An expert panel of scientists contracted by the federal government to study Ottawa’s system of regulating and controlling genetically modified food has condemned the existing system as lax and riddled with potential conflicts of interest.
The “expert panel on the future of food biotechnology,” organized by the Royal Society of Canada, said the existing system of using a “substantial equivalence” test to determine if new GM products are essentially the same as existing products and therefore safe, is unreliable and wrongheaded.
Instead, panel members urge regulators such as Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to apply a form of “precautionary principle.” That would mean approving new products only after rigorous and extensive independent scientific study.
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They propose more federal research spending independent of industry, a more “arm’s length” relationship between government and life sciences companies, and significantly more rigor in testing GM varieties and products before they are approved for sale.
Panel co-chair Brian Ellis from the University of British Columbia told a Feb. 5 news conference that the 48 GM products already on the market — derived from corn, canola, potato, tomato, squash, soybean, sugar beet and cottonseed oil — were approved under a system that is inadequate, but five years of market experience appear to show they are safe.
But it was as much good luck as good management, he said.
Asked if that meant Canadian consumers have been “guinea pigs” in consuming GM products, Ellis replied: “We have in a sense been involved in an experiment for five years.”
The government took a different view.
Karen Dodds, director general for the office of biotechnology at Health Canada, told a news conference the scientists did not understand how the system works.
She insisted the current practice ensures products are thoroughly tested before being approved for the market. “I would have to say that in Health Canada, they have not understood how we are applying substantial equivalence.”
Ellis said the panel’s recommendations would slow the product approval process, at a time when companies complain it is already too slow.
As well, the panel said it supported government efforts to create a system of voluntary, rather than mandatory, GM product labels if their recommendations for stricter regulations were accepted by the government.
The panel report was welcomed by critics of the government’s GM regulatory policies.
“It is a scathing condemnation of the practices of this government on the question of food safety,” New Democrat Judy Wasylycia-Leis said in the House of Commons Feb. 5.
