If peanuts are a threat to your health, you can usually discover through labelling what foods may contain the ingredient that will trigger your allergy.
Not so if you’re a Canadian concerned about consuming GMOs – genetically modified organisms. Although GMOs must be labelled in Europe, not in Canada.
A group of citizens from the Shuswap and farther afield are pushing for labelling of food containing GMO ingredients, as well as a halt to the planting of any further genetically modified crops in Canada.
One way to do that is to support Bill C-474, which will stop the planting of more genetically modified crops until it’s known how this will impact Canada’s export markets. Currently the European Union does not import genetically modified crops for safety and environmental reasons and also labels gene-altered packaged food.
“It’s an experiment,” said Salmon Arm resident June Griswold of the federal government allowing GMOs to be included in foods without warning the public. “What do they know is going to happen 20 years down the road from people eating these GMOs?”
Heidi Osterman, a certified nutritionist from Kelowna, has been circulating petitions at farmers’ markets, including Salmon Arm’s, to urge people to support Bill C-474. She wants residents to become concerned about the current push to genetically modify wheat and alfalfa.
“If this bill doesn’t pass, we’ll likely be the first country in the world to modify our wheat and alfalfa, irreversibly... Why are we modifying crops if export markets aren’t accepting them?”
In Canada, currently much soy, corn, sugar made from sugar beets, and canola is genetically altered.
“There’s no going back, you can’t unalter it,” says Osterman. “There are no human health studies, but what animal health studies show is very disturbing.”
She said, for instance, that third-generation hamsters fed GMOs are sterile and other results include organ damage, pre-cancerous lesions and problems with the liver and pancreas.
“We’re only 15 years into eating GMO foods. We’re mammals – there’s no reason to think it won’t happen to us too.”
She urges residents to talk to their politicians “and tell them we don’t want the dubious distinction of modifying wheat and alfalfa.”
Percy Schmeiser, the 79-year-old farmer from Bruno, Sask. made famous by his taking on of multinational agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto, came to the city last September to warn about GMO seed.
Still carrying on the fight, Schmeiser said last week that if wheat, in particular, is genetically altered, it could spell the end of organic farming. Once a GMO is introduced it can’t be contained because of factors like wind and cross-pollination.
Although he has received numerous awards abroad for bringing attention to the dangers of genetically modified seed and he is in demand as a speaker, his message has been generally unheeded by the Canadian government. He would like to see decisions pertaining to genetically modified foods come from Canada’s department of health, not the department of agriculture or the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
“They’re the same people to give regulatory approval. It should be the department of health. They’ve only used data supplied to them by Monsanto. When the company says it’s safe and the government has approved it, that was based on Monsanto’s own information. It’s like putting a fox in charge of a chicken coop.”
He said Canada can no longer sell canola to many countries of the world. A few years ago flax was rejected because GMOs were found in it.
“It has become a very big issue to farmers,” he said, noting that when farmers haul flax to the market, for instance, they have to pay a testing fee.
“Not only that, the market has been cut off. Why should farmers have to pay?”
Regarding labelling on foods, he thinks consumers in Canada should demand it.
“People in Europe have that right but we don’t have it in Canada. To me, that’s a drastic violation of human rights. If it (GMOs) was so great, why do big companies like Monsanto fight tooth and nail to not have it labelled?”
