A friend in grad school used to get pigs off. He needed their semen for genetics research and, that was how to get it (with props, the mount-equivalent of lingerie, I guess). That was 1986, and I would soon drop out of grad school to pursue Hunter-S-Thompson-esq journalist escapades, but not nearly as interesting.

“I got tired of talking about hypothetical risks.” That’s what I told Maclean’s and the Medical Post today in a brief story about genetically engineered foods. And I agreed with a spokesthingy who said, “To date, Health Canada has not identified health risks associated with GM foods that have been approved for sale in Canada.”

Ron Doering, the first president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and probably the only one anyone remembers (right, pretty much as shown), writes about food silliness in his regular column for Food in Canada. It’s reprinted below.

At the open meeting of the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP) today, the committee considered a hypothetical application under the Novel Foods Regulations for the approval of meat and milk from cloned cattle and their progeny.

Abstract

Abstract

A  Massachusetts-based company is seeking US regulatory approval for its genetically modified salmon eggs, which have been claimed to grow faster than conventional salmon.  On behalf of Canada’s aquaculture industry, which includes salmon farmers on both coasts, the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAIA) would like to state its position on the matter:
1.

WASHINGTON -- A group of agricultural scientists reported in today's issue of the journal Science that corn that has been genetically engineered to produce insect-killing proteins isolated from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) provides significant economic benefits even to neighboring farmers who grow non-transgenic varieties of corn.

The Food and Drug Administration is poised to approve the first genetically modified animal for human consumption, a highly anticipated decision that is stirring controversy and could mark a turning point in the way American food is produced.