Health Canada scientists Shiv Chopra, Margaret Haydon and Gerard Lambert told Canada’s Senate committees in 1998 and 1999 that supervisors pressured them to approve veterinary products despite unresolved human-safety questions. The products included bovine growth hormone (rBST), Baytril, Tylosin, Revalor H, Synergistin, Carbodex and Eugenol. Chopra specifically warned that Baytril, an enrofloxacin antibiotic, could contribute to cross-resistance involving ciprofloxacin-class medicines. The scientists also warned before Canada’s mad-cow crisis that cattle-feed controls were inadequate. These were whistleblower allegations, not court findings that every product was unsafe or that approvals were fraudulent.
Chopra, Haydon and Lambert were fired by Health Canada in June 2004; the department denied the dismissals were punishment for their public testimony, while Chopra’s termination letter cited “total lack of progress” on a project. On April 29, 2005, the Federal Court quashed a Public Service Integrity Officer decision dismissing their complaints, finding that the office had inadequately handled the case and questioning its credibility in protecting good-faith whistleblowers. Later proceedings did not fully vindicate the trio: in 2016 the labour board upheld Chopra’s dismissal for disciplinary insubordination, and a Federal Court of Appeal review was dismissed in 2017. Separately, Canadian human-rights rulings found racial discrimination against Chopra, including altered job evaluations; a 2008 tribunal awarded him $4,000 for damages, lost wages and interest.
