Evidence of meeting #11 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 food.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:30 p.m.
Liberal
Carolyn Bennett Liberal St. Paul's, ON
And maybe they should put a lock the bathroom door. It doesn't matter if it's a man or a woman.
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, witnesses, for coming out.
Mr. Stein, you've talked about moving from a provincial to a federally licensed facility. Is there a different standard at a federal facility for domestic products than there is for international products?
5:35 p.m.
Director, Quality Assurance and Food Safety, Piller Sausages and Delicatessens Ltd.
That depends on where you're sending it.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
So actually we have three standards, then. We have provincial, federal domestic, and federal international standards?
5:35 p.m.
Director, Quality Assurance and Food Safety, Piller Sausages and Delicatessens Ltd.
If you're sending product to the U.S., they have a certain standard. If you're sending product to Japan, they have a different standard--the EU as well. Some will accept products that are treated in a certain way; others will not. So there are different regulations we have to meet, yes.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
This is actually a significant issue for our small abattoirs and for our producers--examples are the seed producers, a number of pork producers, and actually even a number of beef producers--the importance of having provincially licensed.... But if we have a federal system that is actually only above the provincial ones to meet a federal domestic requirement, and all the rest of the federal ones are to meet somebody else's requirements, we only have federally inspected plants, then, that are there to meet Canadian standards, which are different from some of the provincial ones. Is that a fair assessment?
5:35 p.m.
Director, Quality Assurance and Food Safety, Piller Sausages and Delicatessens Ltd.
It's definitely different, absolutely.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
We've had discussions around this table for a number of weeks now. Is food safer now than it was 10 or 15 years ago?
5:35 p.m.
Director, Quality Assurance and Food Safety, Piller Sausages and Delicatessens Ltd.
Absolutely.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Do we have more illnesses and deaths than we did 10 and 15 years ago, based on...?
5:35 p.m.
Director, Quality Assurance and Food Safety, Piller Sausages and Delicatessens Ltd.
From what I understand, from the numbers that I've seen from the USDA, there are more instances, because more people are reporting. It's similar to food-borne illness, where people get flu-like symptoms and don't report it. They just tough it out and stay home. Now people are actually reporting it; doctors are reporting it. I think more testing is being done and more reporting is being done, which is translating into higher numbers. But the food is safer today than it was 15 or 20 years ago, absolutely.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
5:35 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Pork Council
On this matter of international versus domestic, I think the one thing that CFIA does is this. For each of those export customers, where there is a difference, they take the responsibility to certify that the product does meet that difference. Increasingly, in trade agreements and elsewhere, we are looking for countries to accept our system so we don't need to have them look at each of our individual plants. Again, it is a single system, I think we would say, that countries are accepting under the federal system--
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
5:35 p.m.
Director, Quality Assurance and Food Safety, Piller Sausages and Delicatessens Ltd.
For the most part, for instance, between USDA and Canada, the systems are very similar, but there are differences. In their products they are allowed to use interventions that we are not allowed to use. Only 10% of what they're allowed to use we're allowed to use here. If you were to export to the EU, there are certain things you can't put in your products, that they will not accept, and it's the same thing for the Asian market. They are for the most part very similar, yes, but at the same time there are key differences that will prevent us, in some cases, from shipping to them.
5:35 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Mr. Stein, you mentioned that on April 1 you had a recall. You'd mentioned CFIA. I didn't get the words down, but you wished you could work closer together or something.
I'm trying to learn from the lessons learned, quite honestly. Can you help us? Can you tell me, what are the missing communication links? What can we do to help so that when there are these recalls, or when there's an incident that happens, everybody is actually pulling together on the same harness, so that we're reading from the same page?
I'll let you do that one first.
5:35 p.m.
Director, Quality Assurance and Food Safety, Piller Sausages and Delicatessens Ltd.
That's a big one.
The operations group is who we deal with on a day-to-day basis. When there is a situation where there's a positive test that comes in, another group, the OFSR, gets involved through CFIA. They're part of CFIA as well. They seem, for us anyway, to operate independently of the operations group. We were dealing more with OFSR than we were with the operations group. It was difficult because the operations group, even when we talked to them, deferred to the OFSR in many cases. I don't blame them for that. They're not on the risk-based side of the business of the CFIA, but at the same time, those are the people we deal with on a continuous basis. The OFSR does not know our facilities, doesn't know our processes, and the operations people do.
There was a disconnect there, and we had to operate on our own. We had to make decisions ahead of what the OFSR was doing, and we brought everything back because it was a small recall. We had to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and make the decision and move forward quickly.
5:40 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
I would think that at some point in time there has to be a--I think “disconnect” is the wrong word--separation, because they are in fact an inspection agency. They cannot be in bed or be seen to be in bed, in terms of that collaboration, with any company. I think everybody recognizes that.
But somewhere there is a problem, and it's usually in the communications gap. In terms of going forward, I’d ask you if you, from your firm’s perspective, have any suggestions—suggestions that are not in the lessons learned—on how to bring that about. If you could provide the committee with this, it would help us to continue to learn should there be another incident.
5:40 p.m.
Director, Quality Assurance and Food Safety, Piller Sausages and Delicatessens Ltd.
Do you want me to make a quick comment on that?
5:40 p.m.
Conservative
Bev Shipley Conservative Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON
Yes, I was. I'm just asking if he can, though. If he can make a comment on it, it would be appreciated.
5:40 p.m.
Director, Quality Assurance and Food Safety, Piller Sausages and Delicatessens Ltd.
I think a good example that happened to us was when we made a decision that was ahead of the risk-based team's decision. They were doing a risk assessment on two products, and we said, you know what, it's so small a recall that we're going to bring everything back, and so we basically did the risk assessment. We didn't even wait for the risk assessment to be done. We just said, you know what, this is so small, we're just going to bring everything back and be safe, even on a product that we knew was already tested to be safe. We just brought it all back. It was from that product line, on a line that was still out in circulation. We brought it all back. We did that proactively.
The OFSR said, my goodness, what are we going to do now? They've made a decision. They're going to bring everything back. We did our own press release, and it would have been a great time for them to come and say, “This is what we need, to be proactive for the end consumer. They're doing the right thing bringing everything back.” And they just didn't know how to deal with that. We did it all on our own. It would have been a great time for them to be working together with us and stand with us and say, “This company is doing the right thing; they're being proactive, bringing everything back even before we finished our assessment of the risk.”
