Former Health Canada official Len Ritter was on Parliament Hill under duress last week, forced under legal threat by a Senate committee to testify about the controversial dairy production promoter bovine somatotropin.
He urged the anti-BST Senate agriculture committee May 3 to recognize there is strong scientific support for the safety of the drug and some farmers want to use it.
“If it were true that there is no benefit to dairy farmers … I think it would be tantamount to accusing dairy farmers who use it of being unbelievably stupid,” he told Winnipeg Conservative senator Mira Spivak.
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“I have far more respect for them than that. I believe they are convinced that this particular technology has value for them or else they would not use it.”
He also urged senators not to allow their committee hearings on BST to become a forum for besmirching the reputations of bureaucrats or scientists who are BST defenders.
More proof required
Health Canada decided in January against licensing BST for sale in Canada. The Senate committee has said it should not be approved without more research and better proof it is safe.
Ritter, former head of the Health Canada bureau of veterinary drugs and now a University of Guelph professor who supports licensing BST, appeared before the committee against his wishes.
He twice refused April invitations to appear and finally traveled to Ottawa May 3 only after receiving a subpoena.
Ritter said the last time he appeared on Parliament Hill to discuss BST in 1994, his views were ridiculed by some MPs and he was accused of having a conflict of interest.
“The result of my appearance was a vicious attack on my honesty and integrity by some members of the (Commons) committee,” Ritter wrote to the Senate committee. “While committee members are protected from libel suits by parliamentary immunity and while public servants can abuse the privilege of office, I faced significant legal costs to defend my honesty.”
Ritter was accused of conflict because when he appeared in 1994 as part of a group supporting the safety of BST, he still officially was a Health Canada employee on a leave of absence. In government, he had been head of the veterinary drug bureau when the BST application was being studied.
He was accused by critical MPs of having ties to Monsanto, the company that has been trying to have a dairy growth hormone approved for the Canadian market.
Last week, Ritter told senators he had not received funding from Monsanto.
He denied any knowledge of a 1997 memo from a Monsanto official to a Health Canada official that suggested Ritter should be re-appointed to the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives, a United Nations scientific panel.
He defended international scientific committees of the United Nations and World Health Organization, which have said products from animals treated with the hormone are safe for human consumption.
Considered safe
There can be differences of opinion between scientists but in the case of BST, the majority of scientists on review panels continue to believe the evidence is on the side of the safety of the product, he said.
Senators were easier on Ritter than MPs had been five years earlier, but Spivak and acting committee chair Eugene Whelan did voice their customary suspicions about the influence of corporations like Monsanto over the scientific assessment process.
Ritter, who has served as an adviser to several international committees, said he knew of no such corporate influence.
And he objected to earlier testimony from dissident Health Canada scientists who accused him of bias in favor of corporate interests. One of the scientists, Shiv Chopra, called him a “bozo.”
Even last week, the same day Ritter was scheduled to appear, Cho-pra went before senators again to suggest that Ritter’s actions in the early 1990s as director of the veterinary drugs bureau “is worthy of judicial inquiry. There was a conspiracy against us, and me personally.”
Ritter said he did not even know Chopra.
