Yes.
Evidence of meeting #10 for Subcommittee on Food Safety in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was health.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #10 for Subcommittee on Food Safety in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was health.
A recording is available from Parliament.
7:20 p.m.
Conservative
7:20 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Does every animal have to be vaccinated? If you vaccinate a pregnant cow, does the vaccination transfer immunity to the calf?
7:20 p.m.
President, Bioniche Food Safety
No, there's no immunity passed from the cow to the calf. As for which animals you want to vaccinate, you vaccinate all the animals you don't want shedding the organism. In an ideal world, we would vaccinate all the residual cow herds. This way, those cows aren't shedding it, and when newborn calves arrive they don't become contaminated. If you vaccinated the calves, you'd be stocking feedyards with animals that don't have the strain of E. coli. But if the background work isn't done, then you must start at the feedyard and vaccinate, because they're the animals that are closest to the food chain.
7:20 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Are they vaccinated at a certain age and a certain time prior to slaughter? Suppose they were vaccinated and circumstance took the animal to the slaughterhouse prior to the withdrawal time. Is there a withdrawal time?
7:20 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
So what would happen to that animal? Do they have to be separated from other animals when they go into the slaughterhouse, even if they have been vaccinated?
7:20 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
What about an animal that has been vaccinated and circumstances take it to the slaughterhouse prematurely? You take a large beef animal, and instead of going at 1,400 pounds it goes at 1,000 pounds. Does that have any effect? Because they're only done once a year.
7:20 p.m.
President, Bioniche Food Safety
All cattle vaccines have a withdrawal time. The two most common withdrawal times are 21 days and 60 days. This means that the animal shall not be slaughtered for use in food within these times. It depends somewhat on chemistry but also on the type of adjuvant used in the vaccine. In other words, it depends on what was given with the vaccine that breaks down slowly under the animal's skin and gives it time to develop an immune response. Our vaccine has a 60-day slaughter withdrawal. Any animal that broke a leg and had to be slaughtered immediately, and had only been vaccinated the day before, would not be able to enter the food chain. That animal would have to wait till the withdrawal period was up.
7:25 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Mr. Hodges, you talked about standards and the credibility of our food safety on both sides of the border. It's important for consumers here and in the U.S. to know that our food is safe. In this listeria outbreak, something went wrong. We know what went wrong. We're just trying to work through the process of prevention. You mentioned that your federal and state standards were very close. Are they similar to Canadian standards?
7:25 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, American Meat Institute
In the United States, the federal and state templates are very, very similar. It's simply a matter of how they are implemented at the state and federal levels.
I have some knowledge of inspection systems all around the world, and no two systems are more closely aligned than those of Canada and the United States. It has been this way for a long time. You have had your food-borne illness outbreaks; we have too. We've tried to minimize them through a variety of cooperative programs with the government and the industry. I headed up our foundation, and we funded $6 million to $7 million worth of research. We even dealt with intervention systems like pre-harvest work on E. coli, looking at additives in food products for retarding growth of listeria organisms. That money has been leveraged about ten to one with government, private, and university dollars.
The crux of the issue is not the inspection system. You have to have a partner in the industry, and the partner in the industry has to be willing to step forward and do what's right. We have a pretty good track record, but it's not perfect. There is a lot more work to be done, but I can say that we're moving in the right direction. Judging by the efforts being undertaken here in Canada following the recent listeria outbreak, I would say that you're also moving in the right direction.
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
I'm sorry I missed your presentations. I'm filling in for another committee member, so you can take my comments as coming from a consumer. I'm interested in what the process is that we, as government, need to ensure takes place to answer the questions the public has about its food safety and the regimes that are in place to ensure that.
Mr. Hodges, when you said that Canada is moving in the right direction, are you familiar with the Weatherill investigation and the Public Health Agency's own investigations, and what would you suggest would be needed as well as that? What would your recommendation be to the committee? Do you think the investigations so far have been complete and adequate and, by the end of this report, nothing more really needs to be done?
7:25 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, American Meat Institute
I am familiar with the investigations you're talking about only in a very general sense. I'm not in a position to comment on whether or not the recommendations and how they will play out are appropriate or not. All I can tell you is that you're going through a similar process to what we have gone through in the United States after major outbreaks, one of them being a listeria outbreak ten years ago where deaths were involved.
It has taken a series of events, both government initiatives as well as industry initiatives, to make the system much better than what it has been. It has not been a static system that you have to set one standard for. We have a listeria program now, a government regulatory program that has flexibility, that encourages industry to find and correct the problem. It's not punitive in that if you find listeria in the environment, in a drain, there is a problem. The system is set up so that industry is encouraged to do multiple things to find and correct the problem.
Listeria, one of the focuses of this committee, is a constant problem. Every plant has some issue with that, and you have to have constant vigilance, testing, and a dedicated program to try to get rid of that organism in the environment. Just this week, the Canadian Meat Council and the American Meat Institute are hosting a sold-out workshop in Chicago dealing with listeria control. It's a two-day workshop taught by the industry. It takes a commitment on both parts. Just by setting a standard--we have a zero tolerance standard on listeria in products--that won't do the trick, because even though the standard may be the appropriate standard, you need to have the mechanism to get there, and that's our job.
Your question's a very good one. It's not an easy answer, because it takes a series of continual process improvements.
7:30 p.m.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
Do you consider—and I welcome responses from the other panel members as well—that the investigation was not, as I understand, completely arm's-length, that perhaps staff were used in the investigation who had a vested interest, or that there may not have been the teeth the consumer might have liked in terms of requiring testimony and evidence? Does more need to be done to have a truly transparent and arm's-length investigation of this issue?
7:30 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
7:30 p.m.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
Can you encourage a consumer to believe that all that needs to be done has been done, or do you prefer not to comment?
7:30 p.m.
Executive Vice-President, American Meat Institute
I'll be glad to comment. I think I answered your question earlier to the best of my ability, but the job's never done. That's the whole point, that we made great progress.
We have very low incidence rates of listeria. We have very low illness rates. But if it affects your family, that's one too many, so we are in a constant process of improving the safety of the product. It goes on today, it will go on tomorrow, and it will go on a decade from now.
7:30 p.m.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
I understand that. But that's different from my question, which was--
