Hart Haiden, Canada Born and educated in Germany, he worked in different European countries, Saudi Arabia and South Africa on agricultural projects before emigrating to Canada. He was a grain farmer for 20 years in British Columbia and operated a seed business. Since 1997 he has operated an organic health food processing plant. He is currently Chair of the developing Canadian Centre for Sustainable Agriculture Inc., and a Director of the Canadian Organic Growers Association. Sixty percent of canola is currently genetically engineered in Canada.
Current regulations are insufficient to deal with crop contamination and weed resistance.
Canadian farmers are now faced with a drop in large international markets - the market has gone for organic and is rapidly disappearing for traditional canola, as more countries adopt labelling and more consumers reject GE, such as in Japan. Canada should be adopting the precautionary principle - not promoting new GE crops. We need to clean up the mess created by GE canola. Wunsch has been actively working to improve the social and economic conditions of the small farmers in his community. Since 1995 he has worked with a soy farmers' cooperative, Cotrimaio, first as Secretary Director and from 1998 on as President.