Press Release: Keep Canadian food inspection system independent, say scientists Canada NewsWire OTTAWA, April 12, 2005 Canada risks losing its ability to adopt independent testing and the inspection capacity it needs to protect the health and safety of Canadians if Bill C-27, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act, is passed, say prominent Canadian and U.S. scientists who will be addressing the House Standing Committee on Agriculture this afternoon.  Dr. Lester Friedlander, former USDA veterinarian and meat inspector, says "rules and regulations are broken every day in the United States because the government is not enforcing them, allowing, for example, animal protein to be fed back to cattle." He has seen this occur in the U.S. and believes it is a  growing problem in Canada. Warning Canadians against adopting U.S. inspection rules and practices, Dr. Friedlander says, "The public must insist that the food safety regulatory function be separated from the governmental agency promoting corporate agribusiness. We need a genuine, separate department of  consumer protection." Dr. Gerard Lambert warns against relying on other countries' testing. "If food is not tested properly it will contaminate our food chain very rapidly.  Testing after the fact is too late." He added, "Bill C-27 is about harmonizing with US regulations. It is not about protecting the health of Canadians."  Bill C-27 would allow the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to accept testing and certification results from other countries. The government has said this legislation will make Canada's food and agriculture regulatory system more similar to the American system. However, the U.S. system currently permits irradiation of meat, which is not allowed in Canada, has failed to meet World Health Organization guidelines for preventing BSE, and relies on voluntary compliance when companies are found in violation of its regulations. Furthermore, U.S. whistle-blower scientists who act in the public interest are  not protected.  "This government's 'Smart Regulation' legislative renewal project, which includes Bill C-27, is what I describe as the 'Corporatization of Knowledge' -- instituting private interests ahead of the public good," says Dr. Shiv Chopra, who along with colleagues Dr. Margaret Haydon and Dr. Gerard Lambert, blew the whistle on conflicts of interests in Health Canada's drug approval process. "We will request the postponement of the entire legislative renewal process until after a full public inquiry into what we, as scientists, have been suffering on account of the pressure exerted on us to pass drugs and other  products and methods of questionable safety."  The scientists will appear as witnesses at the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food, Room 253-D Centre Block at 3:30 PM, April 12.  Canadians opposed to Bill C-27 can fax a letter of concern to their MP from the Beyond Factory Farming Coalition web site, www.beyondfactoryfarming.org . The BFF Coalition is a network of local, provincial and national groups including the Council of Canadians. It promotes livestock production that supports food sovereignty, ecological, human and animal health, as well as sustainability and community viability and informed citizen/consumer choice.   CONTACT: Cathy Holtslander, Beyond Factory Farming Project Organizer, (306) 955-6454 or cellular (306) 229-4075; Jan Malek, Council of Canadians, (613) 233-4487 ext. 231; www.beyondfactoryfarming.org Opinion: Things other than scandals are important April 23, 2005 Saturday Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star We are fixated on the drama of Paul Martin's Liberals. Can the Prime Minister last until December? Or will he be toppled next month? Are there new revelations in store from the Gomery inquiry? If so, will they be explosive or merely incendiary? Could Conservative Leader Stephen Harper really become prime minister? All of these are interesting questions; some are important. But what we forget is that the federal government is more than elections. We forget that federal politicians and bureaucrats are - even now - quietly writing laws that will have far more impact on our lives than Justice John Gomery's final report. One of these is Bill C-27, the Canadian Food Inspection Act. It has received almost no attention in the media. Yet, it proposes to radically change the way in which foodstuffs are regulated in this country. This bill would give bureaucrats at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency power to bypass domestic health regulators and permit the import of food approved by other countries. The idea, apparently, is to boost cross-border trade with the United States by bringing Canadian food regulations in line with Washington's. But as National Farmers Union executive-secretary Terry Pugh told a Commons committee earlier this month, Canadian regulations - currently administered by the federal health department - are far stricter in many areas than those of the U.S. 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.