Regulating Agricultural Biotechnology

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) shares responsibility with Health Canada for regulating products derived from biotechnology. The Agency is responsible for assessing the safety of plants, animal feeds and animal feed ingredients, fertilizers and veterinary biologics.

Health Canada is responsible for assessing the human health safety of products derived through biotechnology including foods, drugs, cosmetics, medical devices and pest control products.

• Health Canada - Genetically Modified (GM) Foods and Other Novel Foods

CFIA regulatory responsibilities include:

• Animal biotechnology
• Labelling of novel foods derived from genetic engineering
• Novel feeds
• Novel fertilizer supplements
• Plants with novel traits
• Veterinary biologics produced by biotechnology

The CFIA is committed to making itself a more transparent organization. This means keeping the public informed about what we do while maintaining and building public confidence in how we do our job. The Agency works with CFIA program experts to provide input and develop positions for interdepartmental, national and international biotechnology initiatives.

• Transparency and international cooperation

Our resource centre contains information that will help you understand what biotechnology is and how regulatory decisions about biotechnology-derived products are made.

• Resource centre

Additional government and international information can be found at:

• BioPortal - Government of Canada's biotechnology resource
• Environment Canada - New Substances Program
• Fisheries and Oceans Canada - Science
• Health Canada - Biotechnology
• Natural Resources Canada (Canadian Forest Service) - Biotechnology
• United States Department of Agriculture - Biotechnology and Scientific Services
• World Health Organization - 20 Questions on Genetically Modified Foods