GM Process Lacking,
Expert Panel Repeats
By Barry Wilson
Western Producer
August 16, 2001
Ever since the Royal society of Canada published a report last winter critical of the government`s regulating of genetically modified foods, defenders of the system have insisted the scientists simply did not understand how it works.
The scientists' report called for more long-term research and more stringent controls before consumers could be assured of the safety of these new products. But the government said despite their stature as scientists, they did not do the basic research required to understand how Health Canada assesses the safety of GM or novel foods.
A winter exchange of letters between the Royal Society and Health Canada, unearthed by the Canadian Health Coalition using Access to Information laws, suggests the scientists who wrote the critical report felt they understood the government system of control perfectly.
They just did not agree that it was up to snuff. On Feb. 2, after reviewing an advance copy of the report, deputy health minister Ian Green wrote to suggest the society panel was off-base in criticizing the Health Canada use of "substantial equivalence" to approve new GM products if tests showed these have the same characteristics as existing products created by conventional science.
He called it a "fundamental misunderstanding" of government procedures.
Green said "publicly available information" indicates that Health Canada experts use a safety assessment process which includes:
-- How the food crop was developed, including molecular
biological data on genetic change.
-- A comparison of food composition between novel foods
and traditional varieties.
-- A comparison of nutritional information.
-- The potential for production of unexpected toxins.
-- The potential for allergic reactions.
"These considerations are made based on data and information provided by the petitioner, which are carefully reviewed by scientists within Health Canada," Green wrote.
The co-chairs of the Royal Society panel offered a short and uncompromising response three days later.
Conrad Brunk and Brian Ellis said that despite the public information, Health Canada personnel did not provide the detailed data needed to allow the scientific panel to assess how accurate those claims were.
They said they appreciated that Health Canada does an analysis to determine if substantial equivalence can be applied to anew product.
"However, that analysis is based solely on data and information provided by the petitioner and the decision documents describing and validating the outcome are, as you point out, internal and thus not readily available to either the scientific community or general public," Brunk and Ellis wrote.
"In the view of the expert panel, this situation does not meet the expectations of either stakeholder group for a full, rigorous and transparent evaluation of GM crops and foods."
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