Nanovip All things Nanotechnology – Nano Is The Futiure
Canada has banned nanotechnology in organic food production. An amendment was added to Canada’s national organic rules banning nanotechnology as a “Prohibited Substance or Method”, along with genetic engineering, synthetic pesticides, irradiation and cloned animals, among others.
Dag Falck, the organic program manager at Nature’s Path Foods, said the reason for the ban was due to consumer concerns about nanotechnology, its incompatibility with organic principles, and because safety aspects of the technology are unknown. Falck said nanotech presents more potential problems than genetic engineering. “Genetic engineering is a definable science: splicing genes into crops. With nanotechnology there are at least 1000 different applications, all unregulated with unknown risks.”
Canada joins several other countries that have either banned or proposed a ban on nanotechnology in organics, including the United Kingdom’s Soil Association, Biological Farmers of Australia, and Austrian organic certifier, and Austria Bio Garantie. The US-based Organic Crop Improvement Association has added a clause in their organic standard to regulate the use of nanotechnology.