Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on May 6th, 2009

[Lynn Wilcott]

We were involved from a human health viewpoint. That is our primary concern, and it was our primary concern at the time. The people who were dealing with the disposal of the poultry...we gave them information in terms of how to prevent them from being infected as well because there were cases of conjunctivitis. I think that was the main illness. Some of the workers became ill with that. But that was our primary concern at the time.

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

At the time, during a post-mortem—the study that's always carried out after an event of that kind—did the Agency recognize that it was itself likely contributing to the propagation of avian flu, when its employees visited farms and then went to other farms with the same boots they had been wearing on contaminated ground?

Do you think there has been any improvement there? In April—very recently—British Columbia had to deal with a case of avian flu again. In your opinion, has there been any improvement between 2004 and now?

[Lynn Wilcott]

I can't really answer that. I'm not really involved in the biosecurity from an animal disease viewpoint on the farms. It's my understanding that there have been improvements, but that's very second-hand. I don't have any direct knowledge of that.

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

Mr. Dungate, can you give me an opinion on that?

[Mike Dungate]

Yes, I can. In my view, the situation has improved between 2004 and 2009. That's a fact. However, things are always difficult when there are staff changes. There is a lot of excellent training being done. There is the biosecurity equipment used by CFIA. But even today, in 2009, there have been some minor problems, minor in comparison with those encountered in 2004. Problems always arise in relation to the distribution of quarantine notices and the people who take them to the farms. Even if the farms in question are not part of the problem, there is still a risk if they are located within a three-kilometre radius.

But these are really minor problems in comparison with the ones we saw in 2004. Nonetheless, with the post-mortem, we had an opportunity to learn some lessons again.

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

You mentioned a problem relating to quarantine notices. Were quarantine notices issued to farms that should not have received them? Or was the problem different?

[Mike Dungate]

Inspectors visited farms one by one, issuing the notices. If a strain of the virus is detected on one of those farms, the inspector could transmit it from one farm to another. That's not the case here; there was no transfer. We inspected both farms in question and everything was fine, but there is still a risk.

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

But that was one of the problems with the process in 2004. However, the virus wasn't transferred as a result of inspectors visiting farms to issue quarantine notices. The virus transfer occurred during the animal slaughtering process, through vehicles, through employees. Yet there is still no clear understanding that the process needs to change.

[Mike Dungate]

Yes, but we learned a great deal in 2004, there is no doubt of that. Absolutely. There is a group at CFIA that handles poultry and the incidents of avian flu, so these people are familiar with all the protocols, but perhaps they are not the same people who provided the advice at the beginning. I'm not sure. That's why we want to do a post-mortem with CFIA.

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

Often people deplore the lack of inspectors. Perhaps the problem is not the number of inspectors. Perhaps the problem lies with the locations they are working in, and what they do. I really don't know, but the minister always tells us that there are so many inspectors, an incredible number of inspectors. There are so many employees at the agency that I wonder if the organization has become so large that the left hand no longer knows what the right hand is doing. I ask myself this question, but I'm not asking you to comment, because I do not want to put you in an awkward situation.

Is my time already up?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Yes, you are out of time. I'm just letting you finish your statement, Mr. Bellavance.

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

I wonder about this, because the Auditor General's Office has been noting the same shortcomings at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency regularly, ever since the 1990s. It seems to me that the problems have not been corrected. After hearing what I've just heard about a topic as serious as such an epidemic, it seems to me that people haven't learned all the lessons. I understand what you're saying, that improvement has been made, but unfortunately I see that some bad behaviours still go on. I just can't believe it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you, Mr. Bellavance.

Just before I go on to Mr. Allen, indulge me, if you would. I want to follow up a little on HACCP. I think most of you have had a chance.

I wonder whether the cattlemen and Mr. McLean from Keystone could comment on HACCP and its benefits and that kind of thing.

Mr. McLean.

[Robert McLean]

I'll tell you what went on in our firm with hogs. I referred to the Canadian quality assurance program.

What happened was the provincial association went throughout Manitoba to the towns of Manitoba. The producers went to meetings and were provided with the manuals. It was a day-long meeting on how the certification process would take place. This is an annual certification, in which the vet comes at the cost of the farm unit. We have to do daily logs of the feed and of any medications, and it all has to be recorded and verified annually.

That's what happens on the farm on a day-to-day basis.

[Dan Ferguson]

Just to be clear, HACCP is a seven-step program. First you identify the food safety hazard. Then you develop a standard operating procedure that can control the hazard in that operation, whatever the commodity may be. You define your target levels or the critical limits you can live with. The monitoring process is the next step. The fifth step is corrective actions to bring the operation around to the way it should be. You develop methods to verify that you've done it properly. The final step is the record-keeping document. Those are basically the seven steps of HACCP for any group.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Mr. Allen.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We certainly did not want you to feel that we left you out.

I really want to talk more to Ms. Crichton about the sense of the supply chain. It can be a rather extensive one, from a geographical perspective, as well as very intricate, from all perspectives, because of the different places, the different hands, and the different systems that actually move it from place to place, whether it comes, indeed, from a farmer or a farm somewhere through the processing chain to, eventually, the fork.

To paraphrase Napoleon, he once said that the army marches on its stomach. He ultimately lost the Franco-Prussian War because he basically starved his army to death.

Not to be misunderstood, my sense is that there isn't anyone in the chain, from the farmer to the fork, who is trying to do anything other than provide the best quality food and the safest quality food we possibly can. I want to ensure that folks don't understand from the metaphor that somehow we're trying to do something to folks around the issue of food.

