April 25, 2000
Kamloops Daily News


You probably threw it out.  The Canadian Food Inspection
Agency sent a booklet to all Canadian households a few weeks
ago.  At first glance it seems innocuous: advice on the safe
handling foods, and accurate labelling of foods.

What it doesn't tell you speaks volumes.  It doesn't tell
you that CFIA was set up in 1997 to eliminate the inspectors
at Health Canada and Agriculture Canada, reducing the
independent monitoring of our food supply.  

It doesn't tell you that CFIA is also responsible for
marketing foods, to "promote trade and commerce".  This sets
up a potential conflict of interest.  If CFIA finds
potential harm in a food that it is also promoting, do they
proceed with marketing the food or withdraw it because of
health concerns?

Don't worry, the booklet cheerily says, if a "complaint
indicates that action is required, the CFIA and, depending
on the situation, the federal, provincial or municipal
partners will investigate the issue."  It seems to me that
there is plenty of room for a complaint to shuffled off from
one level of government to another, until the complaint is
eventually lost and forgotten. 

According to CFIA, some complaints did result in an
investigation and some dangerous foods were removed from
stores because they contained deadly bacteria, toxins,
allergens, or foreign material (glass, for example).  But
why did Canadians have to get sick and complain before the
dangerous foods were removed?  If thorough testing was done
in the first place, the questionable foods would have never
made it to stores.

Brewster Kneen, author of the book Farmageddon, had a more
blunt assessment of the booklet.   "It's a really pernicious
piece of propaganda", he told CBC TV's the National.

When I contacted him at his home in Sorrento, he told me
that the booklet "is not about food safety other than
telling you that food safety is your responsibility.  It is
about selling biotechnology and genetically engineered
foods."

Kneen says that the graphics are quaint and as misleading as
the text.  For example, one picture is of a farmer, his wife
and little girl eating a picnic lunch behind a split-rail
fence surrounded by a 1940's tractor and a brown cow with a
rooster.

The booklet asks some good questions:  Who oversees the
feeds, seeds and the fertilizers that our growers depend on? 
Who assesses the new types of vegetables...?  Who inspects
the meat products...?

"Who indeed", Kneen continues, "Certainly not the inspector
in white pictured below the  questions in the booklet.  He
has either been pensioned off or is in an office by himself
reviewing forms supplied by the self-regulating industry."

The way that the booklet glosses over Genetically Modified
foods would be laughable if the potential for harm weren't
so great.  The subject is treated in one short paragraph. 
It tells us that some GM crops "may reduce the need for
chemicals in agriculture."

Biologist David Suzuki warns that we are becoming unwilling
guinea pigs in an experiment never before conducted.  We are
consuming GM foods in which genes have been transferred from
one species to another.  The long term effects of these
foods is unknown. "Any politician that tells you these
products are safe, and that it's known through scientific
testing is either very, very stupid, or they are lying", he
says.

The current methods of testing GM foods are "misguided and
should be abandoned" according to a report in the scientific
journal, Nature, by researchers Bruner, Millstone, and
Mayer. Current testing holds that if a GM potato looks like
a normal potato, it must be safe.  "Relying on the concept
of substantial equivalence is just too vague to be of any
use scientifically", say the authors .

Why did this government agency, the Canadian Food Inspection
Agency, embark on this information campaign, costing us
hundreds of thousands of dollars?  Well, a good offense is a
good defence.  It's better to nip controversy in the bud
with a happy little booklet illustrated with  farmers and
wholesome foods.  If you can't find your copy but want to
re-visit it, you can find it at www.cfia-acia.agr.ca, called
"Food Safety and You".

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