Health Committee on June 10th, 2010

[Meena Ballantyne]

From Health Canada's perspective, we have seven recommendations where we're the lead, and we have $10.5 million over three years.

There are three areas that we put it towards. The first is the listeria policy that Dr. Farber is working on, as well as the additives and fast-tracking additives and reducing the backlog on additives and increasing the health risk assessment capacity. We have people trained to be able to work 24/7, and we're cross-training them as well, so it's not just listeria that they can provide a health-risk assessment on but E. coli, salmonella, and other pathogens as well. That's one area of responsibility.

The next one is improving our lab detection methods, as I talked about, doing the testing so that we can identify listeria in five to seven days versus ten days and working with the NRC to come up with a 48-hour testing for listeria. We are improving and validating some of these methods in order to detect listeria early on.

The third area is the risk communications, the pamphlets and the brochures that you saw, which is a three-year targeted communication strategy and social marketing campaign.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

So when we look at their check mark with where we're going with the 57 recommendations, the money truly is transitional money. It's to get the organization structure from A to B, and once we're at B, we should have good structures in place to be in a better place. So we're not looking at needing significant ongoing support in terms of the recommendations. Has there been any costing at all in terms of what might be ongoing?

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

We will deal with that. Again, it's part of the overall budgeting, allocation, planning, etc., in terms of once we get to that point, what if anything else is needed, or is it shifting?A lot of this is actually setting the stage for the right kind of work to be done. That's really key, and the resources have been very helpful in assisting us to do that.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Joyce Murray]

Dr. Bennett, this will be shorter than a five-minute section, because we need to wrap up.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

For the vulnerable populations, there was a suggestion that if turkey breast was microwaved and heated up, you would reduce the risk or eliminate the risk. Is that advice you would give, in terms of nursing homes or the places that like the stuff but have been frightened off by this?

[Dr. Jeff Farber]

Thank you very much.

In general, the directions that we'd like to give is actually to cook the meat to steaming hot, because as we've seen in a number of situations microwave heating is very uneven, so you may have several cold spots in the food that would not reach the temperatures that you need to actually inactivate cells of listeria.

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

Yes, you need to make sure that the food is truly heated through. In terms of even the prepared dinners and things, you look at them now and they're talking about ensuring that it's heated through if you're using a microwave or an oven. That is important.

For fans of fried bologna, that should work.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Joyce Murray]

Thank you very much for that advice for the next time I fry my bologna.

I would like to request, Dr. Butler-Jones, that you table a report with this committee, a progress update on this Panorama surveillance system. By when could we expect that?

[Dr. David Butler-Jones]

The FPT process, which is looking at that, setting down governance issues and all of that, is ongoing. We can certainly give you an update before the House rises, but it will be an update. There's still a great deal of discussion to go on.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Joyce Murray]

Thank you.

Thank you very much to all the witnesses for coming and enlightening us today.

The committee meeting is adjourned.