Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on June 8th, 2009

[Bette Jean Crews]

I believe that food is allowed to come into this country if it meets the production standards in that country. Let's use the States as a very easy example. There are crop protection products that are licensed in the States and that are not licensed in Canada, and yet that product can come into Canada. What we really need is more inspection at the border as well. And I don't mean moving inspectors from one place to another. I mean hiring more inspectors so we have that ongoing monitoring all through the chain, and at the border as well.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

The other point that I think you mentioned, Bette Jean--and I'm not as familiar with this--was that the current funding for the Growing Forward program could move us towards a patchwork quilt of programs across the country. Can you give us any specific examples of that?

That's one thing I've been talking about for a while, though not specifically on funding. We have provincial governments coming up with various programs--Alberta, for instance, has the most--and yet somebody else and some producer in another province has to compete against that money that's been dumped into that industry. We agree there has to be flexibility across the country, but what you're really getting is a divergence, in terms of farm support, across the country now.

[Bette Jean Crews]

We're concerned about the Growing Forward.... We welcome the flexibility to address provincial issues, because every province is different. In Ontario, where we are right now, we have so many sizes of farms and varied commodities that our food safety needs are quite different from those of other provinces.

The concern is that there won't be any overview of the national system, that provinces will be able to work together, that there will be fairness. What we're proposing is an industry-government process by which we will know what the other provinces are doing--and so does government--and that the funding simply doesn't go out on an.... And it is. It's on a first-come, first-served basis. Growers from provinces that don't have a lot of money to put toward this are going to be penalized by this whole thing.

The other thing I would like to mention too, Mr. Easter, is the traceability issue. We need provincial traceability systems that work within the national system. In the earlier presentation by the Canadian Supply Chain Food Safety Coalition, there were questions about what we require as far as minimum standards and about other provinces having better standards.

We have to be very aware that for traceability in particular, some of it is for emergency management purposes and another level is for market access purposes, and the national and provincial systems need to be strictly for emergency management purposes. Whether you call it basic standards, minimum standards, or science-based standards, it only needs to be this good to be traceable. If I want to market my product and sell more, then I can do the Cadillac version.

But in Canada we need to meet global standards. We need to meet national and provincial standards. I've been to a global conference, and the recommendation was that the global standard needs to be the lowest it can possibly be and ensure traceability and food safety for emergency management and animal health issues. I don't want us to lose track of that thought.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Mr. Bellavance, seven minutes.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Ms. Crews, I share your concerns about the costs producers will have to pay to ensure food safety. Your organization represents several thousand farm producers who want to provide consumers with safe food. Ultimately, even if they are not the cause of the problem, their reputation will suffer.

Producers want to ensure that their products meet safety standards, and this costs money. Sometimes there is doubt as to whether or not governments realize how hard producers are trying in their work methods and financially to ensure that food is as safe as possible. In recent years, we have taken some steps to ensure that farm products are very safe.

The government does not seem too sensitive to this, and it is actually imposing measures that will be very expensive for producers. I am thinking particularly of specified risk materials, the SRMs. Our beef producers are now required to eliminate SRMs, even though our American trading partners are not required to do so. This results in unfair competition for our producers.

I am not saying they are opposed to the introduction of these measures. However, I am wondering why the government put them in place. Does it not realize that they are creating unfair competition? The government must help our producers pay these extra costs.

I have other examples of food safety crises. When I was first elected, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agrifood visited Manitoba producers whose cattle had had bovine tuberculosis. We saw one producer in tears when he thought about what happened years before, when he had lost everything. The compensation payments arrived late and were inadequate. The same was true of producers in British Columbia, who had had to cull millions of chickens because of avian flu.

In response, the government recently published in the Canada Gazette some changes in the compensation payments—they were decreased from $33 per chicken to $8, or something like that. I share this concern. There is an imbalance here.

I would like to hear your comments on this. You may have some other examples to give us as well.

[Bette Jean Crews]

So there was a question in there?

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Yes, but you are entitled to—

[Bette Jean Crews]

On producer compensation, this is exactly why government needs to be involved and working with industry to set up these programs to help industry design and implement these food safety programs. Regardless of what kind of disaster program you can come up with in this country, until we have the traceability in place to mitigate that damage in a recall situation, and the food safety protocols in place by commodity, then the damage is going to be phenomenal. And you're right, we are still recovering from BSE. We need government involvement in those programs.

