Health Canada has begun permitting genetically engineered (GE, also called genetically modified or GM) foods onto the market without any health safety assessment. Our government has never adequately examined the safety of GE foods and crops but has now dropped the pretence altogether.

After almost 15 years of approving the varieties of GE soy, canola and corn that we now eat, Health Canada has stopped bothering with the formalities. This complete lack of safety evaluation is not an oversight or loophole in the regulation of GE crops and foods however. Rather, it is the deliberate extension of a regulatory system that relies on corporate data and was designed to support the industry.

On July 15, Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences announced that they had received approval to introduce their new eight-trait GE corn 'SmartStax' into Canada and the U.S. But Health Canada did not assess 'SmartStax' for human health safety and didn’t even authorize it. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) officially approved the environmental release of 'SmartStax' but didn’t conduct an environmental risk assessment. Furthermore, the CFIA actually substantially weakened a critical environmental stewardship rule just for the introduction of ‘SmartStax’ -- without publishing a justification.

Canada’s approval of ‘SmartStax’ corn without health safety evaluation contradicts an international guidelines that our government helped to negotiate. “Stacking” multiple GE traits together is accomplished by crossing GE plants and the UN Codex food safety guideline explicitly states that conventional breeding of GE plants can give rise to unintended effects and that safety assessments should therefore be conducted. Canada is wilfully ignoring this guideline because following it would require fundamental change.

Canada excluded ‘SmartStax’ from safety assessment because the eight GE traits stacked together in the GE corn were previously approved individually in other GE foods. As far as Canadian regulators are concerned, if single GE traits have already been approved in separate crops, there’s no need to evaluate the safety of new stacked-trait crops. Canadian regulations, such as they are, merely limit safety assessments to so-called “novel traits”, which includes GE traits. Even the combination of eight traits in the case of ‘SmartStax’ did not warrant examination.

For Health Canada, GE foods are not regulated as the products of genetic engineering but are regulated as “Novel Foods”, identified by their “Novel Traits”. Health Canada does not classify ‘SmartStax’ as a “Novel Food” because its traits are not novel, having been approved earlier in separate foods. If the traits are not novel, the regulations are not triggered.

The category of “Novel Foods” and “Plants with Novel Traits” is unique to Canada and includes non-GE foods and crops, like products of conventional plant breeding and mutagenesis. It was created to regulate GE foods and crops without naming or singling out the technology of genetic engineering. By constructing an approval process that is limited to evaluating the “novelty” of traits rather than identifying risk questions raised by the process of genetic engineering, the government is supporting quicker GE product approvals.

In authorizing release of ‘SmartStax’ without approval from Health Canada, the CFIA has also ignored a safeguard it established in the wake of the first major GE food recall. In response to the contamination of our food system with ‘Starlink’ corn which was approved for animal feed but not for humans, the federal government decided to only approve GE crops for growing if they were also approved for human consumption. This was designed to protect public health, the food industry, and farmers from contamination by unapproved GE foods.

‘Starlink’ corn was not approved for human consumption because the insecticidal toxins in Bt (insect resistant) crops show similarities to proteins that cause food allergies. ‘SmartStax’ contains 6 of the Bt insecticidal toxins and will mean greater human exposure to toxins that may be allergenic. In a statement released only to the media, Health Canada said that there is no need to examine ‘SmartStax’ for unintended effects because, “If there was a change, the company would have to provide the necessary information to Health Canada.”

Without mandatory labeling of GE foods or post-market monitoring of the population, Health Canada is not tracking any possible health impacts. This is helpful to Health Canada if they are going to continue allowing GE foods on the market without requesting and assessing safety data.

The scandal of ‘SmartStax’ extends further than health questions, however, as the CFIA not only failed to assess the environmental risks of this GE corn but also significantly reduced one of its only environmental stewardship requirements for ‘SmartStax’. Without providing a rationale, the CFIA reduced the required size of refuge areas to 5 from 20 per cent. These refuge areas are a percentage of a Bt crop area that is planted with non-Bt crops as a strategy to slow insect resistance. By giving insects somewhere to go, some insects remain susceptible to the Bt toxins. Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) is a naturally occurring soil borne organism that can be used topically by organic farmers to control pests. The genes from Bt have been genetically engineered into corn to make the plant act as a pesticide, and are speeding the development of insect resistance because the GE plants express the Bt toxin in every cell, all the time.

