Safe Food Matters Inc. and its co-founder, Mary Lou McDonald, have asked the Federal Court to strike down Health Canada guidance that lets many gene-edited plant foods reach the market without the department’s pre-market safety assessment.
The application, filed October 20, names the Attorney General of Canada. It asks the court to declare the May 18, 2022, Guidance on the Novelty Interpretation of Products of Plant Breeding unlawful and contrary to section 7 of the Charter, and to quash its key section.
The court has not ruled yet, but under the Food and Drug Regulations, a food is “novel” if it comes from a plant “genetically modified” to gain or lose a characteristic. Novel foods need Health Canada’s written clearance before sale. The 2022 guidance carves out an exception: if a gene-edited plant contains no foreign DNA and meets four other criteria, it’s not novel.
That means there’s no mandatory notification, no departmental assessment and no public decision.
McDonald says in the filing that she refuses genetically modified foods as a matter of health and conscience and “cannot reliably determine whether the foods offered to her are gene-edited.” She put it plainly: “the only filter I had to protect my health from GE food was transparency from Health Canada. That protection is gone.”
The applicants argue that a guidance document can’t rewrite a regulation. Health Canada says it still assesses all novel foods and has no authority to require notice of products it doesn’t consider novel.
Basically, disclosure is voluntary. Health Canada’s list of non-novel products names 25 products, 15 of them gene-edited, including tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, corn and soybeans. The newest is dated July 31, 2026, and Canada doesn’t require labels identifying genetic modification or gene editing at all, unless there’s a health reason (like an allergen).
The same light touch now covers seed. Since May 2023, CFIA guidance generally exempts gene-edited plants without foreign DNA from pre-release authorization. In most cases, developers decide for themselves whether their plant is novel.
Who wanted it this way? Radio-Canada reported in September 2023 that access-to-information records showed a government-industry “Tiger Team,” including CropLife Canada, helped shape the approach.
