In Canada, novel food is the term used by most of our regulatory agencies to identify new foods that require a safety assessment prior to sale. It includes food products with no history of safe use as a food, food that has been manufactured, prepared, preserved or packaged in a new way. It includes all the foodstuffs that have been genetically modified.
To date, 50 novel foods have been approved for sale in Canada including a number of canola, corn, cottonseed and flax crop lines. Some of the novel traits include herbicide tolerance and pest and disease resistance. It is estimated that there are currently over 2000 novel foods in development for such traits as nutritional enhancement, vaccine content and environmental tolerances.
In spite of the benefits brought about by the development of novel foods, there are also a number of concerns that have been raised concerning their potential impact on the environment and on human health and safety.
Some of the environmental concerns include the potential for long term herbicide resistance among weeds growing near novel plants, outcrossing between novel plants and weedy relatives and virus recombination. Some of the main concerns raised about the safety of novel foods on humans include concerns over the potential to cause allergies, potential for toxicity, changes in nutritional content and the effects of the potential presence of antibiotic resistance genes in the foods.
The potential environmental impact of novel plants are addressed in the environmental safety assessments performed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, while Health Canada is responsible for undertaking safety assessments of all novel foods in order to ensure a wholesome, nutritious and safe food supply.
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