likely responsible for the production of THCA (tetrahydrocannabinolic acid), the precursor of the active ingredient in marijuana, plant biochemist Jon Page of the University of Saskatchewan said in a release Oct. 19.

The cross-country team compared Purple Kush, a potent marijuana variety, with the Finola hemp variety grown for seed production. Hemp lacks THCA, but does contain a non-psychoactive substance, cannabidiolic acid (CBDA).

Detailed analysis of the two genomes suggests that domestication, cultivation, and breeding of marijuana strains has caused the loss of the enzyme (CBDA synthase), which would otherwise compete for the metabolites used as starting material in THCA production, project coleader Tim Hughes, a professor at the Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research at the University of Toronto, said in the same release.

Put simply, over thousands of years of cultivation, hemp growers selectively bred Cannabis sativa into two distinct strains: one for fibre and seed, the other for medicinal use.

Crops such as rice and corn have already seen their genomes mapped, but this marks the first such mapping for a medicinal plant, Page said. Marijuana has been used medicinally for more than 2,700 years, and continues to be explored for its pharmaceutical potential.

The researchers, whose work was published in the journal Genome Biology,said they expect sequencing the Cannabis sativa genome will help answer questions about the biology of the plant and encourage development of its various uses.

That would include development of high-producing industrial hemp plants, hemp seed varieties to produce high-quality edible oil, and strains for pharmaceutical production.

About 25,000 acres of the crop were sown in Canada in 2010, mostly in Manitoba, according to the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance. Farmers must be licensed through Health Canada to grow hemp.

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Growing up near Tillsonburg, I worked on tobacco, ginseng and vegetable operations before heading on to the University of Toronto. There I nurtured a long-smouldering passion for journalism and world cultures, but never gave up my interest in agriculture, bringing a useless rain gauge from one tiny apartment to the next, guerrilla gardening where I could.

In a fit of post-university ambition and youthful optimism, I moved to rural Manitoba on a week’s notice to report for thePortage Daily Graphicbefore transferring to theWinnipeg Sun.I haven’t looked back.

Most recently I strolled the halls of the provincial legislature as a political communicator, receiving a second education on how political systems function and the forces that affect changes in government.

However, my desire to report and write never faded. I jumped at the opportunity to join theManitoba Co-operator and return to journalism.

Throughout my travels and travails I’ve remained firmly rooted in my respect for farmers. Agriculture is not just an industry, it’s a way of life, it’s the food we eat and the basis of human civilization.

I look forward to meeting producers, learning new things and investigating emerging challenges as I grow into my position at theManitoba Co-operator,a position that will no doubt bear fruit for years to come.

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Yet food safety is once again a public health issue. Because of such factors as the growth in world food trade, the scale of food-processing facilities, new emerging pathogens, and an aging population, foodborne illness is now the largest class of emerging infectious diseases in Canada.

How have Canadian universities responded to this important new reality? In my experience – with some exceptions – not very well. Most universities are generally absent from the major public debates on food safety issues and generally irrelevant to most government policy-making.

There are exceptions such as the University of Toronto’s program in Food Safety, Nutrition and Regulatory Affairs has been a leader for many years. But the main point remains: Canadian universities have been generally slow in adapting their research priorities and curricula to address the important and growing challenge of food safety.

A few years ago John Frank, scientific director with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, observed that most health research is “pretty useless” for solving real health problems. Nowhere is this more evident than in the absence of adequate research on foodborne illness. There are now more than 250 different types of bacteria, parasites, viruses and toxins that are known to cause foodborne illness, but little has been done to translate this information so that it is useful for decision-making by food safety regulators.

POLICY

Every food science graduate should have a basic understanding of the food regulatory system and international trade law. They should understand that science and policy cannot be separated in the real world of food regulation. They need to understand the basic elements of policy-based risk management and communication and not just science-based risk assessment.

The recent announcement of the Munro Chair in Food Safety at McGill could be an important development in food safety education. Named after Dr. Ian Munro and his wife Jayne, this new chair could make a real difference if McGill does it right.

Tragically, Dr. Munro died just days after the announcement. A former senior federal food safety regulator and then the founder of Canada’s leading toxicology company, CanTox, Ian still made time to publish over 120 scientific papers, serve on countless international science bodies, and to work tirelessly to reform Canada’s sclerotic food regulatory system. The McGill program and other universities could do no better than to emulate in their research and curriculum what Ian’s life embodied – internationally recognized scientific leadership rooted in a solid understanding of the real world of food safety regulation.

– Ronald L. Doering is a past president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and practises

food law in the Ottawa offices of Gowling Lafleur Henderson.

Contact him at Ronald. doer ing@gowlings.com

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“An important message for health-care policy-makers is that despite universal health insurance coverage, inequities in access to care still exist between rural and urban residents,” the study notes. These inequities are often overlooked because governments evaluate health-care access on a very large scale, which doesn’t account for the impact of the place of residence.

“Understanding the relationship between rural-urban and other determinants will help policy-makers to target interventions appropriately to specific demographic, provincial, community, or rural categories,” adds the study by Lyn Sibley of the University of Toronto department of health policy and Jonathan Weiner of Johns Hopkins University.

