Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on April 22nd, 2009

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I'd like to say to Mr. Anderson that--

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Is this a point of order?

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Yes.

I was at the press conference with Dr. Williams, and you weren't there. Let's wait until we hear what Dr. Williams has to say about why his staff weren't allowed into the plant.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

It's not a point of order.

Mr. Rosenberg, go ahead, please.

[Morris Rosenberg]

I have one final point before I turn it over to Dr. Butler-Jones. In the implementation of these lessons learned, there is an ADM-level committee with representatives from all three agencies who are working on implementation and meeting two times a week.

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

There are two things related to that.

One, the member, Mr. Chair, addressed the interjurisdictional issue. Actually, last week, before the press conference, the chief medical officer from Ontario was part of a meeting of chief medical officers from across the country, which we hold regularly, at which the listeria lessons learned were discussed with us, Health Canada, and CFIA representation, with an opportunity to think through how we can move forward collectively as a country in addressing this.

Finally, on the issue of local public health inspectors going into a plant, I've been both a local medical officer and a provincial medical officer, and now CPHO. The CFIA has no authority to keep anybody from entering a plant. Local public health has the authority to enter where they need to enter to address their problems, and we've always done that. I'm not sure about the misunderstanding in this case, but clearly they have the authority and the CFIA does not have any authority to keep anybody out. My understanding is they did not do so.

There may have been a misunderstanding, which is a lesson learned as we move forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

We'll move on to Mr. Bellavance, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Butler-Jones, you said in your presentation that you had to make numerous public announcements and issue news releases to the public and to the most vulnerable groups as a result of the crisis. Can we say that you first communicated with the public in mid-July—specifically, on July 18, when we knew that two people had died—or was your first communication a little later? When did you start holding press conferences and issuing news releases?

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

Thank you very much for the question of clarification.

In the middle of July it was still sporadic cases. It was not recognized as an outbreak. Once we had the cluster of cases, it was recognized as a possibility of an outbreak. We communicated with Public Health and others, and when we had evidence that there was a link back to the meats, in this case the communications centred on that. You really have to bring the communications related to.... We have listeria cases all the time in this country, and there are ongoing communications about risk and how to reduce that risk, etc. We did not actually have an outbreak.

In retrospect, it's like looking at the first pebble that arrived from the landslide, but until you actually see the landslide, it's only in retrospect that you had that pebble. In this case it was the pebble. We had the landslide in the middle of August, and that's when we were able to actually address it more directly.

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

So, it was actually in August when you increased communications, while we were in the throes of the crisis? The situation was at its worst in August?

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

Correct.

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

And in September? Until the end of August, we....

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

Communications continued after the month of August, and we continued communicating with the provinces and other stakeholders to provide the best advice, the best background and information to the public and professionals.

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

In September and October, did you reduce the number of communications with the public? I know that you may not be able to tell us the number today, but could you provide the committee with the number of times you communicated with the public in August, September and October?

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

Now that the outbreak is over, we want to focus on the lessons learned, on applying those lessons and on organizing our response accordingly. Our communications were not occasional, except to answer questions from the media, professionals and others, but it was not an outbreak [Editor's Note: Inaudible] control.

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

I would like to know whether you can provide us with the number of times you communicated with the public. I want to know if, between September 7 and October 14, you were asked to slightly reduce the number of times you communicated with the public about the listeriosis issue.

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

Thank you again for the clarification; I hope I'm addressing the question.

The information continues--on the web and so on--and we continue to respond to questions. That's in addition to the work of this committee, and the work of Ms. Weatherill, which provides additional impetus and interest in this.

At the end of the day, that's all to the good--not just around issues of listeria, but around the issues of food-borne illness generally. This is an opportunity for all of us, and the public in particular, to learn the ways in which we can control and minimize the risks from food-borne illness.

Every day in this country, 20,000 to 30,000 of us are throwing up or have diarrhea as a result of food-borne illness. The vast majority of that is because of something you or I have done at home in terms of storage, or preparation, or cross-contamination. At each part of the system, we can do many things to reduce that risk.

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

Mr. Butler-Jones, I have a very specific question. I would like you to provide the subcommittee with the number of times you communicated with the public during this crisis. I am particularly interested in the election period, that is, between September 7 and October 14. My question is this: Were you asked to reduce the number of times you communicated with the public about the listeriosis crisis?

