The food industry is a loose collective organization whose primary goal is to provide safe food to Canadian consumers, but its effort are currently failing. Studies suggest that less than 5% of everything we eat in Canada is audited by competent public authorities. Consider imports, restaurants, caterers, hot dog stands on city sidewalks, chocolate bars and chips bought in drug stores, or food purchased at events. The majority of foods we eat are not screened at all. Most consumers don't know that.
For the food industry to be capable of meeting its mandate, the private sector needs to play a proactive role with public agencies in food safety practices. Food safety authorities in this country need to build reliable partnerships to counter potential threats from the food supply, human-induced or not. The “us versus them” culture is too prominent in the food business.
The problem lies in the architecture of the system itself. With our current resources, we can handle two significant changes. The CFIA needs to alter its dual mandate of protecting the public and assessing risk within the industry. In other words, the CFIA should not deal directly with the general public. The CFIA is inherently hardwired to assess risk and contain threats. The CFIA is not designed to communicate risks properly.
The listeriosis outbreak is proof that it is incapable of communicating risk effectively. The CFIA should work solely with industry and on international trade. As such, the CFIA could better work with Health Canada to set up a better food-borne illness surveillance system that we dearly need, similar to what we see in other countries around the world. The CFIA should also play a key role in developing transverse traceability systems that work from farm to fork, a significant challenge here.
Right now, the relationships between governmental agencies and the functions of the supply chain in the food industry are completely dysfunctional. To protect the public, Canada could establish an independent food safety agency that focuses on consumer concerns alone. Such an agency should report directly to Parliament and not be stuck between two silos, Health Canada's and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's. We also need to see our food chain in its continental context and develop an approach to food safety that does not increase obstacles to international trade.
Europe, Australia, and New Zealand have adopted similar approaches with great success. It is high time to design a continentally based food safety scheme for North America. We will face challenges, since harmonization of standards is anything but simple, but it can be done. Since our economy is highly integrated with that of the United States, we owe it to our consumers to engage in a serious dialogue with the U.S. authorities on food safety systems. Food safety is about consumer confidence, not just risks. Regulators and legislators are currently concerned only with safety and risk, not with perception. Rather than forcing governmental authorities to play the role of industry enforcer, we must protect the rapport between Canadian consumers and the food industry before it is too late.
How about rewarding good behaviours rather than just punishing bad ones? How about creating synergies to allow for knowledge sharing among stakeholders, thus creating collective memory for the industry to cope with future crises? A sound partnership between government and industry would allow that to occur.
My last point has to do with the split between people living in rural and urban areas. I think there is a huge gap between these two groups. Let's call a spade a spade: most people who live in urban communities know nothing about agriculture. This gap between people living in urban and rural communities exists throughout the western world. Less than 25 years ago, 30% of the people of Canada depended on farming for their livelihood. Nowadays, here as elsewhere, most people who live in urban centres have trouble understanding the agricultural community around them.
This lack of understanding has led to a sort of divorce between rural food production and the consumption, particularly of basic food products, by urban dwellers. That is why most of the people who live in cities have a poor understanding of the risks involved. As a result, our policies on food safety suffer. We need to give serious consideration to educating people about farming, distribution channels, issues in the agrifood industry, and so on. For example, there are six different types of Listeria bacteria. Only one of them, Listeria monocytogenes, can make people ill. The others are generally innocuous to human beings. Moreover, the Listeria bacteria is everywhere, we eat it every day. That must be said. We have to make sure that consumers know this. Most urban dwellers know absolutely nothing about a number of aspects of farming.
People think that we need more food inspection, and that is because people who live in major urban centres have trouble understanding the fundamentals of the agrifood industry. If people were better educated, it might be possible to better control some of the myths that underlie people's fears. So we have to educate the public, not just during crises, but at other times as well, and we must do so proactively. That is why we need to set up an independent agency to better serve consumers. In the case of the H1N1 flu, we are seeing a great deal of fear and uncertainty throughout the world at the moment. As a result, embargoes and restrictions on imports are being announced. I think education is a key component of food safety.
In conclusion, never before has food been as safe, healthful, and inexpensive as we now enjoy it being. By the same token, never before have we faced so many challenges when it comes to maintaining food safety. The scope of every recall is increasing, but more regulation is not the answer. More domestic regulation will only mask the real problems. We need to build a better partnership between industry and public regulators and establish an agency to serve the public that reports to Parliament. The worst is yet to come, and we need to get ready for it.
There is a lot we know, but few consumers take the trouble to analyze anything. Moreover, few of them take the trouble to understand the changes in food that are happening around us. The dangers exist, they are real, but they are poorly understood. We can do better in this regard.
Thank you.