- Private member's bill about consumer information, not safety, Brosseau says -

The NDP have once again introduced a private member’s bill aimed at bringing mandatory GMO labelling onto Canadian food shelves.

At a press conference in Ottawa Tuesday, agriculture critic Ruth Ellen Brosseau and Quebec MP Pierre-Luc Dusseault said Canadian consumers have a right to know what’s in their food.

“The objective of my private member’s bill is very simple. It seeks to make genetically modified labelling mandatory in Canada,” Dusseault told reporters in French. “…Once adopted, it would be illegal to sell genetically modified food in Canada unless it is clearly labelled.”

Brosseau stressed the “important” legislation should not be seen as a debate on food safety.

“We’re not debating whether the food is safe or not,” Brosseau said. “We’re just debating the fact that Canadians want to know what is in their food. When I speak to constituents, when I talk people across the country they’re curious about labelling and they want to know what is in their foods.”

“It’s not saying the food is unsafe, it’s just about having more truth in labelling,” she said.

The legislation, which was tabled Tuesday and is not expected to be up for debate until the end of 2016, would make it illegal for Canadian companies to sell genetically modified food unless it is clearly labelled.

If passed, Dusseault said the legislation would not take effect until the federal government had outlined a clear definition of GMO foods and until regulations around the labels, including size and placement, have been developed.

This is not the first time the NDP have tabled legislation in the House of Commons on GMO labelling. A previous motion, introduced by NPD MP Murray Rankin was put forward in 2014, but died on the order paper before it was even debated in the House.

Former NDP agriculture critic Alex Atamanko tabled a bill in 2011 calling for GMO labelling in Canada, but that bill, too, was not debated in the House.

Under Health Canada regulations, Canadian companies are required to label food products, including those that have been genetically modified, if they pose a scientifically determined health risk (like an allergen) or the nutritional quality of the food has been altered

The NDP’s latest GMO labelling effort comes less than a month after Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced they had approved the sale and production of a genetically engineered salmon, AquAdvantage, in Canada.

The decision, which Health Canada said came after four years of “rigorous” scientific review, prompted Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay to ask the House of Commons agriculture committee to study the regulatory framework around GMO animals.

The committee, MacAulay said, must submit its recommendations and findings by the end of the year.

On Tuesday, Brosseau, who serves as one of the committee’s vice chairs, said she would be open to expanding that investigation to include GMO labelling on all food products. A date for the study has not been set.

https://ipolitics.ca/2016/06/14/ndp-table-gmo-labelling-bill-again/