Conflict of interest charge returns in biotech debate
By Barry Wilson
Western Producer
February 21, 2002
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 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.
Bradford Duplisea is an independent Ottawa-based researcher
who often works on health care and food safety issues for the Canadian Health Coalition.
He can be reached at:
Bradford.Duplisea@videotron.ca
Click here to read more GM food exposés based on Access-to-Information research by Bradford Duplisea