Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, members of the committee, for allowing us to be before you tonight. I will be succinct. You won't have to call me on that.
By way of introduction, I'm the CEO of the CCGD, and Jackie Crichton is our vice-president of food safety and labelling and a member of the staff.
The folks we represent are both the large and small grocery distributors, both on the retail side as well as on the food service side. In terms of statistics, we have about half a million direct employees, and we supply about 85% of all grocery products to about 12,000 stores across the country.
To state the obvious, food safety is the highest priority for our sector. Specifically, we think food safety is a supply chain responsibility. We think both industry and government should take a continuous learning approach to this, and that this learning be shared among all so that best practices are part of continuous improvement. We will never be so arrogant as to think we've figured out all the solutions.
In short, we also know as retailers and distributors that we are in the consumer trust business and you ignore that at your peril. Consumers expect us to sell safe food all the time, every day. If a problem occurs in the supply chain, the entire industry wears the impact of that. So we take the subject seriously. We take an open and shared approach in discussing the issues and due diligence within the industry.
Tonight, Mr. Chair, I have some summary comments on our approach and four recommendations that we have provided recently to the government.
In terms of our approach--I mentioned it's a first priority--we don't compete on food safety. We share what we know and what we think through a very active industry committee, which Jackie Crichton chairs. As an association, we also share what the committee produces in terms of manuals, templates, best practices, and training programs with the industry. Our approach is continuous learning and, through that, increased due diligence.
However, despite the Canadian food safety system being recognized as one of the safest in the world, and even having the best inspection in place, with industry implementation of HACCP and HACCP-based programs, there is still the potential for food safety outbreaks, and there's no such thing as zero risk. Therefore, a critical tool for food distribution and retail is having an effective and efficient recall system, one that immediately links the industry to CFIA decisions. If you check with store managers or their department heads across the country, everybody knows when you receive a recall, your sole and immediate focus is to remove that product from sale, no questions asked. That action is triggered by a CFIA recall notice, which is a one-to-many electronic system, with information distributed real time.
What has the industry done since the Maple Leaf recall to support what I said? We've played an active role in the consultation process around CFIA's proposed changes to listeria inspection strategies, recommending a rapid test methodology for the test-and-hold policies being considered, and also to look at high-risk products first.
Second, we support Health Canada's move to permit the use of sodium diacetate and sodium acetate as an option for processors who feel they need preservatives in meat, accepting the scientific evidence that it can provide better control of pathogens.
While grocery is an exceedingly competitive sector, when it comes to food safety, we all work together with one goal: sell safe food. As an example, we worked with the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers operating as one retail sector to develop manuals, and we have provided a copy of our HACCP-based retail food safety program to Health Canada. This program is being implemented across all CCGD retail members. We are also supplementing that with food safety one-pagers, with more reference material on issues such as vacuum packaging at retail and labelling.
In the fall of 2008, CCGD, along with Food & Consumer Products of Canada and CFIG, took the lead in bringing together an industry association working group to review and update the Supply Chain Food Product Recall Manual. This is a bible within our industry. The CFIA “Food Emergency Response Manual”, commonly referred to as FERM, is included as a section in this industry document.
A number of suggested enhancements to FERM have been provided to CFIA. These include consistent application of a standardized investigation template for use by both government and industry, and consistent use of recall notice templates that provide retailers and consumers with the required information.
Mr. Chairman, there is nothing that could have been done in distribution or retail to prevent the Maple Leaf listeria situation from happening; however, we have been actively working with the regulators and with the government bodies to share best practices and our lessons learned to help strengthen the Canadian food safety system.
Here are our recommendations, in conclusion. In an effort to draw learnings from last summer's outbreak, CCGD has identified four recommendations, which we believe will help strengthen the food safety framework.
First, government and industry must work from a mutually understood template for gathering information at the time of a recall. This will enhance and speed communication by assisting in gathering consistent, complete, accurate, and timely information, while avoiding differences from region to region, inspector to inspector, and company to company. Such a template should also include a clear list of questions about secondary products that were implied in the recall.
Second, consumers must be provided with complete and accurate information in a timely manner in recall notices and advisories issued by CFIA and in communication to media from government. In a rolling recall, things can get complicated and confusing, and therefore specific information must be provided early on. What I'm really saying is that we need to have consistency, clarity, and accuracy as soon as we can.
Third, to protect consumer confidence, which is paramount for all those in industry, and to protect safety, media must not be provided with information ahead of the industry. To keep consumers safe, retailers need to know as soon as the risk is identified, in order to remove a product from sale. We react from CFIA; we do not react to media. At a minimum, news releases issued by government departments must be accessible to all parties at the same time.
And finally, the fourth point—and we live this every day—there must be a credible third party to provide food-borne illness information to consumers in a contextual and timely manner. Often, consumers are hearing about things they don't understand on which they're given some directives. I think all of us need to work together to help provide context to maintain consumer confidence. In a time of crisis and fear, consumers want to know that there is a single credible voice they can rely on to provide them with accurate, science-based facts. This individual should be responsible for telling Canadians what the pathogen is, where it is found, who is most likely to be impacted, what the symptoms are, and what to do if they are experiencing the symptoms. We recommend that this information be made available in a generic manner, at all times, not just in times of crisis, for each food-borne pathogen.
To conclude, Mr. Chair, thank you again for allowing us to be here. While there is nothing we can see that could have been done at distribution at retail, we appreciate the opportunity to put these thoughts forward in the hope of helping to strengthen the Canadian food safety framework going forward. We are absolutely committed to doing that, day in and day out.