The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has denied that it copied a proposal from CropLife Canada when it called for industry response to regulation of gene-edited crops.
It said its own staff developed the final draft of proposals, but did not deny that the copy Radio Canada obtained was written by Jennifer Hubert, executive director of CropLife.
The CFIA rejected the NFU call for dismissal of the head of the CFIA.
The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network and Vigilance OGM also asked Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau to dismiss Dr. Siddika Mithani.
In its response, the CFIA said it remains “an independent, scientific and evidence-based federal regulatory agency committed to ethical transparency and accountability” and “always authors its own independent guidance and policies.”
It said the final proposals were written by CFIA staff after consultations were held with “seed and grain industry associations” including CropLife as well as plant breeders, researchers, organic industry associations and “non-government organizations” — including the NFU, Canadian Biotechnology Action Network and Vigilance OGM.
“After considering and then incorporating some of the stakeholder feedback on the draft guidance, the CFIA updated all its working documents within one of the returned copies,” the agency said, and the revised document then went out to stakeholders for further comment.
“For this reason, the metadata erroneously identifies the ‘author’ of this document as someone other than a CFIA employee,” CFIA said, but “in fact, the entire draft guidance document, including the proposed key directions, was written by the CFIA, incorporating some of the feedback from multiple stakeholders.”
All of this is moot because the NFU attack is not on the merits of the CFIA proposals, but an attack on a person. It's known in philosophy as flawed "ad hominem" reasoning.
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