Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on June 1st, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you. You're out of time.

Seeing the time, ladies and gentlemen, what I'm going to do here is take one more round at three minutes each, so that it's equal. That includes the answer. I'm going to go as far as three and a half minutes, and I am going to cut off whoever is speaking at that time. I'm going to try to be fair.

Mr. Easter, three minutes.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Gee, he's tough.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Well, I'm trying to be fair here and yet get in all the questions.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

That's a new development. We like that, Mr. Chair—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

—that trying-to-be-fair business.

In your presentation from the Canadian Meat Council, Jim, you say we must have “clarity of interpretation and consistent implementation of existing and new regulations and programs across Canada”. If there's anything I've learned in these hearings and in some of the phone calls I've made on this issue across the country—it's why I asked the question earlier on rational and practical—it's that there is a lot of confusion out there. Somebody spoke earlier about two systems; we actually have 14 systems, or thereabouts, in the country. Each province has a system that's a little bit separate.

How are you suggesting we get there in terms of that doing away with the confusion, getting the clarity and interpretation and consistent implementation, without going to just one inspection agency? One of my problems with CFIA in terms of dealing with some of the problems at plant level that I've had to deal with is that even at that level, sometimes there's no such thing as common sense.

[James M. Laws]

It's a challenge. I think that's why the Canadian Food Inspection Agency put in place this compliance verification system. It was to try to get consistency across the country, because every plant is a little bit different, and an inspector's view of something might be a little different. I can tell you that when the listeria policy was released, we still had lots of questions. Even reading it, we thought it was difficult to read. I know at one training session we went to, one woman stood up and said—and she was in charge of quality control for a place—“Look, I had to read this nine times before I really understood it.” We found it was written in a complicated fashion. It's difficult. How are you going to write regulations that are in simple and clear English? Many of us found it difficult to read.

So that's one thing: try to write regulations that are clear.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I've been on this kick for a little while now. Is part of the problem that we have people at the top agencies—not just CFIA—and at the top of departments in this town who have not come up through the system? They've come in at a management level and they can manage the numbers, but they do not understand the very industry they're supposed to be managing. They haven't been an inspector on the floor or whatever. Is that part of the problem?

[James M. Laws]

We certainly have seen examples of that in the past, yes. There was policy written in Ottawa by people who had never been in a meat plant, yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bellavance, three minutes.

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

Mr. Rice, I wanted to get to the crisis affecting the hog sector, particularly because of the flu that, as Ms. Lawrence was saying, people at the beginning were wrongly calling the swine flu.

Within this committee, obviously, we have spoken a great deal about bacteria. The entire agri-food industry is affected when something happens, for example at Maple Leaf's or somewhere else. It could be an issue of imported fruits or vegetables. It has happened that spinach coming from other countries—I believe it was from the United States—was contaminated with the E. coli bacteria. This is why people were buying less spinach in Quebec and in Canada. People's perceptions are very important.

Your industry was the victim of a crisis whereas there never should have been one. I am wondering if the government really did its job in terms of communications on this issue. People in my riding know that I am my party's agriculture critic, and many of them talked to me about the A (H1N1) flu, particularly at the outset when people were saying it was the swine flu. People were even making jokes about it because they knew that I was visiting a lot of producers. They asked me if I had visited any hog farms and if they were going to catch the flu.

I know there was a barbecue here on Parliament Hill and I believe that all of my colleagues present around the table went to it. Personally, I went to show people that you can safely eat pork. Beyond that, should we not have been a little more proactive by clearly explaining that there was absolutely no danger in eating pork throughout this period?

If you have any recommendations to make, I would like to hear them, as well as hearing your answer to the question I have just asked.

[Martin Rice]

Thank you very much.

Also, I thank many of the members around this table today who came to our barbecue two weeks ago, because it had the enormous benefit of giving producers a sense that they weren't dealing with this by themselves.

We were, I think, one of those bodies that were trying to get rid of this word “swine” that was attached to this flu. Health Canada has formally moved to the term “H1N1”, but quite often was referring to “human swine flu”. We don't see the need for putting the word “swine” in there. Really, I think H1N1 would suffice. That has caught on now. Using the term “human swine flu” still leaves this sense that there is a link with pork meat.

