Lines are Fuzzy on GM Foods
By LYLE STEWART
Montreal Gazette
April 5, 2002
Tie me up, tie me down. Just when you think the Canadian government couldn't get any more subservient - or masochistic - in its relationship with the United States, new information surfaces to prove you wrong.
In the past weeks, I've begun detailing the long, drawn-out process Ottawa is taking to come up with a labeling policy on genetically modified foods. But now, recently released government documents suggest in straightforward fashion that the Canadian General Standards Board committee charged with the task is simply cover for harmonizing Canadian policy on this crucial issue with whatever Washington decides is best.
As a delicately phrased memo to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Deputy Minister Samy Watson from February of last year puts it, "the department should encourage the committee to consider the merits of consistency with the U.S."
Voluntary approach
The memo notes jurisdictions such as the European Union, Australia and New Zealand have already adopted mandatory regulations for the labeling of GM foods. But it emphasizes the U.S. is taking a voluntary approach to labeling and suggests the CGSB committee be asked to tailor its eventual recommendation "as closely as possible with that of the U.S."
"The U.S. guideline is not likely to have been finalized by the time the CGSB committee has completed the Canadian standard," the memo explains, however. "Ultimately, the U.S. may wish to adopt key elements of the Canadian standard, rather than the other way around. It is evident from its draft guideline the U.S. had, indeed, been following the Canadian process closely. At the same time, Canada is free to revisit its CGSB standard, should it be found to differ too significantly from the U.S. guideline once it is completed."
The document was among several obtained last month under an Access to Information request by Canadian Health Coalition researcher Bradford Duplisea. And they show, far from an arms-length process, the government and the largely U.S.-based life-sciences industry work together arm-in-arm to ensure a predetermined result on labeling and other government policies related to biotechnology.
Another document Duplisea unearthed is an invitation to Watson to attend the annual meeting and gala of the Food and Consumer Products Manufacturers of Canada in April 2000. "Biotechnology is an excellent example of how FCPMC and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are working together with common purpose," it says. And the invitation goes on to mention Canada's food bureau is "intimately involved in the CGSB process for developing a voluntary labeling standard for foods obtained through biotechnology, a project of extreme importance to the FCPMC and Industry Task Force."
Another memo for Watson, dated September 2000, further explains the "extreme importance" the agri-food industry attaches to biotechnology: "During the 'biotechnology crisis' last year, they (the FCPMC and the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors) worked very closely with the Department through the Food Biotechnology Communications Network to develop and implement a co-ordinated public and media communications program on food biotechnology. ... Moreover, many food-industry CEOs would likely feel that consumer reaction to biotechnology could impede the advancement of certain initiatives in the Life Science agenda."
PR offensive
That media communications strategy, of course, was unwittingly funded in a big way by taxpayers through grants from Watson's own department. The PR offensive was disseminated over the past couple years through government-industry front groups such as the aforementioned FBCN, the Consumers' Association of Canada and the National Institute of Nutrition. And it all leads to one conclusion.
"There's no clear line between government and industry," says Bradford Duplisea. "As far as biotechnology is concerned, the government should be implementing and enforcing regulations, period. The industry should be left to promote itself. You must keep promotion and regulation of industry under different roofs or you get disasters like bad blood and mad cow disease. If the Krever Commission taught us anything, it's that we have to regulate in the interests of the public, not in the interests of the regulated."
Lyle Stewart is a Montreal writer.
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:
Brad@Duplisea.ca
Click here to read more GM food exposés based on Access-to-Information research by Bradford Duplisea