Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on May 13th, 2009

[Christopher Kyte]

No, not at all. I'm saying that the listeria policy applies only to the 2,300, not to the 5,000. In a perfect world, you'd apply it to the 5,000. That's not how you do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

In our regular agriculture committee we're conducting a competitiveness study of all aspects of food delivery, including slaughter, grocery stores, or whatever. Grocery stores here in Ontario, and I think mostly across the country, have a policy that none of their stores, even the independent ones, are allowed to sell provincially inspected beef or pork, because they buy through their wholesale partners. Do you think they have any justification for that from a food safety point of view?

[Christopher Kyte]

I haven't talked about that kind of issue for many years. However, they know what they're getting from a federally inspected plant. They're familiar with the rules and so are their auditors. This makes for some simplicity in auditing and purchasing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Can you explain why they wouldn't also understand what the provincial rules were?

[Christopher Kyte]

I couldn't tell you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

But you're from the processing industry, and I assume that you don't represent only federally inspected processors.

[Christopher Kyte]

I represent them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Is there any justification for grocery stores to demand that only federally inspected food be allowed in their grocery stores? I'm asking you for your professional opinion.

[Christopher Kyte]

There's a cachet attached to selling it as federally inspected meat. There's a standard—that's their policy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You don't want to comment on it. Okay, that's fair enough.

Mr. Bellavance.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Kyte, you have just told us that you are not an expert in food inspection. Neither am I. But scientists have also told us that having more inspectors in every plant will not necessarily result in any bacteria being found. You cannot smell bacteria, nor see them. Unless the facilities are so unsanitary that you decide to shut down the line, I understand that a visual inspection...

People want to have confidence in their food inspection system. I do not doubt the industry's capacity to conduct inspections. The industry does not want to lose its reputation, or have people become ill, or worse, have people die as a result of what can happen in a plant. With its taxes, the public wants to feel sure that independent inspections are being done, by the government in this case, and that there are more inspectors on the plant floor to take samples.

You are not an expert, but you think that having more inspectors will not necessarily solve the problem. But bacteria can be found if samples are taken and if the cleanliness of equipment is checked. Those are the things that can be improved so that people can have more confidence in their food safety system.

Do you agree?

[Christopher Kyte]

I don't think the number of inspectors would make any difference. I think the trend towards HACCP and things like that encourages monitoring, making sure the companies are doing what they're supposed to be doing. They're supposed to be doing the testing. If it's product testing that's been scientifically proven to be something you should do, then that's part of your protocol. The listeria policy says you have to do this, this, and this, and then if that happens, you have to do this.

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

How can we be sure of that if there is no one providing independent oversight? That is my question.

[Christopher Kyte]

There are people auditing you to make sure you're doing what you're supposed to do. You can't go much beyond that. Take orange juice adulteration, which is entirely different but also the same. If you put an inspector in a plant all the time, you still can't detect orange juice adulteration--adding sugar instead of orange juice solids. You could only find that out by hiring a snitch inside the plant. So I might be wrong, but I don't see the relationship between the number of auditors or inspectors and the outcome.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Anderson.

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

This question is probably for Mr. Kyte.

Do you anticipate more recalls because of the changes that were made by the government on April 1 in some of the listeria testing, or do you see the recall system working separately from those changes?

[Christopher Kyte]

I don't see a relationship between recalls and what you establish as new procedures once everybody is accommodated and puts them in practice in their plants.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much to our witnesses.

We've certainly had a full round and a little more. I'd like to thank you for coming here today. I think your input to this review on food safety is very important.

We're going to break briefly and then come back to the table. We have votes tonight and will have to leave for a few minutes to vote.

I'll ask our next witnesses from the Canadian Meat Council, Olymel, and the Ontario Independent Meat Processors, and the Beef Information Centre to take the table as soon as possible and we'll get going.

Thanks again to our witnesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Bellavance.

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

Mr. Chair, can we have a schedule of the witnesses coming up? We were sent a schedule of dates and witnesses on April 16. But, given the time we have to do this committee work, I would like to know if all the witnesses are available in the time slots we have. We can have Monday from 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and Wednesday from 4:00 p.m. to 10 p.m. We do not have a lot of time left, but we have to make sure that all the witnesses are available for all our time slots.

I have been told that Option consommateurs is ready to come to the committee at any time. There have been times when we have had few witnesses because we were told that they were not available.

I want to remind the committee that I asked for Tony Clement, the former Minister of Health, to come to testify. I do not see his name. I hope that he will be on the list.

I would like an updated schedule to see if all the witnesses are able to be on it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I don't have a copy of it in front of me, but we can soon supply it.

As far as your reference to how some witnesses weren't available, as you know, on Monday night we tried to get a bunch, but because of the H1N1 it was very difficult. In fact it ended up being impossible to get witnesses for that night, so we weren't able to hold that. We're trying to get every witness on the list here.

