Letter your to the editor

July 2022

Here is some suggested text for a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Your letter needs to be short. You need to include your name, town name, postal code and phone number when you send the letter. Thank you for taking this action.

Many Canadians may not be aware that the federal Minister of Health has just decided to allow companies to do their own safety assessments for many new genetically engineered foods. Health Canada will now let companies sell some of genetically engineered foods without any government safety checks. Companies won’t even be required to tell Health Canada that these new foods exist. Many of them will be produced by the new genetic engineering techniques called gene editing. But I want to know that all genetically engineered foods have been rigorously assessed for safety by Health Canada regulators, including any new gene-edited foods. I don’t trust private companies to properly test the safety of their own products if no one else is watching. We need independent science and government oversight to ensure food safety.

There is information and analysis posed by the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network at www.cban.ca/NoExemptions.