There's another thing I wanted to mention, but I forget where I was going with that one now. Would you like to ask me another specific question? I think you were just making a statement that government needs to be involved, and I totally agree with you.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

I was expecting you to comment on this situation. Producers have to make an effort to cover the costs related to food safety. However, the government does not seem concerned about the assistance it should be providing to producers. You said yourself that the efforts made by producers does not result in any extra-value added for them. Nevertheless, they have to ensure that people have safe food to eat.

I mentioned the example of specified risk materials. Does the government ensure that producers do not have to pay this cost on their own?

[Bette Jean Crews]

Yes, I did mention in the presentation that there is no premium for food safety. That's why we're here today: to make sure we continue some of the good work we've done. The Canadian On-Farm Food Safety Working Group worked with commodity organizations to establish food safety protocols, auditable protocols, for some commodities that were able to do it. Not all commodities have finished that work. We would like to see some process in place that enables that to continue, so more commodities can be brought into that work.

The other thing you mentioned was on the specified risk materials. That is something in modern-day agriculture that we do have to remove. We have to do it for the market as much as for the emergency management of it. And yet there is science there that will enable those specified risk materials to be used to produce energy. That's being done in western Ontario. We're a couple of months, weeks maybe, away from finalizing that.

Government support for those kinds of programs will subsidize the cost to the farmer of getting rid of those animals because now there's a benefit to the dead-stock collector to actually pick up that animal. We don't have any leather industry in this country anymore. We can't use dead stock to make animal food because of the specified risk materials in it. There is no market. Here's where government can help with getting the new science in place and enable farmers to ship their dead animals without it costing them more sometimes than it would to ship a live animal. It's government support in the interim until we get that science in place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Bellavance.

I'll go to Mr. Allen for seven minutes.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and I thank all of you for coming.

Ms. Crews, I was interested that you used the term “this level” for traceability. I think you're the first person who has spoken to us about traceability being an issue, not so much in food safety but about managing something that may have occurred and finding a way to track—because really that is what it is all about: tracking where that particular product has gone, or to whom we sent it, or who may be consuming it. It's interesting to note your comment around what level that should be at. Your suggestion that the market may want to see something else, which would allow them to have a Cadillac model—using your words—I found interesting.

Based on that and on the whole sense of food safety—because I don't think you'd get too many arguments from most of us who sit on the agriculture committee that the producer seems to bear the brunt of the cost for a lot of the programming—it's difficult to get consumers to be aware of trying to get the primary producer a decent return on the investment. I don't think they're opposed to it, but if you went to most farmers' markets or supermarkets, you'd find most consumers aren't aware of the plight farmers find themselves in from a financial perspective. They would probably be shocked by that.

I was interested in how you see the dynamic of how we engage consumers to make them understand that somehow we need to make sure primary producers are compensated in a fair way. I'm not sure how you see that linkage. You talked about some education—and that's important unto itself—but clearly for the producers you represent, and for the producer you are, you need to find a way to get those dollars back into your purse. I'm not sure I see the linkage between the two simply with education. For the consumer, if the price of milk or bread goes up at the store, they just believe the store takes it. They don't necessarily see it going back to the producer.

[Bette Jean Crews]

There is no one consumer.

The position I'm at in my life right now, with the children finally gone--and I think they've quit coming back—

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Now that's not true.

[Bette Jean Crews]

--I can afford the luxury of paying extra for food, because I know the value of it. But I have to tell you honestly, when we were paying off the mortgage and raising four kids, if we were going to have tomatoes in the winter, they couldn't be Ontario tomatoes. So let's just be realistic here. You will never have all consumers able to buy what they would like to buy.

By the same token, there are consumers out there who value the environment, the labour standards, and the whole standard of living we have in this country, to say nothing of our food safety standards. They value that enough to pay for it. I'm lucky enough on our farm that we have a small farm market. I've always said that I can educate about 1,000 people a summer, and that's about it. So over the last 30 years, I've hit quite a few.

If the government would come into that and spin this whole thing out to the consumer, or else work with us in a program we can actually market.... We used to have the Agricultural Adaptation Council in Ontario--we still have it--and that program used to let us market our local food. That's now become a provincial responsibility, and I must say that in Ontario, the province has come out fairly strongly on that and is doing well. But if there were some federal dollars, even through that program, that could go to food safety communication initiatives so that the consumer was aware of the differences....

Consumers assume that the government is looking after them. They assume that everything coming across the border is as good as what we produce here. That's where the communication is needed. It is to get that through to them.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

I would concur, from the perspective of consumers, and I think all the witnesses have concurred, that they actually believe there is no one in the business of producing food who is out to poison anyone. That's what the consumer believes also. There are actually all those things behind them in that chain you've talked about, including the chain Mr. Lennox is involved in that is trucking things and moving things from place to place. Indeed, everyone in that chain is doing the utmost to ensure that when it finally gets to the shelf or gets to the plate, the food is actually safe. They truly don't understand what happens behind the scenes in the chain in the sense of where things come from.