“The best place to be is in or near a small city because it’s more likely to have family doctors and an up-to-date hospital,” Sibley said in an interview. “For rural communities, the more rural it gets, the less likely you are to find specialists.”

For many rural residents, health care is postponed until a trip to a hospital emergency room is needed.

The Telehealth system in Ontario where residents call a 1-800 number for medical information “is likely a lot more important to rural residents who are trying to diagnose a medical problem in the absence of a family doctor or nearby hospital.”

The study found rural residents outside of Quebec didn’t have near the access to specialist physician services that urban dwellers do nor the same supply of family doctors common in smaller cities. Their study also suggests health-care officials need to better understand the effect of physician supply, as well as factors such as how far people have to travel to receive care, rural income levels, and the proportion of the population that is Aboriginal.

Income plays a key role even with the universal health-care programs, the study found. “Those in the lowest quartile for household income were less likely to have had a flu shot, (to) have seen a specialist, or to have a regular medical doctor,” the study states.

The effect is more pronounced for those without full-time jobs.

“An unusual pattern is seen among people who were employed for only part of the year. These people were less likely to have a flu shot, more likely to report unmet need, more likely to see a family or specialist physician and less likely to have a regular medical doctor.”

Despite the shortcomings, rural residents are less likely to report having unmet healthcare needs, the study says. Officials might view that as an indication that their healthcare needs are looked after, but the study says this is unlikely given their lower usage of specialist physicians and poorer health status.

“This result suggests different expectations of the healthcare system, leading to rural residents having a different threshold at which they report their needs being unmet, its adds. Rural residents are more likely to postpone seeking care until economically or socially convenient.”

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Health Canada officials spent the last 15 years trying to develop a comprehensive new policy to allow food companies greater scope for adding vitamins and minerals to their food products. But last year the health minister stopped the proposed new policy from going ahead, primarily because of an intense lobby effort by Canadian dietitians who were concerned that the proposed new rules would allow food companies to fortify “junk food.”

This is a good example of what policy theorists call “harsh policy space.” On the one hand, the food industry sees the business and health advantages of enhancing the nutritional intake of their consumers, without any food safety concerns because fortification levels would be strictly regulated. For food companies anxious to sell more nutritious products, this is a win-win.

At the same time, all provincial governments are terrified by the rapid increase in healthcare costs caused in part by bad eating by Canadians. Moreover, it is the publicly funded healthcare system that is burdened with the serious increase in the cost of drugs to combat many diet-related diseases.

Provincial governments want more of us to go to our kitchen cupboards, not our medicine cabinets, to deal with problems such as high cholesterol. Various mandatory fortification rules, such as the addition of folates to bakery products, have demonstrated significant health benefits.

On the other hand, dietitians and some physicians are adamantly opposed to discretionary fortification, arguing that consumers will end up eating more junk food in the belief that fortified junk food is a healthy food choice.

This position seems to get strong support from a study released recently by University of Toronto researchers Sacco and Tarasuk that was published inEuropean Journal of Clinical Nutrition.Using the 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey data, the authors found an inverse relationship between consumption of fortified foods and the number of servings of foods such as fruit and vegetables, dairy products and meat. Their data raised particular concerns relating to younger age groups.

HARSH POLICY SPACE

The authors also noted that there have been very few studies looking at the effect of discretionary fortification on food selection dietary patterns. They say that Health Canada’s proposed policy is “at odds with national dietary recommendations,” and that before we change the rules “it is important that we understand the broader public health implications of discretionary fortification policies on food consumption patterns, particularly in the context of a growing prevalence of obesity.”

I’m told that these conflicting positions also exist within the department, so it’s not surprising that we have continuing policy drift. The inability to develop a new fortification policy also has real implications for another significant regulatory issue.

It was the ongoing failure to modernize the food fortification policy – and Canada’s more restrictive health claims policy – that drove many food companies to dress up their food products as natural health products (NHPs), which are not subject to food fortification laws.

That’s how we got energy drinks or vitamin-enriched waters being sold as NHPs. The currently confusing “case-by-case” non-policy for food-like NHPs must be clarified, but it cannot be until there is clarification of the food fortification rules.

The root of the harsh policy space is the difficulty in defining “junk food.” From a nutritional science point of view, why would it be acceptable to fortify a nutrition bar but not a chocolate bar, an energy drink but not a soft drink, bread but not a cookie? And harsh policy space makes for difficult politics. Without what policy theorists call a sweet spot – a place that satisfies most interests – the best political option is to do nothing. Don’t count on new food fortification regulations any time soon.

Ronald L. Doering, a past president of the Canadian Food

Inspection Agency, practises food law in the Ottawa offices of Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP. He also chairs the federal

agriculture minister’s advisory board on food safety. Contact

him at ronald. doering@gowlings.com.

———

“Dietitiansandsomephysiciansargueconsumers willendupeatingmorejunkfoodinthebelief thatfortifiedjunkfoodisahealthyfoodchoice.”

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