Document on the decision was inadvertently attributed to CropLife Canada.Ottawa—The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has pushed back on claims by a group of agriculture organizations that it was unduly influenced in its decision to approve gene-edited crops for registration.CFIA said in a statement that claims made by the National Farmers Union and other groups are “inaccurate and therefore misleading.” The CFIA is an independent, scientific and evidence-based federal regulatory agency committed to ethical transparency and accountability. “The CFIA always authors its own independent guidance and policies.”The issue involves CFIA's decision to update the guidance for Part V of the Seeds Regulations approving gene-edited crops. Following four months of consultation last year with non-government organizations as well as the agrifood industry followed by further discussions this year.Its 2021 consultation drew 508 responses from the public, public and private plant breeders, including academia, government, and industry, agriculture industry members including associations representing the seed and grain value chain and not-for-profit organizations.Follow-up discussions were held with CropLife Canada, Canada Grains Council and Seeds Canada, 17 plant breeders or research scientists from seven Canadian universities or research centres as well as the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, National Farmers Union, SeedChange and Vigilance OGM and 15 national and regional organic industry associations and organic producers.“After considering and then incorporating some of the stakeholder feedback on the draft guidance, the CFIA updated all its working documents within one of the returned copies. The revised document was then shared with the broader stakeholder group for further comment. For this reason, the metadata erroneously identifies the author of this document as someone other than a CFIA employee,” the Agency said.“In fact, the entire draft guidance document, including the proposed key directions, was written by the CFIA, incorporating some of the feedback from multiple stakeholders. External parties, including industry associations, are never the authors of CFIA documents.”CFIA said it “is committed to maintaining its reputation and credibility, and values the public's trust. As an organization, we have taken steps to improve our practices.”The NFU and the other groups, which also included the Council of Canadians, Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario, Ecology Action Centre, called for the replacement of CFIA President Siddika Mithani in order to restore the CFIA's reputation and credibility, which was compromised by the way the document on gene-editing of crops was released.The groups said the document reveals collaboration between CFIA and private corporations whose products it regulates “to the point that it appears CropLife is effectively directing the CFIA.”