We don't grow papaya, so people know when they buy papaya that it's not Canadian. But they may not necessarily know about tomatoes or leaf lettuce, depending on the season, especially at this time of year, when we get into May. Asparagus is probably a prime example. They may not know whether it's a product of Chile or a product of Canada, unless they're checking really closely, and it's not every place that actually points that out to us.

There is a sort of taken-for-granted attitude, if you will, on the part of consumers, and it's a fair one to take, which is that no one is out to poison anyone.

The cost has to be borne somewhere. If the cost ultimately is going to be borne at the primary producer level, it seems incumbent upon us, because we cherish the safe food supply as a society.... In fact, it's the only thing that will sustain us. If we poison ourselves, we just won't be here. We ultimately need to bear the cost as a society, which means that all of us contribute.

I agree with you, by the way. When my kids were younger and I was paying a mortgage--because I'm kind of like you, and they're kind of gone, almost--it was a tough go for a while to try to make ends meet.

It seems to me that we need a policy that says this is how we pay for safe foods and how we intend to make sure that the processes we're asking for are put in place. We're asking that as a Canadian government. Here is what we need to see happen. The industry is saying that this is what it wants to do. Ultimately, someone actually has to pony up the dollars to pay for that. It seems to me that it's never going to be consumers.

Mr. Lennox, you said earlier that your industry was trying to absorb the cost through efficiencies in your HACCP-based systems. You said that you have been successful or that you've been fairly successful. Do you see that success continuing, or is there a point at which your efficiency gains will simply be tapped out and you'll have to pass costs along?

[Ron Lennox]

When I say that costs have to be passed along, in the scheme of things, those are pretty minor. If you take a look at a trucking company and its operations, the big expenses are fuel and labour and equipment. So to put in place a HACCP program would just be a fraction of the overall cost of operating a trucking company.

In terms of our ability to pass those costs on, again, because the industry is so competitive, no company can get out of line in terms of the rates they charge their clients, whether it be because of HACCP or something else, because price is important, and so is service.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Allen. Your time has expired.

Just before I move on to Mr. Anderson, Ms. Crews, I thought you had an interesting comment there about being able to afford food and what have you. I'm the same--I think my boys have all left home for the last time.

I've sometimes said there are three groups of people when it comes time to purchase food. There are those who want to buy Canadian or local and can afford to. There are those who want to buy Canadian or local and can't afford to. And then there is the other group of those to whom it doesn't matter--it's only about price, and that's usually because of financial circumstances or whatever, and that's a reality.

I think I hear you kind of agreeing with that.

[Bette Jean Crews]

Well, I am, but I'll tell you, it is also rewarding to go to the grocery store--and I'll use the example of tomatoes because sometimes it's hard to find Ontario or Canadian tomatoes in the store--and I always ask the produce fellow who's working there where the Ontario ones are. I've done this a number of times, and there's been someone standing right beside me reaching for that one from another country. He's listened and wondered why I was asking for tomatoes from Ontario. It has just taken a little sentence about what we do here, and he has gone right over and paid another 20¢ a pound for Ontario tomatoes.

So, as I say, I can reach maybe a thousand people a year. The government can reach a lot more.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

That was a good comment.

Mr. Anderson, you have seven minutes.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Well, actually, I did want to follow up on what Mr. Lennox was just talking about: the cost of HACCP. I was going to ask actually whether you knew what the costs of conforming to HACCP were, whether any of your companies or your association had done that work, but you really don't see that as a major cost at all. I'm a producer, a farmer, as well, and on an individual farm it is a significant investment, but you're able to spread that across your firms widely enough that it's not a big cost?

[Ron Lennox]

It's not insignificant. I've spoken to our service deliverer, Kasar Canada, and they've indicated that costs can run to easily $50,000 for a trucking company to put a program in place. And then there are ongoing costs as well for audits, for example, and the cost of those audits would depend on the number of facilities you have that have to come under scrutiny.

But, again, in the scheme of things, compared to the other costs of running a trucking company, it tends to be small.

I'm not sure if John wants to comment on that.

[John Gyoroky]

I would tend to agree with that. I think Erb Transport looked at it as a cost necessary to continue doing business, but I would agree with Mr. Lennox that compared to the costs of labour, fuel, and equipment, it is minimal.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Do you haul live cattle?

[John Gyoroky]

No, sir.