A Canadian health lobby group last week questioned whether Health Canada’s rejection of a dairy growth hormone drug will be permanent, suggesting the department is too close to the product manufacturer, Monsanto.
“Health Canada’s client relationship with Monsanto undermines the integrity of the regulator,” Mich-ael McBane of the Canadian Health Coalition said in a letter to health minister Allan Rock.
He noted the Health Canada announcement that bovine somatotropin would not be approved included the proviso “at this time.” Monsanto quickly said it would work with the department to challenge concerns that BST would undermine the health of the dairy herd.
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“In light of the fact that Health Canada managers systematically ignored the evidence from their own scientists that rBST is harmful to animals, we have no reason to believe that the decision on rBST will not be overturned,” wrote McBane.
The Canadian Health Coalition, formed years ago to defend medi-care as a publicly funded, universal health-care system, has been a key player in the campaign to block approval of Monsanto’s product, approved five years ago in the United States.
McBane said the Jan. 14 announcement to not license the product was welcome news. It was based on a veterinary report suggesting increased risk of mastitis, lameness and infertility in the dairy herd.
However, he said a College of Physicians and Surgeons report clearing BST as a human health risk is flawed and the Canadian government stand on BST at international gatherings where its merits are discussed remains ambivalent.
Too close to issue
The lobby group says some of those who advise Canada on the drug have Monsanto ties.
And the health protection branch of Health Canada, which is supposed to regulate and assess new products, has too close a “client relationship” with the companies advancing products for the market.
McBane said there is a “regulatory crisis” inside the department and he joined political critics in calling for a public independent review of the system.
“The rejection of rBST was achieved only after extraordinary public effort,” he wrote.
McBane said his coalition will continue the effort “to stop Monsanto, or any other biotechnology company, from subjecting children to an experiment involving large-scale adulteration of milk by an unlabeled biotechnology product…”
Monsanto officials insist the product is safe and the milk produced is the same as milk produced in untreated cows. BST is a factory replication of the production-inducing hormone found naturally in dairy cows.