That is why I want to know how many press releases and public communications there were in August, September and October. Can you provide us with that information?

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

Public education continued during the election period, but no statements or information on government policies was given. However, we continued to provide the public with information on protecting their health and so on.

I don't have that at my fingertips in terms of what was out there and when. We will endeavour to provide that for the committee as best we can.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Mr. Allen, five minutes.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

During my previous questioning, I think you said to me that you thought there were about 15 press conferences, give or take. I wouldn't hold you to the 15--it might be 13, it might be 17--but can you identify those? They should be easy to identify. I think there's more of a problem around other things--i.e., what little notice did you put everywhere, at every point in time; that may be more difficult for you.

So perhaps you could at least get to us, Dr. Butler-Jones, the dates of the press conferences. Whether indeed they were carried or not is another issue. Then I'll change tracks here to give you a rest.

To Ms. Ballantyne, according to the time log that I have in front of me, on July 25, 2008, there was a meeting...with you, and with someone from Maple Leaf Foods; they're unidentified, obviously. Could you identify, just from your memory, who the person was and the nature of the conversation? Or would you need to go back and look at your notes for that?

[Meena Ballantyne, Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Products and Food Branch, Department of Health]

I think I'll have to look at my notes and get back to you.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

That's fair enough, and if you would, I'd appreciate it.

You didn't get much of a rest, Dr. Butler-Jones. I was trying to let you have a sip of water.

One of the things I found interesting is that at a certain point in time listeriosis was what is called a notifiable disease. I assume that what they are saying is that when folks see it—and I'm assuming they are talking about public health agencies and others—they are supposed to notify someone. To my understanding, that stopped at some point in time, somewhere around 2000.

It seems to me that in a case such as listeriosis, which we have all come to learn is fairly prevalent—the listeria bacterium, according to what all the scientists and all the lay people who talked to us have told us, is a very prevalent bacterium, and folks get ill from time to time—we stopped doing this. It begs the question why.

The other question is whether it is still listed as a “not notifiable” incident when others see it. I'm not suggesting that folks don't speak about it, but clearly, a notification process isn't being used, according to my understanding. If somebody can verify that for me, I'd appreciate it.

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

Certainly, Mr. Chair.

I'll say to the member that it's a very good point. There are notifiable diseases at the provincial or territorial level. In other words, in legislation and regulation each province requires notice of a certain number of diseases, for a range of issues, including that we're trying to understand more about it and its importance in terms of public health impact. A range of criteria go into it, and they develop those.

There are also nationally notifiable diseases; you are correct. We have expert committees and provincial and territorial committees that review these on a regular basis. Their recommendation at that time was that it be removed, given its risk burden of illness etc. So it was removed from the list of national notifiable diseases.

The lesson learned from this is that doing so was probably premature, and now it will be, I'm certain, reintroduced—not as a nationally notifiable disease, as it's often notifiable provincially and, certainly in the case of laboratories, we know about these things. It is a way of enhancing the surveillance related to these issues.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

That goes to the point that we now have producers operating on such a scale that their products are not only consumed across this country but could be consumed up and down North America and beyond, depending on the product. It seems to me that the traceability of product becomes much harder, and when we are not notifying at an appropriate time, albeit there may have been a risk analysis....

I'm not sure how one does risk analysis with food, in the sense of assessing how safe you can be. I heard Mr. McCain say that whenever CFIA sets the base level, they'll work above it. Then, it seems to me, CFIA should adopt that as a base, and there should be a never-ending, continual process of getting better. But I'll leave that for them to answer when they come back.

If indeed we are in an age of mass production of food, in the sense that these plants are huge and are producing vast quantities, are there other things out there that we should be doing? I'm noticing that this was a non-notifiable disease. It doesn't matter whether the province decided upon it or we decided upon it. It seems that we as a federal regulator need to start thinking in broader concepts, even though there are requirements within the provinces and they have their own jurisdictions. Now that we are seeing food substances go across the provinces, it becomes incumbent upon us to take more of a leadership role to make sure we have this type of notification.

I'm wondering where you are going to be headed with that, because it seems to me that this can be very critical as we go forward.