Canada’s new Parliament needs to reinstate regulation for all genetically engineered foods and seeds to ensure safety and transparency.
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Canada has removed government safety assessments for genetically engineered (genetically modified or GM) seeds and foods if the GM plants have no foreign DNA. These regulatory exemptions will apply to most (but not all) GMOs created with the new genetic engineering techniques of gene editing. This means that many GMOs can now enter the market without being assessed for safety by government regulators and without any notification to the government or public.
There are no gene edited foods on the market yet in Canada. CBAN assisted the research of a new report produced by the European Non-GMO Industry Association which finds only three gene-edited foods on the market globally: two GM transgenic corn and one GM tomato in Japan.
Take action today before a wave of unregulated, unidentified gene-edited foods and seeds enter our food system and environment.
Background
Because of recent government decisions, there is no pre-market regulation for most gene-edited seeds as well as the foods derived from these genetically engineered (genetically modified or GM) plants. This means that some of these new genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can enter the market without being assessed for safety by government regulators. Instead, companies can assess the food and environmental safety of their own gene-edited GMOs without government oversight, and without providing any notification to the government or public about market release. This regulatory exclusion of many gene-edited products enhances safety concerns and comes at the expense of transparency for Canadian farmers and consumers.
In 2022 and 2023, Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) updated regulatory guidance on genetically engineered foods and seeds. The new guidance exempts plants from regulation if they have no foreign DNA. This exemption will apply to most but not all, GMOs created with the new genetic engineering techniques of genome editing, also called gene editing.
The federal government has handed safety assessments for these plants and foods over to product developers, with no government oversight.
The federal government is also not requiring companies to notify the government when these unregulated gene-edited foods and seeds are released onto the market.
Gene editing (genome editing) can result in a range of possible unintended effects. These unintended effects need to be detected and evaluated for their potential impacts on food and environmental safety. Narrowly focusing on the presence of foreign DNA as a trigger for government safety assessments is simplistic and overlooks many possible safety issues that could result from unexpected effects caused by the process of genome editing.
The regulatory exemptions are not science-based but, instead, assume the safety of GMOs that have no foreign DNA, including those produced by future genome editing processes that have yet to be developed.
Click here to read the briefing we sent to MPs.
Click here to also see our new briefing on gene editing.
For information on the regulatory exemptions see cban.ca/noexemptions
For more information on gene editing see cban.ca/gene-editing