AGRICULTURE: Canadians Divided Over Labelling Bio-tech Food

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Mark Bourrie

OTTAWA, Nov 17 1999 (IPS) - Government efforts to placate widespread concern over genetically engineered food stumbled this week when Canadian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) boycotted a conference to discuss voluntary labelling of modified food products.

The government invited NGO groups to attend the conference as observers but instead, they renewed demands that labelling be mandatory for all plant products, genetically engineered animal products, and meat from animals that have been fed genetically- engineered feed.

Lucy Sherrit, coordinator of the Canadian Sierra Club’s “Safe Food – Sustainable Agriculture Campaign” said even Government opinion polls showed that between 80 and 95 per cent of consumers wanted mandatory labelling.

The Department of Agriculture, however, has been leery of enforced labelling and sponsored this week’s conference of associations representing farm groups, biotechnology companies and grocery store owners.

Environmentalists were to have three of the 21 votes at the conference, but they withdrew because they did not want to appear to back voluntary labeling.

“Overwhelmingly, Canadians have demanded mandatory labeling immediately, but the government is spending time negotiating a voluntary standard,” said Sherrit. “More than 40,000 signatures have been collected by the Consumer Right to Know Campaign (which is pressing for mandatory labeling).

“In the interests of democracy and food safety, we demand that the government mandatory labeling. This is the government’s responsibility, and we expect it to be met immediately.”

Michael Kooh of Greenpeace Canada expected little to emerge from this week’s conference.

“The purpose of this voluntary labeling committee is to protect the biotech industry and to deny consumers the information they demand,” he said. “Government and industry are stalling with a process that will be entirely optional – if it is ever completed.”

Such a committee “would not address the public’s right to know what kind of food they’re eating, and their right to choose. Industry has always had the option to voluntarily label genetically-engineered foods,” he said.

Kooh declared that most industry groups and government agencies had been resisting mandatory labelling of GE foods, saying that it would be “misleading and confusing.” But voluntary labelling “would be even more confusing to the consumer and would not compel companies to provide this information.”

Canadian environmentalists believed the country’s Food and Drug Act already required labels on genetically engineered food. U.S. activists are making a similar argument in their campaign for mandatory labeling in the United States.

Jennifer Story, health protection campaigner for the Council of Canadians – an anti-globalisation group – said Canada should follow the lead of the European Union and force industry to label all products that contain at least one per cent genetically- altered material.

“We already have mandatory labeling standards to draw from, all around the world,” she said. “The members of the European Union have had a label standard at their disposal for about three years. It is not as comprehensive as it could be, but they are in the process of improving it.

“Australia and New Zealand have announced labeling earlier this year, as have Japan and Korea, and political pressure for labelling is building in the United States.”

Cindy Wiggins, head of the Canadian Health Coalition, a group of medical professionals and laboratory scientists who oppose cuts to Canada’s food testing programs, said the Canadian government cares more about biotechnology companies and agri-business than its own citizens.

“This is just one more signal that the Canadian government sees industry as its client, not the public,” she said. “When government becomes advocate for the industry, it ceases to be a guardian for the public. None of the 700 million dollars that government spends on the biotech industry goes toward food safety or environmental risk.”

Wiggins posed a series of questions: “Why are we being force-fed genetically engineered foods instead of being given a choice? Why has the biotech industry turned its back on the ideology of the market: competition, free choice, marketing?

“If GE foods are so safe, why isn’t the industry proud to label them and market them as such? Why can’t biotech industries get insurance for their products? What do the insurance companies know that we don’t know?”

“Why would the government allow a company like Monsanto, which denied it had put dioxin in Agent Orange, fix our dinner? I don’t get it.”

Health Minister Allan Rock, whose ministry sets the standards for approval of genetically-engineered food, insisted there was no proof that such food was harmful.

“Let’s have the science, let’s have the facts,” he said. “We’re very open to hearing criticism but it has to be criticism that we can deal with.

“The principles we use in testing these materials are derived from the World Health Organization, the International Federation of Agriculture. We’re using standards that are pretty well developed. If someone has a criticism of them, tell me what the science is…just making a political statement is not very helpful.”

Rock said that scientists “examine every product from the view of nutrition, from the view of biotechnology, from the view of toxicity.”

“They do tests, they examine test results, and they come to their own conclusions based on the safety of those products,” he said.