Help Stop GMO Alfalfa

The Canadian Government is proposing to allow contamination of our food supply with genetically engineered foods that have not been approved for safe eating in Canada. The government wants to allow 0.1% or higher of our food to be contaminated with GM foods that have not been approved by Health Canada for safe human consumption but have been approved in at least one other country where our government has confidence in that regulatory system. The federal government calls this “Low Level Presence” or LLP and argues that this “low level” of contamination from unapproved GM foods is not harmful.

Help Spread the word about GMO Alfalfa! Visit www.cban.ca for more details.

About The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN)

Mission: To promote food sovereignty and democratic decision-making on science and technology issues in order to protect the integrity of the environment, health, food, and the livelihoods of people in Canada and around the world by facilitating, informing and organizing civil society action, researching, and providing information to government for policy development.

To achieve this CBAN works to:

– Facilitate collaborative campaigning at the local, regional, national and international levels
– Enable individual Canadians to take strategic and effective action
– Research and monitor new technologies and provide credible information
– Challenge government to transparency, accountability and democratic process

CBAN is a charity under Tides Canada Initiatives.

History

The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN) is formed from a collaboration that began in 1999 when 23 environmental, social justice and consumer groups met in Ottawa to create an informal partnership on the issue of genetic engineering. Among other victories, these organizations worked together to successfully stop the introduction of Bovine Growth Hormone in Canadian milk production and pressured Monsanto to abandon introduction of genetically engineered (GE) wheat in North America. For 6 years we shared information and coordinated common actions on issues raised by genetic engineering such as the need for democratic debate, precautionary decision-making and mandatory labelling as well as issues surrounding regulation, sustainable farming and corporate control in agriculture.

In January 2006, a consensus emerged among participants that new momentum and resources were needed in the movement against genetic engineering in Canada. We agreed to create CBAN to assist research and monitoring, support grassroots action and coordinate action at the national and international levels.

CBAN demonstrated the value and power of our new, strengthened collaboration when in March 2006 we thwarted Canadian Government’s attempt to lift the international moratorium on Terminator seeds. And in October 2006, CBAN held its first annual Annual General Meeting in Vancouver.

Today, CBAN is coordinating the national Ban Terminator Campaign and is building capacity to take on other critical issues such as GE Trees and to become a resource on GE issues for all Canadians.

Thanks to the support of scores of individuals and many dedicated organizations, CBAN analyses the implications of new technologies while keeping a critical eye on government regulation and corporate activities. For more information visit their website: www.cban.ca