At the Canola Council, our view is that we have labelling in place in Canada for health and safety and for nutrition. Those are the criteria upon which the labelling process is based. If you go beyond that to other issues then I guess the question is what are those issues and what are the criteria?
It's been framed in terms of a consumer right to know. I would say consumers have a right to know, but there is a lot of information about genetic modification and about biotechnology generally available to the public. In Canada, if the public wants to know what they're eating, they can find that out. They can go to www.canolacouncil.org and there's lots of information about the canola industry and about genetic modification and the products we use.
I don't know that it's a right to know as much as a legislative process where you're going to be told that the product is genetically modified. I'm not sure how much information that really provides. In fact, with canola for example, while the plant is supported by biotechnology, the oil that results from it doesn't have any GM protein in it. In fact the product doesn't have GM in it. The product the person's consuming, if anything, has only extremely trace levels of the product in it.
A label that says this is produced through genetic modification really doesn't tell the consumer that much. I would argue that there is a lot of information for the consumer and there's no barrier to their right to know about what they're eating in Canada that needs to be addressed.