It has been an enormous challenge. In fact, as Don has referred to, we've lost some consumers in terms of their confidence in pork safety, and for no good reason, as you've suggested.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

On that, Mr. Rice, I had one of those pork barbecues to try to get the word out there in my own riding too, and it's amazing how people responded to it. I was actually pleasantly surprised to see how many urban people in the riding already basically knew about the issue and did trust pork. That is a positive thing.

Mr. Allen, for three minutes.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm not sure if it was you, Mr. Laws, or Mr. Stein who talked earlier about how, when it comes to ready-to-eat meats, we should be more specific in what we do here about high-risk consumers. One of the things we did hear during this outbreak last year was that the majority of folks who actually succumbed to this illness were indeed the elderly and those who may have been immunosuppressed. Warnings went out at certain points about breastfeeding mothers, young babies, pregnant women, the elderly, and those who might be immunosuppressed.

Taking that into account, do you have any thoughts around how we decide to give warnings? Should we necessarily look at one group before another? When we talk about labels, should there be warnings on certain ready-to-eat meats to suggest to certain groups that they ought to be more cautious than others? Or should there be none of those sorts of things?

[Peter Stein]

My opinion is that there should be no need for that. You make a product that is safe. The shelf life tells you over what period of time that product is safe and beyond; the shelf life is never the end of when that product is actually safe. I feel that a safe product is a safe product. It should be safe no matter whether it's low-salt or not, in my opinion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Do you want to respond to Mr. Allen?

[James M. Laws]

I'll just add as well, however, that there certainly was information disseminated in the United States, for instance. I think one of the recommendations the Meat Council made the last time we presented here was that we believe there should be a Canada-U.S. food safety authority that would be responsible for identifying what are the new risks or the risks for people and their health. It should really be someone in the health community who is making sure that those people who are in the high-risk categories, be they in long-term health care facilities or not, are certainly aware of the published situations. For instance, I believe the policy states that if you are going to serve these products, it's fine, but make sure you heat them, reheat them to steaming hot, or choose products such as these dry-cured pepperoni that don't support the growth of listeria.

As a whole in Canada, I think we certainly could have done a better job of making sure that those working with the elderly at the long-term health care facilities were fully aware of those recommendations that were already out there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You have a few seconds, if you have a closing comment, Mr. Allen.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

I appreciate Mr. Laws' comments. The only difficulty I have with food as “safe” is that peanuts are safe for me, but not for somebody who has an allergy. Clearly, for those at the high-risk level when it comes to ready-to-eat meats, it's like having a peanut allergy for some of them if indeed something goes wrong.

We haven't been able to absolutely say unequivocally that nothing goes wrong. There are those who are simply at high risk. If we're not educating them, and if indeed we're not helping them, we're doing them a disservice.

I think Mr. Olson said it very succinctly. There is only one food safety, that's it, and that's safe food.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much, Mr. Allen.

We'll now move to Mr. Anderson for three minutes.

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

We've heard a lot of contradictory testimony or statements at committee here. We heard from some witnesses that there was not a failure of inspection, that there was really nothing that could have been done in terms the requirements and expectations. We've heard from others that we need twice as many inspectors on the floor—that's the solution to the whole problem. We've heard that we need better data analysis over the long run to be able to see trends. We've heard that we need visual inspection, that it's really the key to what's going on here. I guess I'd like to get your reaction to that.

I also want to ask, Mr. Stein, as you're an expert in this, was it a mistake to cancel environmental testing in 2005? Is that something that would have helped prevent what happened last year? And you support the changes that were made on April 1, from what you said earlier. Is that correct?

[Peter Stein]

Are you referring to the increased testing that started April 1?

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

Yes.

[Peter Stein]

I think it's a good thing that we're testing more. However, as Jim said earlier, what we're testing and the way it was implemented for certain things didn't make a lot of sense in some cases. That needs to be sorted out. For example, why are we testing something that doesn't support the growth of listeria, or that actually kills it?

Having said that, when you're looking at micro results, it's almost reactive. We need to start looking. What we do is look for places where we don't expect to find it, where we're not having issues, and we look for it there and we clean there. There's no substitute for having a good sanitation program in all departments on all shifts. So the maintenance people—

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

Was it a mistake, then, to remove that environmental testing in 2005?