Article below is from Doug Powell's Food Safety list.
Don Maroc
Vancouver Island, Canada
FOOD SAFETY LIKELY HOT TRADE TOPIC
Aept 2, 1999
Western Producer
Barry Wilson
Ottawa bureau
Canadian negotiators at upcoming World Trade Organization talks will,
according to this story, resist any attempt by the European Union to
expand the definition of how to judge the safety of food products involved
in trade.
Last week, agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief was cited as saying that
Canada is proposing that a committee of the WTO be created to draw up
rules for how products of biotechnology are treated, adding, "The basis
of our decision making must be science, not emotion," and that the issue
of genetically modified organisms is expected to be one of the more
contentious debates during the WTO round beginning in early December and
slated to last at least three years.
As with the beef hormone issue, genetically engineered food has become a
case of dueling scientists as European studies raise questions and North
American studies proclaim GMO products safe, subject to the usual tests
for nutrition, composition and allergens.
At a Aug. 19 briefing, senior Agriculture Canada trade official Mike
Gifford was cited as saying that the next WTO agreement must
include clear rules to keep politics out of health and safety judgments
and that the European move to ban beef from cattle raised with growth
hormones was a "politicized" decision, based more on public fear than on
scientific evidence, adding, "Now they are trying to rationalize after the
fact what they did originally by ignoring science."
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