The reduction of the refuge area means that Monsanto can sell 15 per cent more ‘SmartStax’ seeds to farmers. This is a tremendous coup for Monsanto and Dow which between them own eight patents in the one seed and will charge up to 45 per cent more for ‘SmartStax.’ ‘SmartStax’ will quickly replace other GE corn on the market and will rapidly enter the food chain as livestock feed and processed food ingredients (not to mention being turned into ethanol for fuel). 

Industry has always assured Canadians that GE foods are safe because the regulatory system has approved them. But the federal government cannot make the claim that stacked trait GE foods are safe because they have not evaluated their safety -- Health Canada has not even officially approved them.

This outcome is not a design flaw in our regulatory system but is an illustration of the limitations that were deliberately designed into the system. The regulation of GE crops and foods in Canada is constructed to be flawed in order to permit the predictable and speedy approval of GE products. The system fails from the perspective of public health and environmental protection but works perfectly well for Monsanto and other huge biotech seed companies.

Unless the government is content to entirely abandon its claim to protect public health and the environment in relation to GE foods and crops, the CFIA must withdraw authorization for ‘SmartStax’ pending environmental and human health safety risk assessments. But to do so should trigger deep structural change.

There has never been a democratic debate over the introduction of GE crops and foods in Canada, there is no mandatory labeling of GE ingredients and, despite 58 recommendations for change from a Royal Society of Canada Panel in 2001, there has never been an attempt to reform our regulatory system. With ‘SmartStax,’ Canadians are faced with the urgent need for this reform.

Lucy Sharratt is Coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network. [2]

Source: rabble.ca - http://rabble.ca/news/2009/09/why-did-monsantos-latest-ge-foods-get-free-pass-canada

Take Action: You can write an instant email to the Minister of Health demanding that authorization for Monsanto's GE 'SmartStax' corn be immediately withdrawn. Send your letter from http://www.cban.ca/content/view/full/540

Most farmers look at a crop field and see profit, or hope to.

When farmer Bryan Gilvesy looks over his 44 acres of native tall-grass prairie in Norfolk County, Ont., on Lake Erie, he sees truly green fields.

By planting this ancient "crop," which once covered much of Southern Ontario and is now one of the most endangered in North America, he is also showing that farmers can become leaders in combating climate change.

These native grasses thrive in draught, extreme heat and poor soils. The roots, which plunge up to 16 feet into the ground, can sequester as much as 1.8 metric tons of carbon per acre.

The extensive cover, up to seven feet high, can either feed livestock or produce a biofuel that regenerates year after year without damaging inputs, making it far superior to corn. So what the former tobacco farmer turned environmental visionary would also like to see when he looks out over his grand experiment is payment for producing not only food but clean air, water and soil.

Gilvesy is the chair of the Alternative Land Use Services (ALUS) project in Norfolk County, which is developing a new model for farm support that could shift Canadian agriculture into a greener future.

The farmer-driven initiative has cobbled together a small, $1 million budget from 16 funding sources to run a three-year pilot that pays farmers $150 annually for every acre they devote to ecological functions, the rental rate for cropland in the area.

"We need to pay farmers in order to engage them to protect nature," says Gilvesy. "Farmers are highly skilled water managers. Farmers understand soil. They're experts at sequestering carbon. Farmers are excellent stewards of the land. Paying farmers attaches a value on ecological services they provide that all of society benefits from."

The incentive is clearly effective. In just two growing seasons and with just one staff person, 53 farming families that work some 6,300 acres have managed to convert 438 of those most vulnerable acres into waterway buffers, wetlands, pollinator hedgerows, prairie grass and native Carolinian forest and oak savannah.

The project is a small green example of what agriculture, globally, must pursue on a grand scale. Agriculture and food production in North America and Europe are major contributors to greenhouse gasses (accounting for up to 20 per cent of emissions per country), and industrial agriculture is responsible for extensive degradation of the world's waterways. The European Union overhauled its agricultural subsidies to support environmental stewardship and ecological food production. But Canada's new agricultural policy, unveiled this year, remains stuck in the past, with no strong targets for reducing the sector's environmental impacts.

