March 22, 2014
Shannon Lough

OTTAWA – The government is uncertain on how to label genetically engineered fish –if it ever gets approved –as one company is pushing its modified salmon to make its way to Canadian plates.

Earlier in March, the U.S. company AquaBounty applied for approval from Health Canada to sell its altered fish in the market.

Genetically modified food comes from the manipulation of genes in plants or animals. In this case, the AquAdvantage fish uses a hormone gene from a Chinook salmon that enables it to grow twice as fast as the average salmon. The company considers it to be an environmental alternative to farmed salmon.

A document released through the Access to Information Act reveals meeting minutes from a working group concerning genetically engineered animals in October 2010. There was a section on modified salmon and how it would be labelled.

The document mentions naming non-genetically engineered salmon as “GE free” as an example of “negative labeling” for the product. The members of the meeting recognized that genetically modified food “continues to be a contentious issue.”

This was proven earlier this year when environmental groups took legal action against the government for approving genetically engineered salmon eggs to be produced in a facility in P.E.I. and potentially the salmon themselves in the near future.

Joanne Cook of Ecology Action Centre, from one of these groups, says the government “has been trying to avoid comment as much as possible on this issue.”

“Basically, the crux of our case is that we don’t think the government has followed its own laws under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act in approving this critter,” Cook said.

Environmental groups are concerned with the lack of public consultation and how safety assessments on the fish are being done behind closed doors.

The document from 2010 exposes what little is available on the topic. It details a working group with representatives from Health Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans discussing prospects for the altered salmon in Canada.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration is reported to being close to its decision on if the fish will be deemed safe for people to eat.

In the document, the working group noted that in the U.S. “labeling of food in general is based on the principle of there being no material difference.”

Since this meeting, the U.S. agency found in a safety assessment there are in fact no material differences between an Atlantic salmon and an AquAdvantage salmon.

Health Canada spokesman Gary Scott Holub says the department can’t speculate on when or if the fish will be approved, but at the moment no genetically modified animal has received approval for human consumption.

But if it did pass, Health Canada says it’s responsible for setting the food labeling policy.

“This applies to all foods, including foods that have been derived

through genetic engineering,” Holub said.

Fisheries researcher Nick Lapointe says he worries about the potential consequences despite scientific findings the fish are materially the same.

Lapointe says he won’t support what he calls the Frankenstein of genetically modified foods due to its potential environmental impact and the unknown of what those genes may develop into.

“Essentially when we inject genes from one organism to another, we’re putting in an unknown collection of genes and we don’t know what additional genes are going to be expressed,” Lapointe said.

If there is no labeling on the product, average Canadians may not know the potential risks when purchasing the fast-growing salmon.

Lapointe said he thinks Canadians will go to the big grocery stores in places like Walmart and “they’ll buy whatever is cheapest, they don’t see beyond that.”

 

ATIP and FOI requests that are still pending. This includes some correspondence. I called to follow up on all the requests as well.

Applications for previously released documents

Previously Released Requests (Text)
For the pages in the document I cited above (within the story):

(*) What is the information?
A working group with several government departments met in October 2010, in Guelph, to discuss the genetically engineered salmon, or the AquAdvantage fish. They discuss negative labelling and how genetically modified organisms is a contentious topic. I took this information from pages 16-17 of the document. On page 10 there is a picture showing the effects of the growth hormone in the fish.

(*) From which department and level of government did you obtain these pages?
This was obtained from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

(*) Why was this information helpful?
Yes, because it brought up another issue that hasn’t been discussed on the salmon. Most people are concerned about the ecological impacts, but this brings out the issue that it was considered that it might get sold in Canadian markets back in 2010. This month, the company AquaBounty applied for approval from Health Canada to sell its fish to Canadian markets, so its interesting to approach this issue from the angle of how people will be informed about the product if they can buy it at grocery stores. The information also showed all the departments who are working on this topic. I was able to reach out and try to get contacts from each department.