Canadians could soon be eating products from cloned cattle and swine without knowing it, as Health Canada makes moves to eliminate mandatory labelling and notification.
The agency last year proposed removing foods derived from somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) cloned cattle and swine and their offspring from its list of “novel foods,” saying that scientific opinion had concluded such foods were “as safe as foods from traditionally bred animals.”
Excluding these foods from the “novel food” category eliminates the requirement for mandatory pre-market safety assessments and the need for sellers to submit detailed information to the health minister for approval before sale, as stipulated by Canada’s Food and Drug Regulations….