Implementing ALUS across Canada, according to a review commissioned by the Delta Waterfowl Foundation, would conserve 36 million acres of environmentally sensitive areas on private farmland – the size of the state of Michigan – and deliver $820 million in societal benefits through greenhouse gas sequestration alone. The work of Gilvesy and his band of Norfolk farmers has grabbed the attention of major conservation organizations, farming groups and local food enthusiasts. Last spring, 78 of them formed the Ontario ALUS Alliance to press for government funding to continue growing ALUS across the province. The Ontario government has resisted, and the program has generated little interest at the federal level.

Gilvesy remains undeterred. He sees ALUS as the future of farming. And he's far from alone.

The first major global assessment of agriculture, initiated by the World Bank and United Nations and delivered last year, called for a shift to ecological farming systems; payment to farmers for restoring land, soil and air, to ensure future harvests; and a new partnership between farmers and science to increase ecological food production rather than corporate profits.

Often dubbed agriculture's Kyoto, it concluded that Canada's dominant form of agriculture – high-input, energy-intensive, export-oriented industrial food production – was no longer a viable option as it causes soil and water degradation, increases deforestation, undermines rural livelihoods, and, if unchecked, will threaten future world food supplies.

The assessment won the support of 59 countries. Only three dissented: Canada, the United States and Australia. The Canadian government has all but buried the assessment, not even submitting it to the standing committee on agriculture and agri-food. That hardly surprises University of Toronto professor Harriet Friedman, one of hundreds of experts from around the world who developed the assessment. "All three countries have a high commitment to massive production of crops and livestock for export. When a certain production system becomes widespread, ministries develop to support it. But they'll have to shift fundamentally."

How that's done will require a major overhaul of the more than $8 billion Canada currently spends on agricultural programs.

The Harper government's new national policy for agriculture, "Growing Forward," merely bundles together old programs and includes no support for shifting agriculture into a greener future. According to University of Saskatchewan agricultural economics expert Murray Fulton, the policy sinks billions into income-stabilization programs that largely protect export commodity producers from world price fluctuations. Risk-management programs are "disaster subsidies" – bailouts for a system of agriculture that actually creates the conditions for those disasters, as industrial farming methods make animals and crops vulnerable to disease, pest infestations and drought.

The first outbreak of swine flu was in the Mexican village of La Gloria, which is surrounded by factory swine and poultry operations, and villagers complained for years about respiratory infections before the outbreak of the pandemic. Such tax-funded bailouts are not helping farmers become economically sustainable. Government programs and industry encouraged farmers to invest millions in expensive technology so they can produce more with less labour. Now Canadian farmers are staggering under a collective debt of more than $50 billion. But the profits, or even savings, have not flowed back to farmers. According to the National Farmers Union (NFU), net farm income plunged to zero this decade, while a whole supply chain that feeds off the work of farmers – food processors, retailers, chemical and seed companies, equipment dealers – harvested record profits.

What's required to change this, along with payment for environmental stewardship, is support for production of healthier foods and more ecologically farming methods. The shift to that is happening, if slowly, and it's partly the result of a surge in consumer demand for local and sustainable foods. Transitioning just 10 per cent of Ontario's cropped acres into organic production (from the current 1 per cent) would reduce environmental costs of agriculture by $2.18 billion over 15 years, according to a study commissioned by the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada. Government support for the program would cost $51 million, but farmers would save on expensive, damaging fertilizers and pesticides and also get an organic premium in the market, reducing other agriculture support payments to farmers.

Says Friedman: "We all live in this ecosystem. It's our collective responsibility to pay farmers if they're growing health food and providing ecosystem services for us. They get a good living, respect and skilful and interesting work producing food that can be afforded by everyone."

Source: http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/707700---we-need-to-pay-farmers-

Globe and Mail, Nov. 12, 2009 Special Report on new federal organic regulations and log and the benefits of choosing organic products: http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/partners/free/sr/organic_nov_12/organic_nov_12.pdf