Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on April 20th, 2009

[Cameron Prince, Vice-President, Operations, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

Thank you for the question.

At the Maple Leaf Bartor Road plant, we had at that time, the time you specified, two inspectors. There were two shifts. Each inspector would have been present on the day shift or on the night shift. And it is true, as you indicated, Monsieur Bellavance, that the one inspector on the day shift had seven facilities that he was looking after. His primary facility was the Maple Leaf Bartor Road plant. He had his office there. He operated from that plant. He spent most of his time at that plant.

Four of the seven facilities, in fact, were not really plants as we think of them. They were cold storages. Those cold storages are registered with the federal government, and the work at those cold storages is for export certification and the inspection of imports. It's important work. It's not as time-consuming as in-plant inspections.

As far as the workload and what they were doing in the plant, these inspectors were operating under the system Dr. Evans mentioned--the compliance verification system--which very clearly sets out tasks for each inspector and targets risk areas. It sort of rotates between certain parts of the plant and certain functions, such as sanitation, employee hygiene, and construction--all these types of things. In that plant, those tasks were completed, as prescribed by the program, by those two inspectors. They had to have been busy, I'm sure, but they did meet all those tasks, and we have that documented.

As far as time spent on the plant floor, this is something that's been talked about quite a bit since last summer. The allegation seems to be that inspectors don't have an opportunity to walk around the plant, look at the construction, talk to employees, and look at the equipment. In fact, that's an integral part of what an inspector does.

I had the opportunity last fall to go across the country and meet with more than 100 inspectors to discuss this and other really important issues and how they felt about this. The consensus was that the compliance verification system is a good system. It had some growing pains, but they were able to spend an adequate amount of time on the plant floor. Our records indicate that about 50% of their time is spent on the plant floor. They're looking at the whole system. They're looking at the plant records and making sure that they're all appropriate, and then they're going out onto the plant floor and verifying that those things are done correctly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Prince.

Mr. Allen, seven minutes.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming.

Let me just read a line from what we heard earlier: “Most Canadians first heard of Listeria from us, despite how common it is.” Those are the words of Michael McCain earlier this evening. It begs the question, at least for me, on behalf of Canadians.... Mr. McCain, by all means, as the spokesperson and CEO of Maple Leaf, has a responsibility, and may indeed want to speak about his responsibility, and he did do that. But where were we, as government agencies, whether that be Public Health, if you believe that's appropriate, the Minister of Agriculture, who is responsible for CFIA, or the Minister of Health, who is responsible for the health of the country? Where were they in all of this process?

I think if you went out this door and walked down Wellington Street and asked ten Canadians, who do you think speaks about listeriosis, they would say Maple Leaf or Michael McCain. I think that's an indictment of us, as a government, and it's an indictment of the systems we've put in place to protect Canadians that the CEO of the affected company is seen as the true spokesperson. As well intentioned as he was, as forthright as he was, and as honest as he was, that's not his responsibility. His responsibility is to speak for Maple Leaf, and he's done that. Our responsibility is to Canadians, and it seems to me we fell down on that one. I'd like a response on that.

I'll go to Mr. Prince because I see he is the operations manager. I have a couple of things. I don't know if you can answer them at the moment or not, but you can get back to us, as Mr. Bellavance has said. The information we received in the House from the minister was that 200 new inspectors were hired. Could you break that down for me as to who actually works in meat inspection and who works on the plant floor?

We also heard there is going to be an additional 58 inspectors hired. Have they been hired, and if so, are they doing meat inspection or are they doing other things? As you articulated through your opening statements, you do many other things besides simply meat inspection, which is highly important. You look at imports, you look at foreign plant material, and you look at foreign species of insects, which can have devastating effects across this country. So there are other things you do. You also have specialists who work in labs and all those sorts of different places. When folks think of CFIA, they sometimes think everybody is inspecting meat or food substances, and that's not necessarily the case.

Could I get comments on those two specifics?

[Dr. Brian Evans]

Thank you, honourable member.

Very briefly, on the issue of what I believe Mr. Michael McCain was alluding to, the issue of consumer awareness or consumer education is a very significant element of a robust food safety system. We certainly do have an obligation to inform Canadians of risk and how those risks are being mitigated on their behalf.

With respect to listeriosis, and listeria itself, in fact there has been advice to the public, and issues on listeria have been posted on the Health Canada website for a long period of time. The issue is, are we keeping it current and are we keeping it in front of Canadians so that it resonates with them? I think that's a very honest question that we have to collectively look at. But there certainly has been information available to Canadians on the website and through the “Healthy Canadians” website that speaks to the risks associated with listeria, and the risks particularly for vulnerable populations, those who are immuno-compromised, those who are aged, women who are pregnant, and young children.

So that information is out there, but we need to keep it out there and visible at all times for people to really understand what risks do exist and what they can also be doing in terms of proper food handling to deal not just with listeria, but I would say equally with E. coli, with salmonella, and with campylobacter. As people have pointed out, these are risks that you can't see, you can't smell, you can't taste, and you can't touch. So you need to know that it's there and you need to be taking precautions at all points across that.

