EU Audit Reveals Corruption in Canada’s Food Safety System: Canadian meat adulterated with cancer-causing drugs
For immediate release
November 20, 2000
OTTAWA - The Canadian Health Coalition released today an audit of
Canada's food safety system conducted by European Commission
officials which reveals uncontrolled use of cancer-causing hormones,
antibiotics, endocrine disruptors and other agro-chemicals in meat. The
full text of the audit is available here.
Of particular concern is the uncontrolled and abusive use in
Canadian cattle of the following growth hormones banned in Europe:
Estradiol, estradiol benzoate, testosteron propionat, progesterone,
Zeranol, trenbolone acetate and MGA. These drugs are known to
initiate and promote cancer. Prepubertal children are exposed to the
greatest risk. The audit also documented widespread abuse of
antibiotics in farm animals including the carcinogen, carbadox.
Canada has been warned by the EU in an earlier audit in May 1998
and has ignored the call for immediate corrective measures. Instead,
the government of Canada has gagged its own scientists who raised
health risk concerns with the hormones in meat, especially the drug
Revelor H. There is evidence that this drug can lead to decrease in
thymus weight and therefore poses serious risks to the immune system
of children.
The latest audit provides further evidence that the federal Liberal
government has put in place two major shifts in the role of
government. First, the shift from the precautionary principle in food
safety to a risk management approach. Instead of preventing harm
from happening in the first place, food safety regulators manage the
damage after the harm is done. The damage we are dealing with is
illness and death. The shift to risk management repudiates a lesson
learned from Europe's Mad Cow disaster. The U.K BSE Inquiry
concluded that precautionary measures must be taken to protect
human health in a situation of uncertainty (www.bse.org.uk).
The second regulatory shift under the Chrétien government is from
a guardian culture that protects the public interest to a trader culture
that regulates in the interest of industry. This policy shift repudiates the
lessons learned by the Krever Commission's Inquiry on the Tainted
Blood Disaster, namely, government regulates in the public interest and
not in the interest of the regulated. (Krever, Vol.3, p.995).
"The situation calls for immediate action by the Prime Minister. The
federal government must return to its proper role as the guardian of
public health. Canadians - especially our children - must be protected
from cancer-causing drugs in meat," said Kathleen Connors, President
of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions and Chairperson of the
Canadian Health Coalition.
For further information:
Michael McBane
Tel.(613) 521-3400, ext 308
www.healthcoalition.ca
E-mail: info@clc-ctc.ca
November 20, 2000