Mustard industry works to stop InVigor Gold

The spectre of InVigor Gold loomed large over mustard industry meetings in Saskatoon this month as farmers and processors addressed the threat of the new canola hybrid.

They don’t know if they can stop it but are trying their best.

“We know at the end of the day it’s going to destroy the condiment mustard industry in Canada, that that’ll be the end of it,” said Rick Mitzel, chief executive officer of Mustard 21 and executive director of SaskMustard.

Industry has been meeting with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Agriculture Canada and BASF, which announced last June it was going to introduce the crop in the United States in 2027 and in Canada a couple of years later.

Why it Matters: InVigor Gold is a genetically modified LibertyLink-resistant crop, which the European market won’t accept. Although BASF has called it a yellow canola, it is actually a brassica juncea, or from the mustard family, and not brassica napus, which is the canola grown in western Canada.

Sask Mustard officially opposes the introduction of InVigor Gold.

In December, it issued a news release and letter to producers to draw attention to what it called a critical threat from the crop. Saskatchewan supplies about 80 per cent of Canada’s mustard and 50 per cent of global supply.

Sask Mustard, Mustard 21 and the Canadian Mustard Association strongly disagree with BASF’s assertion the technology won’t negatively affect mustard producers, they said.

“The introduction of a GM B. juncea crop threatens to irreversibly contaminate Canada’s non-GM mustard supply through expected gene flow within a single species,” they said.