Health Canada proposes to leave many new GMOs unregulated

Everyone agrees that we need evidence-based decision making. Yet Health Canada is proposing to let companies sell some new genetically engineered (commonly called genetically modified or GM) foods without presenting evidence of their safety to the government.

Health Canada will soon wrap up a public consultation on proposed changes to how it implements regulations for “novel foods.” If accepted, the changes would mean Canadians could soon be eating some unregulated and unreported genetically engineered foods.

As a matter of practice and principle, this should concern all Canadians. The science is clear that the safety of new genetically engineered foods cannot just be assumed. Allowing private corporations to determine what’s safe abandons public oversight.

Corporations can already sell GM foods in Canada without labels, and now Health Canada proposes to allow companies to sell some without government safety assessments. We cannot accept this shift away from independent, government safety reviews of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The unregulated GMOs in future foods would likely be produced with the new genetic engineering techniques called genome editing or gene editing. These newer techniques are more precise than firstgeneration genetic engineering, but can create a range of unintended effects in the organism that may impact food safety. Such unexpected effects need to be detected and evaluated. However, Health Canada proposes that if a new GMO has no foreign DNA, then companies themselves can determine if the food is safe or needs a safety review from Health Canada.

Health Canada suggests that companies should look for the more predictable “off-target” effects that can be caused by genome editing, but doesn’t mention looking for the other possible unpredictable effects. For many GMOs with no foreign DNA, all of that checking would be done by product developers, with no government verification.

This is a dangerously narrow approach to the risks posed by genome editing. The process of genome editing is known to result in all kinds of unexpected consequences.

Health Canada would have no access to the science behind these new GMOs.

When it comes to the safety of new GMOs, Health Canada is saying it has confidence in corporations, but do Canadians? Rather than ensure sound science and transparency, Health Canada is doubling down on corporate science and confidentiality. This approach would undermine future claims to “science-based” regulation of GMOs.

Health Canada says it wants regulation to provide “an efficient and predictable pathway to commercialization for new products.” The biotechnology industry is already celebrating genome editing as the future of food.

The last day of the consultation is May 24.