Call the Minister of Health

July, 2022

Demand mandatory safety assessments for all genetically engineered foods

You will be calling the Office of the Minister of Health, at the House of Commons in Ottawa:

You can leave a message with a staff person or on a machine.
Give your name and your riding or town/province.
If you talk to a staff person, ask them to take down your message and pass it to the Minister.

What’s happening:

On May 18, 2022, Health Canada changed a technical document (“regulatory guidance”) to allow many new gene-edited foods onto the market without a Health Canada safety assessment. These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will be exempt from the Novel Food Regulations and can be sold without any notification to the government. Health Canada now wants to change the regulations themselves, to formalize the changes they have just made to regulatory guidance.
Specifically, foods from GM plants that have no foreign DNA in them can now just be assessed for safety by the companies that developed them, with no government oversight.
The changes will mean some unregulated, unreported, genetically modified foods and seeds on the market. Click here for a quick summary of the proposals and the problems.

Tell the Minister:

I want Health Canada to assess the safety of all genetically modified foods, even the new GM foods made by gene editing. I don’t trust companies to decide the safety of their own GM foods without government checking.
The Minister should make sure that all genetically modified foods are regulated. I don’t want unregulated GM foods in my grocery stores.
The government should know which GMOs are on the market.
Stop these proposals from Health Canada. They serve corporations, not Canadians. If the regulations are changed, they should be made stronger and they should cover all genetically modified foods.
The Minister needs to stand up for food safety and transparency for the public.

More information to support your phone call:

Click here for a the summary of how the proposals will end transparency.
Click here for a quick summary of the proposals.
Visit www.cban.ca/NoExemptions for more background and information.
For more support and information, or to report any response from the Office of the Minister of Health, please email Lucy Sharratt coordinator@cban.ca or call 902 209 4906.