Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank the members for inviting me, and I'd like to thank the clerk for multiplying the copies. We processors can't count.
Food Processors of Canada got its start back in 1947. We provided assistance to freezers, canners, and the vegetable industry, and we have moved on to value-added products today. We represent only Canadian processors or processors actually making things in Canada and making investment decisions in Canada. We do not represent any foreign interests who do not make investment decisions in this country. Our members make dinners, entrees, pizzas, french fries, frozen foods--all of today's foods. We export to 80 countries in 23 different languages.
The agrifood business is a huge business. There are 210 associations representing it. If you look at the primary production, farm gate receipts are $46 billion, and for product processed at the factory level it's $87 billion. It's a $133 billion industry, and that's a very big industry.
We have over 5,000 plants, but only 2,300 of them are federally registered. In other words, only 2,300 are actually supervised or inspected by the CFIA. That's kind of interesting. You don't really have control over plant inspection in this country.
FPC conducted a study a few years ago. The 227,000 full-time jobs in the food processing industry created another 796,000 jobs in the Canadian economy. That's incredible. That's the number of jobs we created. We put in $18 billion in taxes, which is well over and above any subsidies the producers get, I think. The retail and food service businesses are $137 billion. Just to put a perspective on that--and some of the figures may change, because I got updates from Agriculture and from CFIA yesterday--the number of facilities selling food or preparing food...there are 22,000 grocery stores and another 79,000 food service outlets. That represents a huge number of people involved in food, and again, those are not federally inspected.
Consumers want to know—and there are a lot of discussions around “product of Canada” and everything else—if food is safe, wholesome, what they think it is, and the right price. Before I get into the crux of my discussion, I want to state that Canadian food is safe. Statistics show that recalls are declining. You have a chart that we just distributed today. These figures are from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the office of recalls. It shows that the recalls are declining.
There are two interesting statistics. One shows that they are declining and the other shows that 50% of all the recalls come from imports. That's kind of interesting, because we can justify how much we invest in plant inspection, but we can't justify what we're not spending at the border. We import 23% of the food we consume, and that results in 50% of the recalls. The Canadian food safety system works.
The CFIA is the most important department in the government. If you took National Defence and dropped it off in the middle of the Atlantic, nobody would notice it was gone for a couple of months. However, if the CFIA wasn't working or working well, we wouldn't be able to ship food tomorrow. We think that Carole Swan and her team have tough jobs, and they're doing the best they can. We feel they're stretched, and we'll talk a bit about that in a few minutes. That department supports a $133 billion industry. We've talked about that. There are relatively few incidents.
Companies, not governments, make safe food. They make food safe. Canadian companies' standards are higher than government standards. If you looked at this room, you would say that this floor is the government's standard, the minimum standard. The ceiling in this room is the consumer's expectation.
We're inspected not just by the federal government. We have our own QA people. We have our own systems. We have our own protocols. And we're inspected by customers and by other governments.
The customers have high expectations for our plants, and if we don't meet their expectations, we can't ship to their stores. Our name is on the product, so there's instant accountability there, as we've seen.
The Canadian food safety system is more efficient today than it's ever been, and you're talking to somebody who's had some experience through a number of ministers right through to today. I have to tell you that it's easier to do business and to work with the Food Inspection Agency and Health Canada now that there are only two entities. There used to be 36 decision-makers in 8 different departments every time you wanted to change a regulation. Now, if you want to reduce impurities in fish food, you can sit down with the CFIA and Health Canada and you'd make a decision overnight.
We also feel that because agriculture is not involved in the day-to-day workings of the CFIA and other departments, the decisions are more pure. There's less interference.
System advances are taking place all the time—HACCP, ISO, detection systems, DNA testing, internal communications—so the system continues to improve, and that's really what we're seeing today. Coming out of these hearings, we hope to see more improvements to the system.
The new listeria policy is one more advancement, but we don't believe the listeria policy goes far enough. It doesn't cover enough categories. It doesn't cover provincial plants. It's not enforceable on imports, and I think that's the next step to improve this listeria policy. So if I were to make recommendations, I'd say based on our experience we need strategic improvements to food inspection, not wholesale changes, because I think it's all about continuous improvement.
Import control is the consumer's best defence. Take a look: 50% of the recalls are imports, yet only 23% of food consumed is imports. There's an imbalance there. The CFIA is cancelling its meat import control program. We have a problem with that and we're fighting that vigorously. The only other association that's vigorously challenging that with us is Robert de Valk's group, the Further Poultry Processors Association of Canada. We want to see that program maintained, and that's connected to the pre-market label review program. We think that should be not only maintained but strengthened. It's your best defence. It's the best enforcement program, the most cost-effective enforcement program the government has today. It's HACCP-based. It's prevention.
The market enforcement--we talked about that. You can't go from a 13-person, 100% meat control at the border to inspecting 22,000 stores and 79,000 food service outlets. You cannot do it. You can't do it.
There's one other area. We'd like to see the agency have more enforcement staff and more of a mandate or more of...give them hormones or something. But we are finding a lot of mislabelled products on the marketplace and we'd like to see those enforced, and we bring it to their attention. Other than that, the system works.
We'd also like to see an upgrade of the capacity and the capability of the department. We're finding that the senior management are way too stretched to sit down and have a proactive discussion about enforcement, consumer labelling, or any of those kinds of things. You can't have more than an hour of somebody's time, and already their minds are on the next issue. So we've noticed there's a big change over time.
The other thing we've seen is that there's an eroding knowledge base, and that's just because of the attrition that's taken place since 1993. You used to have a huge number of people from the private sector who got into government back in the seventies. They're all gone, and you're left without the depth we used to have. If you want to get into some examples, I can do that. But one of the examples you will see, and you probably have seen it already, is where process—i.e., we had a committee meeting and everybody agreed—overrides content, because there isn't the capability of providing good content.
I'd just like to say that one thing that is also missing, and that hasn't been around for a number of years, is the striving for best decisions--not the right decision, not the politically correct decision, but the best decision for the consumer, for the processor, for the issue.
The last point I would like to make is about communication. Communication is a funny thing. You know, when I look at the Canadian Medical Association Journal--we all remember the editorial that came out last August, and the draft copy that hit the news--I see a disconnect between the editorial in the journal and the articles in the body of the magazine pertaining to plant inspection and listeria. There's quite a good, informative, thoughtful piece on listeria and what it is. They actually have a good discussion on plant inspection practices. It's quite different from the editorial.
There's one thing that probably disturbed us the most. When we had the BSE issue, the government was there in full force. You had Brian Evans out discussing it. You had the minister out. We felt really good. You got the message out to the consumers. They ate more beef. But we didn't see that in listeria. Michael McCain ended up being the Canadian government's spokesperson. We're not sure that was right.
Thank you, sir.