MEDIA RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 26, 2001

NGOs blast government response on biotech study

Ottawa -The government's latest missive on GE food is a slap in the face to Canadians concerned about the issue, says the Council of Canadians. The federal government issued an action plan late last Friday in response to the Royal Society of Canada's (RSC) Expert Panel report on GE foods.

"After months of being pressured by the Council of Canadians and other groups to respond to the RSC's report, what we've been given here is a great deal of talk with no concrete action," says Nadège Adam, campaigner for the Council of Canadians. "Not only do they wait until everyone's gone home to release this report but this so-called action plan doesn't even scratch the surface in terms of what is needed to address the problems posed by GE foods."

The action plan is full of non-committal and largely bureaucratic initiatives calling for years of consultations. Many promises of revisions to current regulations are made but no concrete actions seeking to implement the RSC's recommendations seem to be included. For example, the report acknowledges that GE foods should be submitted to a rigorous scientific assessment but falls short of calling for the implementation of this new assessment plan and ignores the RSC's recommendation to open those rigorous testing regimes to the expert scientific community or to have them monitored by 'an appropriately configured panel of arms-length experts' who report their findings in a public forum.

The great disappointment comes with the governmental response only focusing on future GE foods and continuing to ignore the safety risks associated with GE foods currently in the marketplace.

"The RSC report clearly stated that the existing federal regulations are scientifically unsound," says Adam, "the responsible thing to do would be to implement a moratorium on any further releases of GE foods until the reassessment of the regulatory framework is completed. Canadians should not be exposed to such risks."

Following the defeat of Bill C-287, which called for the mandatory labelling of GE foods, this action plan adds insult to injury for thousands of Canadians across the country.

"It's not enough that our government is refusing to give Canadians the right to know and to choose what they eat, they have now shown that they plan to take little action to restore consumer confidence in the regulatory system."

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