No Safety Assessment of GE Corn by Health Canada

 CBAN made the demandafter learning that Health Canada has not assessed the human health safety of ‘SmartStax’.Safety assessment of multi-trait crops is part of the guidelines adopted by theCodex Alimentarius—a United Nations body that develops food-safety guidelines recognizedby the World Trade Organization (WTO) and used to settle trade disputes.

‘SmartStax,’ amulti-herbicide tolerant and multi-insecticide-producing corn developed by Monsantoand Dow AgroSciences, has been authorized by the Canadian Food InspectionAgency but not by Health Canada.

“Health Canada didnot conduct or require any testing for this new eight-trait GE corn and did noteven officially authorize it for release into the food system,” said LucySharratt, CBAN’s Coordinator. “Health Canada has entirely abdicated itsresponsibility and just shrugged off the potential health risks of eating eightGE traits in one corn flake.”

 “Combiningmany GE traits together can give rise to unintended effects which couldadversely affect health, such as creating new allergies or toxins, or exacerbatingexisting allergies," said Dr. MichaelHansen of the Consumers Union in the US, a leading global expert on thepotential health risks of GE.

"This GE crop should have gone through a new safetyassessment, as recommended by Codex in its' Guidelines for the Conduct of Food Safety Assessment of Foods Derived fromRecombinant-DNA Plants' adopted in 2003. Codex standards and guidelines areused to settle trade disputes and the lack of a new safety assessment for thisGE corn means that other countries could reject 'SmartStax' without runningafoul of WTO rules," said Dr. Hansen.

 “Canada isignoring the Codex guideline to test stacked-trait plants - a guideline ourgovernment negotiated. Our standards should be at least as high as Codex, ifnot higher," said Sharratt. “Thisscandal exposes the deepest and most dangerous nonchalance of Health Canadatowards the risks of GE foods and the safety of Canadians,”

 “Health Canada isprotecting the interests of biotechnology corporations rather than the health ofCanadians,” said Dr. Shiv Chopra, a former scientific evaluator for HealthCanada and whistleblower in Health Canada’s review of Monsanto’s recombinantbovine growth hormone.

 "Releasing 'SmartStax' without evaluating safety, just a dayafter the release of the blistering report on the listeriosis crisis, confirmsdeep structural problems and government mismanagement of GE foods and crops,"said Éric Darier from Greenpeace Canada.

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