Editor:
Re: GMO foods no concern, April 3 letters.
In response to your article on genetically modified food (Petition takes on GMOs, April 1), Ted Menzies, president of CropLife Canada, claims GMO crops are harmless, so there is no point in demanding that all foods containing such artificial ingredients need be labeled.
Menzies claims “all new crops undergo extensive safety reviews by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Health Canada.” He also denies there is evidence that there should be a safety concern when there is none.
Readers should realize CropLife Canada is a lobbying organization, part of a multinational business-promotion lobby funded by the manufacturers, developers and distributors of “plant technology.”
In spite of the extensive propaganda, independent scientists in Europe have banned many of these products as scientifically unsafe. Even scientists in Canada have blown the whistle on these products, but then they usually lose their jobs in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s anti-science, pro-business world.
So-called regulatory agencies like Health Canada have been ‘captured’ by the industry they are supposed to regulate; senior administrators from industry are appointed by government to misdirect the historical activity of such bodies. Inspectors are removed from manufacturers as government tries to save money by having such companies regulate themselves.
These ‘regulators’ have been reduced to rubber-stamping ‘research’ done by polluters of our food, who typically only look to see if their additives cause an immediate poison reaction. The last thing they are looking for are long-term problems such, as cancer or birth defects.
This is the type of pseudo-research tobacco companies used for years to divert attention from the cancer-causing effects of cigarettes. Unfortunately, there are immoral scientists who will ‘prove’ anything for money.
There are now more than 75,000 artificial chemicals added into our food and environment since 1945. Meanwhile, cancer rates soar while manufacturers resist all attempts by the consumers to make their own decisions by being told which foods contain GMO.
These “maximizers of the bottom-line” are quite happy to impose the largest safety experiment in history on ignorant populations. People need to alert themselves to the quiet machinations of organizations and their high-paid lobbyists and propagandists.
Herb Spencer, Surrey
• • •
Was that a paid commercial by CropLife Canada?
Good or bad, the public has a right to know.
Currently, 64 countries around the world require labeling of genetically engineered foods – such as 15 nations in the European Union, Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia and even China.
Marilyn E. Pearson, Surrey