Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on May 4th, 2009

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Okay, so an arm off, if you will. Perhaps it's not as clear-cut as that, but we'll take it at that.

[Richard Doyle]

We're paying for it. That's the difference.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Can you help me understand why there seems to be, in the management program in the dairy program, a culture that has safety at its forefront? One of the things I've been asked about by producers is what are my constituents' perception of the dairy products and their safety aspects. One of the few things that came to mind for me is one of the validators, if you will, of how safe the product is. And it's primarily milk I'm talking about now, because I do agree with what you said earlier about the potential to mislabel things like yogurt, when they may indeed not necessarily be made exactly the way most of us think they're made.

Mr. Easter mentioned ice cream, and not unless you go down to an old ice cream factory is it going to be ice cream necessarily. There's this whole sense that the folks who validate the milk system are actually mothers who actually go out and buy it for their young children, and there's never ever a thought about second-guessing that decision. Can you help me understand why that seems to be the case from the perspective of safety? Clearly, I don't think there's any more stringent inspector of what you put on the table than moms who go out and buy products for their kids. Why is it, do you think, that there's no question there?

[Richard Doyle]

Maybe history. Milk has been safe for a long time and continues to be safe. As I said before, it's still the most tested product. Pasteurization has a lot to do with it, because you're talking about liquid milk. In this country, we pasteurize all the milk that is sold to consumers, and in my view, that is very key as well. As much as you have a high-quality milk, when you drink it raw there is a risk element, irrelevant to what some people who are well known say. I think the science is proving that and we've seen enough cases in other countries. We don't have these things here, not with regard to what we sell at the retail level.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Would you call it a culture of safety through the production system from farmers, in a sense? That's my general view. I'm not sure if that's what you see from a management perspective, in the sense that your numbers suggest that the uptake for dairy producers is quite large. Did you see a reluctance?

Maybe I should ask the question in the other sense, rather than being praiseworthy of the group. Was there any reluctance from any perspective like, “You know what, we don't need to do that”, or ”We're doing well as it is”, or “I don't think I need to do that”?

[Richard Doyle]

Actually, yes. To be frank, absolutely. But it's not necessarily an indication that the farmers do not put a lot of emphasis on how safe the product is. It's because the farmers themselves feel how safe the product is, because they consume it. They produce the milk and they consume it on the farm, and therefore they're convinced of how good a job they do.

When you get into on-farm food safety programs, it's a question of recording everything and it's the details. Most of the farmers who have come into this program in the end have said, “Look, that's what I was doing. But I had to fill in all these forms and I had to document it, and I had to record it, and I had to report it, and so on and so on.” So the farmer's reluctance is not necessarily on the food safety aspect, if you want; it's on the process, and you'll understand that.

But with today's traceability and food problems and so on, you now need to do those things, and it's a question of time before we complete it. And it's picking up. So I'm very optimistic that we'll meet our targets within a very short lapse.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. de Valk, I want to get back to this labelling piece that I think you made quite an impassioned plea about and talk some more about the sense of traceability. I agree with you from an electronic perspective.

The folks you're talking with and to about importing food stuffs, are they seeing this as an impediment to doing the job that they want to do in importing food, or are they hearing from folks they're buying it from that this is an impediment to them, or is traceability and this electronic labelling an enhancement for them?

[Robert de Valk]

There are two aspects to it. Both sides you've mentioned are expressed in the industry. Some people look at this prior approval process as a regulatory burden that they have to meet, and they would like to do away with it. But on the other hand, those same people often say that one of the benefits of that system is that everybody has to meet the same rules. You don't get products on the shelf that all of a sudden, as Richard was indicating, don't meet Canadian requirements and then you have to go and complain and try to get that product off the shelf, which seems to be kind of a backwards way of doing it if there's a better way of doing it in order to prevent that product from getting there in the first place.

So while they lament the lack of regulatory freedom, at the same time they recognize the benefits that these regulations can bring in levelling the playing field among competitors.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Allen. Your time has expired.

Mr. Shipley, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for coming out.

I'm going to focus just a little bit with you, Mr. Doyle. Obviously this was driven by the listeria issue, but I'm glad to hear it recognized by all of our presenters, quite honestly, that this is about food safety, so that we can prevent not just an outbreak of listeria but other issues that might come up in terms of contamination of food.