Could you sort of walk us through some intricacies here, in the sense of the food supply chain we now have? It is much different than it was, I would suggest, 30 years ago, and is changing, it seems to me, on an annual basis in terms of how intricate it truly gets when it comes to the things we consume. They literally travel thousands upon thousands of kilometres.

We don't grow papaya in this country, yet you can find it. We don't grow oranges in this country, but you can buy them. There are numerous other products we find on our store shelves that we don't necessarily produce, nor do we grow them here. But things we used to grow here are now disappearing, like canned peaches, for instance. In my neck of the woods, in the Niagara Peninsula, when the last canning factory, CanGro, left, it meant that there were no canneries east of the Rocky Mountains for fresh peaches, or fresh fruit for that matter. That means that the local source of canned fruit for Canadians is now gone. In fact, flip the label, and you'll find that it is probably a product of China. Flip the product of frozen fish over and you may find that it's a product of China. It might be caught in the Grand Banks, mind you, but it might be a product of China.

If you could, and I know you don't have a lot of time, could you try to give us a sense of where you think the system isn't up to snuff? And where you don't have controls that you might want, because clearly you can't be in all places at all times when you're sourcing product far away, how sure are you and how comfortable are you that those regulations we see here for our farmers and our processors are actually being followed there? What is your sense on that?

Ultimately, the subsequent question would be why, if you're not sure they are as good as what we have here, we are selling them. I'll finish with that and let you take the rest of the time.

[Jackie Crichton]

Certainly one of the things we have seen is an increase in products from around the world. Part of that is due to consumer demand. Consumers travel. Consumers buy products. They come home, and they'd like to see those products on our shelves.

Certainly from the CCDG members' standpoint and the industry standpoint, food safety is a top concern in all realms, regardless of where the product is sourced. We work closely with CFIA and their findings. We work closely with vendors. We work at the international level with common best practices and we work with groups such as the Global Food Safety Initiative and programs they have in place and consider to be equivalent.

It depends on the nature of the product and sometimes on the risk associated with that given product. But it is always top of mind. When we are making a purchasing decision, it is that food safety aspect. There are, of course, other things that come into play as well, but food safety is always top of mind.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You have a few seconds.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

It begs the obvious question, then. What are those other considerations besides food safety?

[Jackie Crichton]

Food safety, certainly, is first and foremost. Sometimes it is the quantity that can actually be supplied to you. That can be a situation. The quality of the product comes into play, depending on product specifications. Is the company able to meet the quantity of product you need to supply your outlets?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

We'll move to Mr. Shipley, or is it Mr. Storseth?

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you, Chair. I know you prefer not to notice me at committee, but....

I'd like to thank all of the witnesses for coming and enduring the time here today. I know the break we had to take for votes disrupted our committee flow a little bit, but we very much appreciate your patience and your time on this. This is a very important issue that we have in moving forward on food safety.

I would like to talk a little bit about food safety and maybe relate some of the things we have going on today to some of the things that have happened in the past in our agricultural sector, and indeed to some of the concerns we have when it comes to food safety in Canada, and also talk a little bit about our record and how strong it actually is.

First of all, I'd like to talk to Mr. Masswohl from the Canadian Cattlemen's Association. Could you give us a little bit of background on the science of BSE and some of what happened there? Could you relate how that affected us and, moving forward, how we could have been better prepared for that?

[John Masswohl]

Yes, that's certainly the one that's biggest in our minds as being a disease that perhaps has a reputation it doesn't deserve, and how countries and trade and emotions react to it. That's perhaps instructive for what the pork industry might be going through right now with the H1N1 virus.

With BSE you had a new disease that started appearing in Europe and the U.K. in the late seventies and early eighties, and people didn't know what it was. Animals were just getting sick, and people didn't know why. They started to do some research to learn more about it and found out that people were also getting sick. As the years went by and the research was going on, trade barriers went up and people stopped trading with the U.K., which became the way people and countries dealt with it.

Science moved on, and they learned what it was and how it was spreading and how to control it. But countries—including Canada—still put up trade barriers. Perhaps we were somewhat guilty, too, and had to taste our own medicine, because when we discovered it here, that's also what happened to us. We immediately lost all of our markets in other countries, losing to the tune of $11 million per day, because we do export about 60% of our production.

With that happening, and with the U.S. then getting in the same boat as us, we did manage to address it from the point of view of knowing what to do. We changed regulations in Canada. We made sure that our feed ban was stopping the spread of the disease from animal to animal; it was not contagious, but it was through feed. We adopted some changes in how beef was processed to make sure that the risky parts of the animal containing the agent were not going into the food supply.

So we've done everything to assure the safety of the beef, and we've done other things to ensure the health of the animals. But we still continue to suffer from the economic impact. I think that's the real message here, which is to identify what are the things.... Some of the things we've talked about are real food safety concerns, and you have to make sure you're preventing those and controlling them.

Some of the other things we've talked about are extremely important issues—animal health issues, biosecurity, and disease prevention, and perhaps country-of-origin labelling in terms of marketing—but a lot of these things aren't food safety issues. So we want to make sure that when we're talking about how we respond to these things and what lessons we learned, we're really getting at what the objectives are. If there's a food safety objective, we need to ensure we're addressing it from that perspective.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Exactly, and I think it's important to recognize the difference between trade and science. All too often it's used as an excuse.

I know that the SRM removals are something the Canadian Cattlemen's Association brought forward, though not exactly in the vein it came forward. And I know that you and I have had discussions about the regulatory burden placed on farmers and where that should be looked after. But it is important I think to recognize that our beef is not only top quality beef to consume but also some of the safest beef in the world.

When we start looking at traceability and age verification and some of these other tools we've heard about at the standing committee, and from your organization before, would you agree these are additive tools that not only help us with marketing, but with traceability and the safety and soundness of our system as well? Would you agree with that?