AGRI Committee Report

DISSENTING OPINION TO THE REPORT OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE
ON AGRICULTURE AND AGRI-FOOD REGARDING LABELLING OF
GM FOOD AND ITS IMPACTS ON FARMERS

DICK PROCTOR, M.P., PALLISER

The New Democratic Party supports the mandatory labelling of all genetically modified foods or food ingredients.

This is a technical question at one level, but the principle here is really quite simple. People who buy and consume food have a fundamental right to know what that food contains.

A resolution passed at the 1999 New Democratic Party convention acknowledged that biotechnology as applied to food production contains both great promise and potential risk. The resolution insists that when evaluating and regulating new food production technologies, the health and safety of Canadians be given the highest priority.

Public opinion surveys indicate that people overwhelmingly support mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods. We refer, most recently, to surveys conducted on behalf of the federal biotechnology co-ordinating committee, which indicate a strong support for mandatory labelling.

Consumers know that there are many genetically modified foods and food preparations on grocery shelves, but they have no way of ascertaining which foods are genetically modified and which are not.

Some witnesses appearing before the Agriculture Committee oppose mandatory labelling and support voluntary labelling. They argue that, while consumers are concerned about the safety of genetically modified foods, they should not be taken seriously because people are essentially uninformed in their opinions.

We believe that this dismissive attitude toward the people who consume food is both misplaced and shortsighted. The proposed voluntary system of labelling offers no guarantee that food containing genetically modified material will, in fact, be labelled. This, in turn, undermines confidence in Canada’s system of food production and regulation.

Some witnesses appearing before the Agriculture Committee argued that a system of mandatory labelling would be costly to Canadian farmers and food distributors. It was agreed, however, that predictions about those costs are undocumented and that more work must be done in this area.

But, we must also consider the costs that will accrue to stubbornly resisting the demands and expectations of our trading partners and competitors.

A growing number of countries, including countries of the European Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea are developing or implementing legislation requiring mandatory labelling. A voluntary labelling system cannot offer any guarantee of genetic integrity of exports to our trading partners.

Our farmers and agribusiness have already absorbed the costs of lost export markets. We can no longer, for example, export canola to Europe. As well, the Canadian Wheat Board has repeatedly asked the Canadian regulatory agencies not to approve genetically modified wheat for fear of losing export markets.

Our committee’s terms of reference were to study the impacts of voluntary and mandatory labelling on agricultural producers and the rest of the agrifood industry.

As indicated earlier, it has not been possible to define those costs in any precise way. Further, there are both short-term and longer-term costs to be considered, with the potential cost of lost international markets among them.

But the terms of reference deserve further comment. There were plans to have the Commons Health Committee study the labelling question as well. The expectation was that having two committees at work would provide some balance to the debate and the conclusions. The Health Committee, however, chose not to pursue its investigation.

The issue of genetically modified foods and their labelling is not merely a sectoral question. Surely, these are issues where the needs of various groups and individuals in our society have to be balanced, to include heath and environmental concerns, in addition to industry costs and international competitiveness.

The resolution passed at our party convention in 1999 called, among other things, for a full-scale national public discussion on the genetic modification of food, including the question of labelling. We do not believe that such a wide-ranging discussion has yet occurred, and we believe that it should.

To conclude, the New Democratic Party supports the mandatory labelling of all genetically modified foods or food ingredients, and we believe that a system of mandatory labelling would respond to a basic right of Canadians to know what they eat.