From the Australian.

The threat facing our foodFont Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print Necia Wilden | June 25, 2009
Article from: The Australian
A CANADIAN whistleblower says that if Australians want to eat as safely as Europeans, they need to ban the five major contaminants of modern industrial food production: growth hormones, antibiotics, slaughterhouse wastes, genetically modified organisms and pesticides.

Microbiologist Shiv Chopra, sacked after warning parliament of the dangers of bovine growth hormone, says Australia's food safety regulations place the country at risk of repeating the mistakes of Canada, where 80 per cent of the food is contaminated by GMOs. In contrast, he says, the EU has already banned three of the five contaminants -- hormones, antibiotics and slaughterhouse wastes -- has not yet approved GMOs and is in the process of banning pesticides.

A fellow of the World Health Organisation and former senior scientific adviser to Health Canada, Dr Chopra is visiting Australia this week to promote his book, Corrupt to the Core: Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower.

Speaking in Sydney yesterday at the Rockpool Bar & Grill -- a leading proponent of ethical beef production -- Dr Chopra said it was not the job of the public to prove additives are harmful.

"The onus should be on the government and big business to prove that these substances are not harmful, because they're the ones who are making money from them. Unless they can prove that these substances aren't harmful, we should be telling our governments that we don't want them in our food supply."

Dr Chopra said the Australian government's desire to promote the country overseas as a source of "clean, green" food was at odds with its policies.

"Australia could be the world's leading exporter of clean, green produce. Why would you do anything to jeopardise that?"

Dr Chopra's visit comes as Food Standards Australia New Zealand has been criticised for placing trade ahead of public health. Health and dietary experts have called for an independent review of the food safety regulator, one of the few in the world to have approved every application for genetically modified products.

FSANZ recently declined to follow the lead of other countries in banning or restricting a range of additives linked to behavioural abnormalities in children.

Overseas, food ethics have moved from the fringe to the mainstream with the release of two documentaries, both attracting the publicity and rave reviews usually reserved for multi-million-dollar Hollywood productions. The US film Food, Inc exposes the horrors of the industrial farming system. The British film The End of the Line indicts government overfishing policies and has already prompted bans by retailers of some species of unsustainable fish.