Again, we fully accept this obligation to educate, to inform, and to keep ourselves aware.

[Cameron Prince]

I probably won't be able to answer all of your detailed questions on numbers, but certainly I can give you some initial responses, and we'd be very happy to provide additional information later on.

Since the agency was created, the number of front-line inspectors has steadily gone up, and we currently have 3,228 front-line inspectors. Of those, 1,467 are in the meat program. We did hire the additional 200; you would like more information on that, I understand, and certainly we can provide that to you in writing as soon as possible.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you for that.

I understand what you're saying about the education component, and that's admirable, but let's not be mistaken that somehow everyone is hooked into the Internet. A great many Canadians across this land don't have access. In fact, this summer I gave up using mine. When you're still hooked into dial-up, you don't do it anymore. And I'm pretty savvy; I know how to use it. I have the equipment. I don't have to go to my public library like a lot of folks do.

So that becomes an issue unto itself, but clearly when we were looking at a situation where Maple Leaf foods, and Michael McCain as the CEO, thought he needed to do something in a public manner that we didn't do, he communicated openly through every means he had available to him—through an Internet website, through the press, through press conferencing—making sure he became the public face of listeriosis. He's a private person and a private operator of a company that was affected by that.

Where was our public face across this country that asked what we needed to disseminate information? I've said it to Mr. McCain, and I'll say it here again: I believe Mr. McCain did everything humanly possible and was as open and honest as he humanly could be, but it was his plant that the contaminated food came from. How do you restore trust and confidence in the public if it's not our face out there saying here's how you have faith and trust in the process, when someone from private industry who is affected by it is saying...? We could have supplemented...in fact, we should be leading. He would have been the supplement to us as that voice, so we could have been saying what you needed to do, what was happening, the recall was happening, what you do next in the process, and absolutely could have helped Mr. McCain and Maple Leaf by being the validator of all these correct things. I didn't see that, and Canadians who talked to me in my riding are saying they didn't see it either. I'm wondering why we didn't.

[Dr. Brian Evans]

I think we all, as CFIA and Canadians, recognize the outstanding work that Mr. McCain did in terms of bringing issues forward to Canadians in a very responsible, timely, transparent way. He's to be commended for that. We encourage all industry leaders, and government leaders, to follow that model.

I can honestly indicate to the committee that efforts were made to inform the public beyond the use of the Internet, for sure. In our food recall unit, during that period of time, there were—I believe the figure is over 400—media calls that were responded to in the agency by food safety specialists to try to get information into print media. Over and above that, subsequent to the initial release, when we went to the expanded recall on August 23, I think, as the other honourable member has pointed out, from that point forward, initially technical briefings were held by Dr. David Butler-Jones, the Chief Public Health Officer, to share information about listeria and the events that were unfolding.

There was a briefing as well involving Minister Ritz and some of our technical staff, and daily technical briefings were provided for over a 14-day period from the latter part of August through until early September. So on a daily basis, officials were made available, press were notified, and we made people available to share information about how the recall itself was progressing, the steps that were being taken, the identification of the products, to help Canadians, to remind Canadians...again, at that time of year, if you've been at the cottage and somehow you've not been aware, these are the things you need to be looking for. You should be looking at your freezer at home, and on the long weekend you should be looking in the refrigerator at the cottage as well.

So while I can appreciate the views that perhaps the messages weren't picked up, certainly there was a concerted effort and a considerable investment made by a number of people both to respond to media and to be out there trying to get the information out to Canadians. Lesson learned: we obviously didn't hit the mark; we need to review why that was.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Your time has expired, Mr. Allen.

Mr. Anderson, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to talk a little bit about some of the specifics of the environmental testing and then missed opportunities. I've taken a quick look at the “Lessons Learned” reports, and I just want to talk a little bit about those. It appears to me CFIA did its job according to the protocols and the information it had at the time.

Mr. Evans, last summer you said, “Now, in hindsight, we do recognize that environmental testing is a critical component of food safety.” I want to ask either you or Ms. Swan this. In 2005, under the previous government, mandatory environmental testing was removed. Is that correct?

[Dr. Brian Evans]

At no time were there mandatory requirements for industry to do environmental testing.

Up until 2005, as the government, we were conducting environmental testing on a twice-per-year basis. With the introduction of mandatory HACCP in 2005, the greater percentage of the industry undertook to do environmental sampling. Even prior to 2005, some level of the industry was doing environmental sampling at a level of intensity much greater than that of the government.

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

Did they have a responsibility then to report back to you? It's out of your “Lessons Learned” report, in section 4.2, and I'll quote:

Subsequent to the outbreak, Est 97B

--which is the Maple Leaf plant--

staff provided the CFIA with documentation that the environmental sampling program for Est. 97B had identified positive results for Listeria spp. on a number of occasions between May - August.

