Explainer
Health Canada announced last month it is indefinitely pausing a proposed policy change that would have exempted products from cloned cattle and swine from special assessments reserved for novel foods before being sold in Canada.
The move followed public pushback from consumers and organizations who raised transparency concerns. The health agency has clarified that no foods from cloned animals are currently on the Canadian market and that the proposal only affected the requirement for a pre-market safety assessment—not labelling rules.
But the policy change pause raises a key question: if labelling rules remain unchanged, would Canadians know—either through additional labelling or a separate meat category—if cloned meat was introduced to the market, regardless of whether it underwent pre-market safety evaluations?…