Agriculture committee  According to World Health Organization estimates, for countries like Canada about 20% of deaths are due to excess sodium intake or too much saturated and trans fat. It works out to about 48,000 Canadians. We've seen some published estimates. One of the witnesses who appeared at the Senate committee has published estimates of between 300 and 500 people dying from food-borne pathogens, but I haven't seen any Canadian Food Inspection Agency data on that.

Agriculture committee  I don't think so. We're going to submit a technical brief to the committee with some specific recommendations for modifications. One specific thing we've noticed over the years to our surprise is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency re-characterizes nutrition as a food quality issue, and therefore they assign it lower priority.

Agriculture committee  To be clear, sir, the submission I gave to the Senate committee was the same as the one I gave to this committee. It could achieve those three objectives if the nine or ten concerns that I laid out were addressed better. The truth is because we don't have good data about the number of people who are dying from food-borne pathogens every year, we don't know how this—at some level it seems as if it's a good exercise to merge legislation.

Agriculture committee  Certainly there's a benefit to having an external party evaluate what the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has done. Obviously the Auditor General has a strong authoritative voice. That has to be complemented by information. It's possible it's already been collected but certainly not reported.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Centre for Science in the Public Interest is a non-profit health advocacy organization specializing in nutrition and food safety. We don't accept funding from industry or government, and we are supported by 100,000 subscribers to our newsletter, a nutrition action health letter.

Health committee  It's Mr. Jeffery, but thank you, Madam Chair. One important goal to ensure that consumers understand what they're reading on the label is to make the meaning of the label as self-evident as possible. Current regulations permit manufacturers to play around with the serving size, so they can make a product seem like it's very low in sodium simply by using a smaller serving size.

Health committee  That's not always the case. In fact, sometimes the reverse of that is true. It's really on a case-by-case basis. One thing I can say is that the Finnish government did a study looking at sodium levels in food. They found that when a diet consisted mostly of fresh fruits and vegetables and homemade foods, in some cases it was difficult to get enough sodium in the diet to hit that kind of adequate intake—which a lot of scientists think is too high anyway.

Health committee  I just wanted to make a contribution from a public health perspective on the cost and the burden of modifying products. The burdens on industry must always be measured against the public health impact. This is the sole motivation for changing these foods—to reduce these 10,000 to 16,000 deaths a year.

Health committee  I'm not an expert in pediatric nutrition--I will say that from the outset--but I've read enough of the high-level studies to know that the health benefits and the academic achievement benefits are pretty much beyond question. It's just a matter of mobilizing the political will to better fund these programs.

Health committee  There's a lot of evidence to demonstrate that poor dietary practices that start in childhood persist into adulthood. One of the things we've noticed in recent years is early-onset diabetes. It used to be called adult-onset diabetes, but it happens so early now that they had to rename it.

Health committee  I'm not sure how strenuously the case for feeding children has to be made from an economic perspective. The children have to eat one way or the other, so it's really just a matter of whether we can organize ourselves as a society to have everybody contribute a little bit so children eat while they are in school, and improve their health outcomes in the long run, and of course improve their school performance.

Health committee  I don't want to get confused about reports, but the sodium working group report published in July 2010 had 27 recommendations and six overarching recommendations. Some have been implemented, the softer ones, such as research and some of the public education. There are some unambiguous recommendations for modifying food labels that simply must be done.

Health committee  It's a myth that we don't tax food. We plainly do. The Excise Tax Act spells out what's called the definition of basic groceries. Some foods, such as Froot Loops, are exempt from tax. Bacon is exempt from tax. Club soda, which is generally a healthful food, is taxable. The tax rules are basically based on these 1950s notions of what is a sensible diet, and they have to be updated.

Health committee  Certainly. On the first point, we'll be circulating, through the chair and the clerk, our technical brief next week. We're not ideologically predisposed to a mandatory voluntary route. If it were a voluntary method that would deliver performance, then we would be behind that. My concern is that the voluntary approach is simply completely unworkable and that a bunch of sophisticated public servants and politicians will sit around for two or three years to prove that to everybody.

Health committee  Six, commit to fully implement Canada's strategy for sodium reduction, which is now 18 months old. As the committee is aware, the sodium working group made 33 recommendations, including some recommendations for regulatory reforms. Ninety percent of Canadians will have hypertension during their lifetime, and a lot of this is attributable to excess sodium intake, which may cause as many as 16,000 premature deaths a year.