They were not required then to report to you?

[Dr. Brian Evans]

It's been a regulatory requirement for a number of years that should they detect...on end product testing there is a legal obligation for them to report. But there was no legal obligation for them to report to us immediately on an environmental sample that was positive. They did have obligations, themselves, to conduct sanitation and to retest. Based on the Health Canada policy at the time, a retest that was negative following sanitation was deemed to have addressed the insult.

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

Did those changes in 2005 affect the end product sampling at all?

[Dr. Brian Evans]

No. The end product testing has persisted on the part of both the federal government and the industry, and in fact it has also been ramped up in response to the circumstance as well.

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

If those changes hadn't been made in 2005, then is it possible that the problem could have been caught sooner than it was? Could a recall have taken place earlier? What's your opinion on that? Or could it have been prevented entirely?

[Dr. Brian Evans]

I can give you my considered scientific opinion; I can't speculate as to whether it would guarantee that we would have found the circumstance.

Again, I think the difficult reality of the consequences that occurred last summer was that there were unknowns about this issue of the ability for slicers and equipment.... The issue of what happened last summer was multi-factoral. There were a number of contributing factors. I think Mr. McCain and others, and even our own assessment beyond the investigation done by Maple Leaf, indicated that there were a number of factors in the plant in terms of product movement, people movement, situation of elevators, positive pressure movements, and other things that were detected in terms of equipment.

Having said that, what was critical to this whole event was this determination at the end of the day that in spite of cleaning and disinfection and breaking down of equipment according to manufacturers' specifications, beyond the cutting and contact surfaces, a new threat, a new issue, was identified in this particular circumstance, which we had no knowledge about, that could colonize deep into the equipment and well away from the normal operating events. That, in combination with the fact that a product that in true terms is recognized to have higher health consequences to vulnerable populations....

One of the parts of the tragedy of this is that the vast majority of people who died and who had illness last year were a vulnerable population. The fact that these products were being served in institutions without cooking, and other factors, is another critical element to this.

So to say that doing environmental testing twice a year would have found this I suspect would not have stopped it at the level of the plant.

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

The changes that were made April 1, 2009, by our government have instituted mandatory testing. Are these going to deal with that in an adequate way, then?

[Dr. Brian Evans]

Having identified this previously unknown risk, we believe we have--and this is important to the memory of those...and to those families who have lost loved ones--prevented, to a large extent, this type of scenario from unfolding again in the future.

The measures that have been introduced from April 1 include mandatory environmental testing within the HACCP plans conducted by industry. There is mandatory reporting of those results, on a daily basis, or on review by our staff. When those samples are submitted to a private accredited lab, a positive sample is also directly notified to CFIA by the accredited lab. There is the reintroduction of environmental testing by CFIA at a greater frequency than we had been doing previously. Over and above that, there is the continuation, at a greater frequency, of end product testing both by government and by industry.

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

I want to talk a bit about the timeframe that Ms. Duncan was talking about earlier. It seems your report says it took a number of valuable days to trace where the meat came from, that there wasn't enough information with the original sampling, and that perhaps some of the sampling procedures were not performed properly. I want your opinion on that.

The Ontario report said the original samples collected July 21 were routine samples. Was there enough information with those original samples to do an effective recall? You talked a bit about this before, but what would you have needed at that point to do a recall?

[Dr. Brian Evans]

Again, a number of the reports, ours and Ontario's, recognized the need for ensuring that when samples are taken in these types of circumstances, they're identified as high priority for testing on the basis that we are actually dealing with investigating food-borne illness, in this particular case, as opposed to randomly testing in the environment. The second component of that reality, again, is that when the samples were taken, these were samples that were what are called retention samples. The hospital retains the elements of the foods that are served to the patients for a period of time, should the circumstance warrant.

These were samples for meat. There were retention samples, so meat was placed into a retention box with cheese, with lettuce, with other elements of the sandwich, and held at the location. Part of the challenge was, while it was identified as meat, there was no way to verify that the cross-contamination couldn't come from one of the other elements and how it was maintained at the nursing home.

Beyond that, even identifying it as meat, there were no identifiers at that time as to the production, in terms of whether there was an establishment number, a production date, a lot code, anything that would have given us earlier information to help narrow it down, based on the supply records of those supplying the nursing home, so that we could fix it on a date. Nor was there any information available from the nursing home that linked the actual production dates, per se, with what was put into the sandwiches. So, again, this was part of that information verification activity that we were confronted with on August 6, and we worked closely, then, with Toronto Public Health to gather that information.

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

So you have the capacity—

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Sorry, your time has expired, Mr. Anderson.

Mr. Easter, five minutes.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, folks, for coming.

Ms. Swan, you are the president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. I'm correct, right?

[Carole Swan]

Yes, you are correct.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Well, let's try this question one more time. Who is ultimately responsible for food safety in this country?