I certainly can. Thanks for the question.
We had read in some media reports that some groups had been saying that this pre-market label approval process was a food safety issue. I did send a letter to each member of this food committee, wanting to clarify that we, the Canadian Meat Council and our members, strongly disagree.
Getting a label pre-approved—that's the important part, pre-approved—by somebody sitting in Ottawa who may never have been into a meat plant in their lives has nothing to do with food safety. What does have to do with food safety is making sure that the label on the container is correct.
The meat industry gets a double whammy. We have to go through this pre-market label approval process, but we already have inspectors in the plant. I mean, that's where the rubber hits the road. We have inspectors in the plant, and they can go up and say, “All right, what are you making today?” They can check the product formulation. They can check the label. That's what the inspectors should be doing in the plant. They have to make sure that whatever is on the container is in there. The consumer, if they have child who's allergic to peanuts, wants to make sure that there are no peanuts in that. Somebody sitting in Ottawa who may pre-approve the label has nothing to do with it. They have no idea whether the guy has accidentally put peanuts in or not.
So that's where it stops. As well, if a product label says that the product is either fully cooked or not fully cooked, the guy sitting in Ottawa has no idea whether that product has been cooked or fully cooked. Another important consideration is cooking instructions.
We all know that the products recalled last year--resulting in this committee's creation--all had labels that were pre-approved in Ottawa, showing you again that it has nothing to do with food safety.
There were other arguments used by people--for instance, that you have to worry about products coming in from foreign markets. Well, that is true, but that's why the Americans come up and audit our system and the CFIA goes down and audits theirs. They similarly rely on the inspectors down in those plants to make sure that, yes, what they've put in the product is what's in the product.
Interestingly enough, before last August in Canada, you were not allowed to import a product that had sodium diacetate as one of its ingredients. That's too bad, because had we been able to import ready-to-eat meat products from the United States with sodium diacetate in them, the products would have been safer than the ones sold in Canada. Finally, we have that approval from Health Canada.
So we couldn't disagree more with the comments some other groups have made about pre-market label approval. There are other challenges with the pre-market label approval process; it has nothing to do with food safety.