Ottawa - The fact that Health Canada is studying the safety of genetically engineered foods while the government refuses to label them is an unacceptable hypocrisy and an absurd double standard, says The Council of Canadians and Greenpeace.

"The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing," says Nadege Adam of the Council of Canadians. "Health Canada has gone to great lengths to try and persuade Canadians of the safety of GMO's, but now the same department is studying their health effects. This is tacit admission there's cause to be concerned about what we're eating."

"Eat first, ask questions later is a dangerous public health policy," says Pat Venditti of Greenpeace. "If the government doesn't know the risks, it shouldn't be allowing GE crops into our food supply and into the environment. If they truly want to protect public health, they should label products so Canadians can avoid them in the first place."

CBC Television reported last night that Health Canada has established a "Biotechnology Surveillance Project" to monitor human health impacts of GMO's. The project was apparently established in 2000 but has not yet been able to come up with ways to track human health impacts. Meanwhile the government has blocked all efforts to establish a mandatory labelling system that would have allowed them to do such monitoring more effectively.

"These tests are specifically designed to find long-term harm from GE, which confirms our worst fears. We can't put GE back in the box once it's eaten or released into the environment, but we won't know the harm until it's too late. Ottawa must get its act together before it's too late, starting with a moratorium on new GE products and labels on them all," says Venditti.

As the new Minister of Health, Ann McLellan has yet to let her position on GMO's be known. Late last year the former minister spoke favourably of labelling GMO's but failed to show up to vote in favour of a mandatory labelling bill introduced by another Liberal MP.

"The Minister of Health needs to explain how exactly her department can study health effects when, without labels, it's impossible to link the impact to the food source," says Adam. "The fact that she has been likened to Harry Potter may come in handy, because you'd have to be a magician to make this project work."