You mentioned going until 10 on Monday night. It was part of the instructions given to us by the committee that if we had to we'd go from 4 until 10, and we're going there. We can certainly get an updated calendar. I guess there isn't any reason why it can't be sent out in the next day or two.

To our witnesses, thank you very much for being here. Bells will start to go off in a few minutes, but don't be alarmed. We will have to depart to vote and we'll be back here as soon as possible.

Please keep opening remarks for each organization to 10 minutes or less. That will allow more time for questioning.

First from the Canadian Meat Council, we have Mr. Jim Laws.

[James M. Laws, Executive Director, Canadian Meat Council]

Good evening, and thank you for inviting us to speak to you today on food safety in the meat sector. My name is Jim Laws and I'm the executive director of the Canadian Meat Council in Ottawa. With me today is Martin Michaud, vice-president of technical services at Olymel, one of Canada's largest processors of pork and pork products, headquartered in St-Hyacinthe, Quebec.

Our sector is the largest of the food processing industries, employing some 67,000 people, with gross sales of over $20.3 billion. We have 43 regular members who operate 134 federally registered establishments across Canada. We also have 74 associate supplier members who provide equipment, rendering, storage, ingredients, packaging materials, and services such as laboratory testing for the regular members. Altogether there are some 772 registered federal establishments that slaughter, process, render, debone, package, can, or offer storage for meat and are inspected by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Every day in Canada, over 100 million meals are eaten. A significant number of those meals contain meat eaten in Canada each and every day. Major illnesses and deaths due to meat are rare events in Canada. The number of meat recalls in proportion to the volume of Canada's total meat production is quite small. Most meat recalls are issued voluntarily by meat processors as a precautionary measure. Very few meat recalls in Canada are a direct result of illness. Many Canadians who travel abroad to countries around the world know that they have to be very careful about what they eat. Getting sick from something that we have eaten here in Canada is something we rarely worry about.

Nevertheless, Canada's meat sector has been challenged with several major food safety events over the past few years. Canada's meat industy takes full responsibility for the safety of the meat it produces. Maple Leaf Foods did the right thing. They stepped up and accepted full responsibility for the products from their Bartor Road facility.

We need to get on with this subcommittee's work and the work of the listeria investigation so that all the lessons learned can be shared with the entire industry so that this type of outbreak does not happen again. Yes, we still have work to do.

We actively participated in the CFIA consultations on the new listeria control measures that came into effect on April 1, 2009. We welcome those new measures; however, we still have many questions about the policy. We believe the policy should be amended to set the rate of testing based on the risk of the product produced. For instance, dried and salted deli meats, such as salami and pepperoni, generally do not support the growth of listeria. Others with higher moisture, like deli hams, do. We also believe that the rate of testing should reflect the investment in brand-new state-of-the-art buildings and equipment, combined with the company's proven track record of excellent lab results. In addition, we have asked the CFIA to let industry have access to the entire rapid assay tests for listeria that appear in Health Canada's The Compendium of Analytical Methods and those that are permitted in the United States.

Over the years, meat processors have been continually improving their food safety systems. Millions of dollars have been invested by companies in upgrading their equipment and reformulating their products to include newly approved antimicrobials such as the new high-pressure pasteurization technology and the addition of sodium diacetate. Hundreds of thousands of dollars on additional listeria testing and countless more hours by sanitation management and quality control personnel have been invested. Meat processing facilities employ highly professional food science and microbiology experts to manage their food safety programs, and many firms have Ph.D.s on staff.

Canada's meat industry is already the most regulated sector of the food industry. In addition to the requirements applicable to meat and food under the Food and Drugs Act and regulations and the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, we must comply with Canada's Meat Inspection Act and regulations and the highly prescriptive and comprehensive manual of procedures.

When we print out all the acts and regulations, there are over 1,500 pages of regulations that we are dealing with. This is the Meat Inspection Act, and then we pull out the manual of procedures. As you can see, it is a very large stack of paper that Canada's meat industry is faced with.

Complete sectors of our grocery supplies, such as bakery goods, cereals, and spices, are rarely inspected and do not have all the additional manuals of procedures that we are faced with in the meat and poultry sector.

Despite the recent events in the meat industry, we believe that our food safety system is not broken. As CFIA correctly points out on their website, the safety of food products produced in Canada is ultimately the responsibility of the food industry. Food inspection programs administered by the CFIA confirmed that establishments have taken the appropriate steps to produce safe food products. In the past, food manufacturers relied almost entirely on end-product testing to determine the safety of their products. Now industry representatives and government together have developed scientifically sound principles, including the HACCP system, to control production. Hazard analysis critical control point, as you all heard before, was conceived in the 1960s when the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration asked Pillsbury to design and manufacture our first foods for space flights.

