Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on April 22nd, 2009

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you again.

I'm trying to understand a little bit about listeriosis. It seems that Mr. Easter is intent on blaming our government for whatever reason, when actually the funding for testing that was cut, and which we had to reinstate, was part of what they did, for whatever reason. It was likely to try to create surpluses within their budget. I'm not sure. What I've tried to understand here, though, is what actually happened, and what we can do to improve things so it doesn't happen again. We're talking about an illness, a disease, that happened because of food safety.

My understanding is that listeria is pretty much everywhere. Listeriosis is pretty complex. It can have symptoms that are similar to those of other diseases, if I understand that correctly. The reality is that there are all sorts of illnesses that can occur at any time, and when we look at the routine findings...when the samples are sent in, what is the trigger? What trigger shifts a report from being routine findings to being a red alert? Can you explain, first of all, when you first noticed the unusual levels that would point to a potential crisis? Did the listeria case look like a fairly normal event at first? There's a process time here that seems to have taken place, but what actually shifts that report from being routine and takes it on to being the red alert or emergency that might instigate a recall?

[Dr. Frank Plummer]

Thank you for the question.

The time we consider something a red alert is when we see a significant number of related cases. In this listeria outbreak, which occurred August 12, we identified a number of different listeria strains from Ontario with identical fingerprints, or very similar fingerprints. At that point, we sent out an alert to the provinces.

What we can do to make that better is decentralize the system, which we've already started to do. It had begun before the listeria outbreak with Quebec and the Health Canada lab in Ottawa. We've since expanded the decentralization to include Ontario and Alberta. We will be working with other provinces so that all the provinces that wish to will have this capability. That will take a bit of time off the time it takes to detect cases—a few days, three or four maybe--but it will improve the system.

We also work closely with provincial public health laboratories, which are closer to the front line than we are, to ensure that they have appropriate testing capabilities. I think there are some things we can do to enhance the system for detecting these events even more. That will permit earlier detection of outbreaks, earlier detection of the food source, earlier recall, and ultimately fewer cases.

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

If I might supplement, Mr. Chair, there are a number of factors that go into this: severity of disease, the number of people relative to what you might normally expect, and how broad it is. There are quite a number of factors, and it's a scaled response.

What many people don't realize is that at the very same time as we were dealing with this listeria outbreak, we had another listeria outbreak going on in Quebec related to cheese, as well as some 20-plus other outbreaks and events we were tracking, following, working on, paying attention to, and being involved with. It's not as if we only have one thing to do or one outbreak to deal with at a time. We're constantly monitoring the world. We're constantly engaged with our partners around the world and in Canada. Some we are more heavily involved with than others.

Again, those are some of the factors that determine our level of engagement. Clearly, when a province says it needs our help, that is one of the jobs we fulfill as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You have a couple of seconds for a closing remark, Mr. Shipley.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

When you get a sample, how do you know it's a pure sample in terms of what's in it? Maybe it has meat, it has lettuce, it has tomato. You get a sample of a sandwich. How do you determine the cause or the carrier?

[Dr. Jeff Farber]

It's very complex. When you have a clinical sample like blood or cerebral spinal fluid, usually you have the organism in a pure culture, so it's very easy to isolate. When you have a food, the food itself is complex, plus you have many, many different types of bacteria in the food. You have to use very selective media and broths to try to enrich for the organism you're trying to detect, in this case listeria, and you try to inhibit the other organisms in the sample. So we use very selective techniques to fish out the listeria from the food sample.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much.

As it is eight o'clock, lady and gentlemen, I'd like to thank you for coming here tonight. I think quite a number of questions were answered. So thanks again for being here.

We adjourn until--

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Chair, just before you hit the gavel, I have a motion I've given the clerk. At this point I'd like to withdraw it, with the consent of the rest of the members. Perhaps we'll have one in the future, but at this point I'd like to withdraw the notice of motion I've given the clerk.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Do we have unanimous consent to do so? It's not required?

Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.