Health Canada’s new guidelines for novel foods take hands-off approach

In the place of government oversight and regulation, Health Canada has enacted a 'voluntary transparency initiative,' inviting plant breeders to self-regulate the risks of their genetic products. In effect, genetically modified plants, foods, and seeds have been deregulated.

If you share our concerns about Health Canada’s effectively deregulating genetically modified plants and seeds, we urge you to call or write Minister of Health Jean-Yves Duclos, left, and Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Foods Marie-Claude Bibeau, write Reverends Peter Kuhnert and Joan Masterton.The Hill Times photographs by Andrew Meade

Opinion

BY PETER KUHNERT AND JOAN MASTERTON

September 7, 2022

Since 2006, the insertion of foreign DNA has triggered a Health Canada safety assessment of genetically modified plants and foods. In the past decade, new genetic engineering techniques like CRISPR have been developed, giving plant breeders the ability to make new gene modifications without the addi...

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