Harmonization Of Canada-US Food Standards Scarier Than Scandal

For example, Health Canada does not allow dairy cows to be fed a bovine growth hormone used in the U.S. for fear that the resultant milk could harm humans. Nor does Health Canada permit meat to be sterilized with X-rays, as the Americans do. Yet, the quiet, bureaucratic changes envisioned in Bill C-27 could change all of that. If, for instance, the inspection agency decided to allow irradiated U.S. hot dogs into Canada, it would be harder for Health Canada to argue that domestic producers shouldn't be allowed to do the same. So far, the government has given C-27 the lowest of profiles, saying only that it is part of its effort to introduce "smart regulation." Politically, this is shrewd. In 1999, the last time Ottawa tried to mess with food safety in order to promote trade, there was a public outcry. A chastened Liberal government eventually allowed that bill to die. But the impetus never went away. Major farm groups such as the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, as well as agribusiness and the biotechnology industry, have long been dissatisfied with what they see as the excessive cost of Health Canada's food safety regulations. They would prefer everything to be run by the food inspection agency, an arm of the federal agricultural department and an organization deemed, as Conservative Saskatchewan MP Gerry Ritz put it recently, more "farm-gate friendly" than Health Canada. Yet, the National Farmers Union's Pugh says the food inspection agency operates under an impossibly contradictory mandate. It is supposed to both protect the food supply and encourage agribusiness. When the two come into conflict, critics say, it sacrifices safety. The 1999 bill would have explicitly given all of Health Canada's food safety duties to the inspection agency. The current bill appears to be aimed at doing much the same thing, but in a more roundabout way. If an election is called soon, C-27 — like all government bills still in the legislative pipeline — will die. However, transcripts from the Commons agriculture committee suggest that even if this were to happen, it would rise again. That's because rural MPs belonging to both the Liberal and Conservative parties support the gist of Bill C-27. And so far, few other Canadians seem to know about it. source:http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1114207812030&call_pageid=970599109774&col=Columnist969907626796 [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on April 23, 2005]