You mentioned that milk is the most tested product of all commodities. Why is that? You talk about the Canadian quality milk program that you're going to implement by December 2010. I think I heard you say you were actually on target of having all of the producers. Is it going to be mandatory?

[Richard Doyle]

Yes.

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

It will be mandatory. How many producers will you have on it?

[Richard Doyle]

Slightly over 13,000. I think we're at 13,400 right now.

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

How many are signed up for it already? You say that it's—

[Richard Doyle]

There are different steps. It's a fairly elaborate program where you need to have people go on the farm and check everything. You have to fill in all the forms, and then you have a validator who goes in. Before you're totally registered, it's a fairly....

Right now 10% have been registered, but 96% of all producers, of that 13,400, have been trained on the program and have done at least the first steps.

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

What is the attitude of producers about having such a stringent program forced on them?

[Richard Doyle]

I think it varies. As I said, the hardest part in selling a program like that.... The farmers generally have supported this; otherwise it wouldn't be there. We're run by farmers, so obviously there was a will and a willingness to do it.

When you go into the field and try to sell it, as I think I was explaining to Mr. Allen, some of the farmers are more reluctant. They say, “I've always produced high-quality milk. I know. I have my tests every month. I know it's high quality. I have no bacteria. I have fairly low somatic cell count. Why am I going through this very complicated process of documenting everything I'm doing?”

And that's fair enough. That's human nature. You go into any business and tell them how to run the business when they've been doing it for years, and doing it very well, and you're going to have a bit of reluctance, and that's what we're finding out. But if I look at the dairy farming community, there is a strong willingness to get these programs in place, and everybody in the whole leadership is behind implementing this program.

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

You talked in terms of the Dairy Farmers of Canada supporting the development of a national farm animal health strategy. I wonder if you can help me a little bit with that.

Its goals are to avoid and respond faster to animal health threats to improve market access—and I think we all understand what that is in terms of supply management—and to enhance our ability to protect public health, industry viability, and actually even down to farm animal care. And you want to emphasize the need for all major stakeholders to work together.

Is this a strategy that is to meet the standards of other countries, or is this a strategy that will be unique and advanced for Canadians?

[Richard Doyle]

Oh, it's more designed to do the job here in Canada for us.

Part of the issue on the national farm animal health strategy is that we have all the elements. We have traceability, we have all the tests, and we have all the things we need. But because of the nature of this country, where we have some jurisdictions that are provincial, some regional, three systems of traceability, of identification of animals, what this strategy is designed to do—and we're in the process of discussing it with all the other cattle industries and livestock industries—is to try to get coordination of all this, because everybody goes their own way. We have an association for traceability. We have another organization to do something else. We just need to basically put all the links between all of these, so that if you have any other problems, we will act the same way all through.

I'm not saying in any way, shape, or form that we are at risk of any disease. We've seen it in BSE and we've been able to act very quickly and trace the animals back and so on. But we all think we can do a better job just by getting a little bit better coordination.

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

How long have you been working on that?

[Richard Doyle]

A general animal health strategy was designed by CFIA, and the farm animal health side of the business has been dealing with this, I would say, for a couple of years. The assistant deputy ministers--federal, provincial, territorial--have decided to pick it up and try to work with the industry to come up with better coordination faster. I think they played a key role in pushing for it. We have a draft of a national policy that is now being debated. I expect that within weeks we will have the final version of that strategy. Having a strategy is one thing, and implementing the strategy is going to be another thing, but we have to start somewhere.

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

Can you tell me just a little bit about who the stakeholders are, so we have that understanding when we're talking about...?

[Richard Doyle]

In the farm animal health strategy we use the Animal Health Coalition, which groups most of the farm livestock industry. So we have the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, the Dairy Farmers of Canada, the Canadian Pork Council, the poultry sectors, the smaller industries like the goat, sheep, and equine that also participate--pretty much all the farm animal commodities.

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

Mr. Bouchard, did you have a comment?

[Réjean Bouchard]

I was adding to Richard's. The chief medical officer of each province is involved in developing the strategy.