A guide to biosafety double-speak

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by JOHN EDMONDS

 "I don't think there's any significant health risk with genetically engineered (GE) foods," a member of the Australian delegation said Monday as he munched through a plate of snack food. "But I'd be more comfortable if it was labelled ['lie-bulled'] like we do in Australia."

 All around the downtown Delta Hotel's Regency Room, delegates from 134 nations gobbled GE-canapes after a day of labourious meetings to work out a UN Biosafety Protocol about trade in GE agricultural products. But despite the presence of Greenpeace's costumed "frankentiger," shaking a box of breakfast cereal to highlight the GE corn within, this conference is supposedly not even about food safety.

 Not according to the Canadian delegation, anyway. "Food safety in the normal sense is handled by the Codex Alimentaris," said co-chair Richard Ballhorn, who doesn't mention that Canada also heads this obscure UN body (where it firmly opposes mandatory labelling for GE foods).

 The official UN word is that this conference is merely about "biosafety," that is, stopping designer genes in seeds and animals from going AWOL into vulnerable developing-world ecosystems. But environmentalists argue that food safety and biosafety issues cannot be separated. "Grain for food can be planted. Seed grain can be eaten," said CheeYoke Ling, a lawyer with the Third World Network.

 And regardless of what the UN says, this event has attracted both pro and con GE-food lobbies. Which only shows that the GE-food industries will be made or broken over one basic issue: whether or not people in countries like Canada are willing to eat the stuff. :

 

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