Our HACCP is a standardized, internationally recognized approach to food safety. Under HACCP, manufacturers identify stages and production processes at which problems are most likely to occur and they take actions to prevent them. After last year's listeriosis outbreak, the Canadian Meat Council immediately formed a listeria working group as a joint effort with other industry associations and their members from the Canadian meat and poultry industry. Our objective is to develop and promote the adoption of best practices for the control of listeria, to advocate for the approval of listeria-controlled interventions, to assist the regulators in developing sound listeria control regulations, and, above all else, to encourage complete sharing of information on food safety between competing processors of ready-to-eat meats.

In addition, we will, of course, continue to deliver regular educational seminars and technical symposia for our members.

I'll pass it on to my colleague, Martin Michaud, who will describe our eight recommendations.

[Martin Michaud, Vice-President, Technical Services, Olymel]

Good evening.

The recommendations of the Canadian Meat Council, that Olymel is of course part of, are eight in number. The first recommendation deals with antimicrobial interventions. In our opinion, the industry in Canadian should have access to the same antimicrobials and interventions that our American counterparts have.

Health Canada approved the use of sodium diacetate in combination with sodium or potassium lactate in ready-to-eat meats in September 2008. Schneider Foods had officially requested permission to use this antimicrobial six years prior to that, in September of 2002. According to the American Meat Institute, since this antimicrobial has been widely in use, there have been no recalls of ready-to-eat meats due to listeria-related illness in the USA for the past five years.

Our second recommendation is to create a single food safety authority for Canada and the United States. In our opinion, Canada should work with the United States to develop a single authority with the responsibility of overseeing food safety. The Europeans have done it; Australia and New Zealand have done it. Not only that—the Europeans have developed a common economic union that allows for free movement of goods between a number of countries without the need for border inspections. The new Obama administration has announced that it is reviewing the American food safety system after the salmonella in peanut butter incident. Now is the time to act.

Our third recommendation is that Canada should create a single meat national inspection standard based on outcomes and guidelines, rather than on normative standards and criteria. We believe that all provincial meat inspection standards should meet the federal meat inspection standard. Canadians should expect that all the meat they consume meets the same rigorous standards regardless of where they live and shop. Canada's federally registered meat processors are inspected regularly with standards that meet both high domestic and international requirements.

Provincial meat inspection standards do not meet international or national Canadian requirements and such plants can only sell products in the province in which they operate. Some provinces, like Ontario, have recently introduced new, stronger meat inspection regulations while others still have meat processors that are rarely, if ever, inspected.

Here is our fourth recommendation. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency should be exempt from Treasury Board guidelines on the common look and feel of the federal website so they can get information up on a timely basis. The information is either actually part of the regulations we have to use every day, or refers to them. The Manual of Procedures is constantly being updated, but those updates are often too slow to get onto the website and into the system. For instance, when the new Compliance Verification System was imposed on the industry on April 1, 2008, we had to wait until December of 2008 for chapter 18 of the Manual of Procedures to be finally published on the website and available to the industry.

Even today, there are many sections of the Manual of Procedures that state: “This chapter is currently under review. For more information on its availability, please contact...“ This even includes the entire chapter 19: Poultry Inspection Programs. The industry needs to have access to all sections of the Manual of Procedures because it is the basic tool with which we make changes to and inspections of our plants while they are in operation. When a chapter is under review, the current rules should be posted until new ones are made. Even the Government of Canada website on lawmaking states:

A fundamental principle of law is that everyone is presumed to know the law; this principle cannot be applied or be effective unless it is supported by a system that enables those affected by a law to have reasonable access to it.

Our fifth recommendation is that the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency be the voices during crisis events. The Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency should be the official voices that regularly update Canadians during a food safety outbreak. During the listeriosis outbreak last summer, what our industry really needed was a voice and a face that Canadians could rely on as we had during the BSE crisis and the SARS crisis.

What we really needed was a voice to regularly update Canadians on the listeriosis outbreak and on the new rules that were being put in place.

Our sixth recommendation is to invest in better training for inspectors. We believe that CFIA inspectors need to have better and more regular and consistent training. It was evident to us after the new control policy was implemented on April 1, 2009, that this was not always the case. In fact, we met technical teams and teams of inspectors who were having difficulty with the new standards and the new inspection system and with the changes that had been made. Veterinarians are trained in animal physiology and surgery, but they have no training in food science or quality control. That is a problem.

Our seventh recommendation is to make food safety expenses eligible for the Agri-flexibility program. We should put the funding of new food safety technologies on the list of the new program's eligibility criteria. We feel that this is essential.

Our last recommendation is to educate consumers. Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency should continue to educate retailers and consumers on safe handling, storage and preparation practices. A proactive and concerned federal government should target consumer education collaboratively between several ministries. Special attention should be paid to high-risk groups such as the elderly, the immunocompromised, and pregnant women.

Thank you for allowing us to be a part of this committee's work.

Thank you on behalf of Olymel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you. We have about a minute and a half to two minutes to get to the chamber and vote. We will be back very soon.

We will recess for a few minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

We'll call the meeting back to order.

We now move to the Ontario Independent Meat Processors, and Ms. Laurie Nicol.

Thank you very much. Go ahead for 10 minutes or less, please.