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Montreal Gazette
Sunday 2 April 2000
'Food safety' pamphlet is Liberal spin
LYLE STEWART
A seemingly innocuous pamphlet probably arrived in your mailbox this
week, as
it did in mine, titled Food Safety and You.
Produced by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, its cover features a
soft,
crayon-drawn rendition of a wholesome-looking picnic: a tossed salad,
bowl of
fruit, glass of milk and a solid plate of char-broiled steak, string beans,
baked spuds and ruby-red tomatoes. It recalls the colourful,
government-produced charts that used to adorn my mother's refrigerator,
detailing the four food groups with their recommended servings. Just good,
politically neutral information.
This pamphlet, studded with several useful food-safety tips, appears
to be
along those lines. That it is, until one reads the section titled "How
are new
food products approved?"
It is worth quoting extensively.
"Over the years, scientists have been involved in developing new
food
technologies that could lead to improved food products," reads the
pamphlet,
without mentioning that these scientists work for some of the worst polluters
on the planet, including Monsanto, DuPont and Dow Chemical.
"These foods go through a rigorous and thorough review process before
they can
be introduced into the marketplace. The way the government of Canada assesses
and regulates these goods is based on scientific principles that have
been
developed through consultations with experts around the world."
"Before any product derived from biotechnology can be marketed in
Canada, the
government of Canada requires that it undergo thorough laboratory and
field
testing. This includes testing in controlled, small-scale field trials
to
generate some of the data needed for health- and environmental-safety
assessments. In every step of the way, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency
conducts environmental-safety assessments for plants derived through
biotechnology."
Sounds Great
This all sounds great. If only it were true. In fact, according to Ann
Clark,
associate professor at the University of Guelph and an expert in crop
production and physiology, the CFIA doesn't do any actual research into
food
safety at all. Reached in Wooster, Ohio, where she is on sabbatical, Clark
calls the pamphlet "very carefully worded. The phrase that they 'conduct
assessments' is probably true, but it's not research."
Research into the safety of genetically modified foods - when it is done
at
all
- is provided by biotech corporations themselves, the parameters and
methods of
which vary widely, says Clark. In January, Clark published an analysis,
titled
"Food safety of GM crops in Canada: toxicity and allerginicity,"
that showed
the CFIA has completely dropped the ball on studying the safety of GM
foods.
"In sum," she wrote, "70 per cent of the currently available
GM crops,
including all of the canola and cotton crops approved for commerce in
Canada,
have not been subjected to any actual lab or animal-toxicity testing,
either as
refined oils for direct human consumption or indirectly as feedstuffs
for
livestock.
"Food-safety assessment is largely an assumptions-based process.
Most or
all of
the conclusions of food safety for individual GM crops are based on inferences
and assumptions, rather than actual testing. Evidence is needed to
substantiate
and validate these assumptions."
Hard to Review Data
Clark's analysis was conducted using data supplied on the Health Canada
Web
site. Actually reviewing the data supplied by industry is next to impossible,
she notes. "The ministry neither encourages nor allows independent
review of
industry research," Clark explains. "It makes it very difficult
for
independent
researchers like myself to review their data, so Canadians are obliged
to
entirely depend on the CFIA."
The CFIA is part of the federal Agriculture Department, which, Clark
notes,
labours under two incompatible goals: it is responsible for both regulation
and
promotion of the industry.
Says Clark, "I find that an unacceptable combination."
It's obvious the promotional role of the ministry now holds the upper
hand. In
addition to this food-safety pamphlet, the CFIA has contracted out for
two
advertising supplements, to appear this spring, in the consumer magazines
Canadian Living and Coup de Pouce. The supplements will ostensibly contain
"balanced, factual" information on GM foods.
As 200 Health Canada scientists warned in a letter to minister Allan
Rock last
fall, the government lacks the manpower to ensure food safety in Canada.
The
reliance on industry to police itself, meanwhile, is a disaster waiting
to
happen.
Spinners to the bone, the Liberals would rather spend taxpayers' millions
on PR
efforts to lull us into complacency rather than on actual flesh-and-blood
scientists who could ensure GM foods are safe.
In response to growing fears the government isn't acting in the public
interest, the Liberals turn to pollsters to probe Canadian attitudes (on
that,
more next week) while blithely assuring us that every food product on
supermarket shelves has been properly tested. Don't believe the hype.
- Lyle Stewart is a Montreal writer. His E-mail is
l.stewart4@sympatico.ca
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