As the House of Commons health committee opened hearings on policy for
labelling the food products of genetic modification, the government’s
chief regulator of food safety found itself again on the defensive
about its ties to the biotechnology industry.
GMO opponents Greenpeace Canada and the Canadian Health Coalition
released documents suggesting the federal government has spent $3.3
million to promote the safety of GM foods.
The two groups suggested it was an unholy alliance in which the
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regulator was teaming up with the regulated.
“The Canadian Food Inspection Agency should be regulating the biotech
industry, not covertly promoting it,” said Bradford Duplisea of the
health coalition, during the hearings two weeks ago.
On Parliament Hill, MPs uneasy about the safety of GM foods jumped on
the well-timed release of the funding information.
“Aren’t you running the risk of being seen as the mouthpiece of the
biotech industry?” asked Winnipeg New Democrat Judy Wasylycia-Leis when
CFIA officials appeared before the health committee Feb. 7.
The issue also was raised by anti-GMO MP Suzanne Tremblay of the Bloc
Québecois.
The officials challenged the numbers but also said they were not
promoting biotechnology.
Peter Brackenridge, CFIA vice-president, told MPs the government spends
money to explain the food regulatory system to consumers and to assure
Canadians that any foods approved for sale in Canada are safe, however
they were created.
“We are a regulator and we are not in the promotion business,” he told
MPs.
The agency helps fund public information about how the food regulatory
system works. “It is largely a response to questions from consumers.”
But critics see government funding of advertising about the safety of
GM foods as promotion of the industry.
Even within the ranks of biotechnology supporters in Parliament, there
is unease about Agriculture Canada’s dual role of overseeing regulation
through the CFIA and promoting genetic modification through research.
Critics fan the flames of that unease.
Holly Penfound, biotechnology campaigner for Greenpeace Canada, said
the Food Biotechnology Communications Network and the Consumers
Association of Canada, partners with CFIA in advertising food safety,
are too close to the biotech industry.
The federal government should choose its allies more carefully, and it
should move away from its position of favouring voluntary labelling for
GM foods.
“They’re busy paying for Monsanto’s front groups to try and make the
public accept the untested experiment that is genetic engineering,”
Penfound said.
