Action brief

What’s happening?

Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)

are proposing new “regulatory guidance” which would exempt many new genetically engineered foods and seeds (genetically modified organisms or GMOs) from government safety assessments. Instead, product developers themselves would assess food and environmental safety, with no government oversight. These exemptions would apply to many new genetically engineered foods and seeds that have no foreign DNA (likely produced by gene editing techniques).