Doug Powell of Agnet must be spitting about item 1, having organised an immense effort to undermine the Royal Society of Canada report. Hi, Doug!
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3 from AGNET AUGUST 23, 2001
*Ottawa changes mind on GM food report findings; health officials to act on denounced study
*The 5 per cent solution?
*Biotech food alert
archived at: http://www.plant.uoguelph.ca/safefood/archives/agnet-archives.htm
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OTTAWA CHANGES MIND ON GM FOOD REPORT FINDINGS HEALTH OFFICIALS TO ACT ON DENOUNCED STUDY
August 23, 2001
Toronto Star
Peter Calamai
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=998517799399&call_page=TS_Canada&call_pageid=968332188774&call_pagepath=News/Canada&col=968350116467
OTTAWA - The federal government has, according to this story, quietly changed its tune about a controversial scientific report that said Canadians aren't adequately protected from the risks of genetically modified foods and other biotech products.
The story says that Health Canada officials had denounced the report's key finding, which said the main concept underlying federal rules on modified products was "scientifically unjustifiable."
Yet over the past six months senior officials from Health Canada and two other federal departments have, the story says, drawn up a plan to implement many of the more than 50 recommendations on tightening regulations on GM foods.
The recommendations came from a panel appointed by the Royal Society of Canada, described as the nation's elite science academy.
The story also says that the government's apparent about-face is a blow to the report's critics, who will get a further setback next month when the report is reprinted in the scientific, peer-reviewed Journal Of Toxicology. Such an action is reserved for serious scholarly work.
Yet the controversy set off by the February report is far from over, especially since Canada is the third-largest producer of genetically-modified crops in the world.
About 40 modified types of corn, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, oilseed and other plants have already been approved by the federal government, with minimal publicity.
Only last week, a study for the Canadian General Standards Board proposed that Canadian companies should be allowed to claim their food was GM-free even if products contain as much as 5 per cent genetically-modified material. That's five times the European standard.
As well, a new study on the safety of modified foods is to be published today by the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, whose members are appointed by Ottawa.
This report is expected to take issue with some of the Royal Society's most criticized findings.
Doug Powell, a University of Guelph food safety expert who was on the committee that wrote the new study, was quoted as saying, "The Royal Society report contains numerous excellent recommendations. At the same time there were numerous omissions."
But the co-chairs of the Royal Society's expert panel were cited as saying in interviews that their concerns were "seriously addressed" in a recent draft version of a federal action plan.
Co-chair Conrad Brunk, an ethics expert from the University of Waterloo, was quoted as saying, "Now they're admitting they've got problems and they have to take our report seriously. They've changed their tune. At first they suggested we just didn't understand the regulatory system."
The other co-chair, University of British Columbia biotechnology researcher Brian Ellis, was cited as saying panel members pointed out numerous shortcomings in the proposed plan, adding, "There was a lot of bureaucratese, a fair amount of meaningless hand waving."
Both men were further cited as saying the controversial central finding of the Royal Society report has been strengthened by new scientific evidence. The report criticized federal regulators for regularly exempting genetically modified plants from a full safety assessment if they appeared to be no different than ones produced by traditional cross-breeding techniques.
The government's confidence in this "substantial equivalence" approach was not scientifically justified, the panel said.
The Royal Society pointed to research published in Nature magazine in 1999, which said a GM plant was 20 times more likely to pollinate other plants than naturally occurring mutant plants with the identical genetic make-up to the GM plant.
Ellis was cited as saying that this "unexpected and unexplained" result has since been duplicated by the same researchers at the University of Chicago.
THE 5 PER CENT SOLUTION?
August 23, 2001
Globe and Mail
Ronald Labonte of Saskatoon writes that it's amazing how a consumer-driven market is extolled when it benefits sellers, but blinded by regulation when it does not. To label as "GM free" food that contains less than 5 per cent genetically modified constituents reminds Labonte of a Swedish campaign ridiculing the idea of "designated smoking areas" in restaurants: It's like setting aside a urinating section in a swimming pool. Perhaps now we can expect beer with less than 5 per cent alcohol to be labelled "alcohol-free? Or drinking water with less than 5 per cent coliform concentration to be judged E. coli free?
BIOTECH FOOD ALERT
August 23, 2001
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/23/opinion/L23MONS.html
Richard Caplan, Environmental Advocate, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, writes in this letter that the news of Monsanto's ignorance of its own product ("Mystery DNA Is Discovered in Soybeans by Scientists," news article, Aug. 16) comes at an important time for genetically engineered foods. Caplan says that currently, all genetically engineered crops designed to produce their own insecticides are being reviewed for environmental and human health safety by the Environmental Protection Agency. The risks these crops present from damage to the soil, to harm to species like monarch butterflies, to allergic reactions for those who eat them are only just beginning to be explored, let alone understood.
The discovery that Monsanto does not even know what it is selling should be a wake-up call, and speaks clearly to the need for a moratorium on the commercialization of genetically engineered foods.