Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak to this bill. Prior to this life, I spent a number of years in health care as a hospital nurse and saw a lot of situations where allergies, anaphylactic shock and these kinds of things occurred.
I have mixed feelings about the bill. The overall objective is very worthy, but I have some difficulties from the point of view of onus, or sense of responsibility. It seems to me that we are placing a heavy responsibility on the providers of the food, the manufacturer or the restaurant. We must make that an equal responsibility for the individuals themselves.
It would have been nice to have heard some statistics in the previous member's speech in relation to those persons with allergies versus persons without allergies. What kind of percentages are we talking about? How many people have actually suffered from this kind of thing at restaurants and so on?
To get on to some of my other concerns, the bill as stated would require restaurant owners to make all employees familiar with the issue of food allergies, their potential serious consequences and be able to answer customers' queries about the ingredients that may be contained in the food sold in the restaurant or prepared in the restaurant and sold for consumption outside the restaurant. That is one possible scenario.
The second choice to meet this need would be to have one employee designated as having that information or making reference to it. I caution here and stress, as the member said in her remarks earlier, that we are not asking that waitresses become nutritionists and that they must have at their fingertips exactly what is in the contents of the meal.
The bill would require restaurant owners to maintain a list of ingredients of all food prepared and sold by branch restaurants. I do not know about branch restaurants. That does not seem to be too unreasonable for restaurants. I am talking not only of restaurants but deli type establishments as well, where one grabs a muffin or whatever in passing and leaves.
The thing that comes to mind here, and I cannot seem to move away from it, is that this looks as if we are assimilating the WHMIS program in relation to poisons which was introduced into the hospitals. To give an overview of the WHMIS program, basically what happens there is that in the workplace-I said it was introduced in hospitals but it was introduced in the workplace across the country-any potential hazardous material has to be listed and the appropriate action taken should an employee come in contact with that material.
Two things came out of that. One was that it was going to be a horrendous task for organizations to do this. Basically the onus went back to the manufacturers and in their instructions with the product there was sufficient information for agencies or employers to put it in their binder and have it readily accessible to all staff.
The other thing that arose out of that was the trade secrets in relation to the product. Under the WHMIS program if a company feels that their product has been violated they can take it to a committee to attempt to keep the secret. Kentucky Fried Chicken is the obvious one with the famous 11 herbs and spices in the chicken.
What has to be looked at is not the recipe actually being accessible to the waitress or designated person. We have to look at the chemicals, just as the chemicals are listed on a can that we pick
up on the grocery store. That may help allay the problem of the secret recipe.
There is another plus to this. Labels have been put on products in grocery stores to better inform customers about their purchases. For example, when I make a meat loaf at home I know what is in it if I read the ingredient labels. It does not seem too difficult to move to the next step. Instead of my having to cook the meat loaf, someone else will cook it in a restaurant. But I still should be able to see the list of chemicals versus the recipe in relation to that meat loaf.
There is a great amount of concern over what this means to a waitress or a cook in relation to his or her job. It is very important that the responsibility not fall totally on the restaurant. The onus should not be on the restaurant to assure the public that there will not be any allergic reactions. That must be stressed. If the individuals have that binder, they must be aware of the products in restaurant food to which they are allergic. The restaurant's responsibility stops with the provision of the binder. That does not seem to be stressed in the bill.
This may be a bit of a moot point but there are other food sources like delis, bakeries and food courts which should be included. I would like to see the word "restaurant" expanded to include any food source. Consumers should be informed about exactly what they are buying in terms of chemical content.
Anaphylactic shock is a very quick medical emergency. In most cases there is only 10 to 15 minutes to respond. Remember in days gone by when some people would be dead within a few minutes of receiving a bee sting? Then an alternative was introduced where a person could carry a syringe along with a little ampulla of adrenalin.
Today there is another life threatening food to some people, peanut butter. I suggest very strongly for those persons with very acute allergies that they should take some sort of medical precaution. They should carry that little vial or whatever it may be. You cannot expect a restaurant to save your life if you go into anaphylactic shock or if you have any allergic reaction. Not all allergic reactions end up being anaphylactic shock. We should also be aware of which allergic reactions are life threatening when we interpret statistics.
My approach to this bill is that it has its good points and points that need more development. We talk of recipes in the bill. I would like to see that developed into chemical components of products.
For any restaurant it is quite common to standardize recipes so that the vegetable soup made on Monday tastes the same as vegetable soup on any other day. It is usually a standardized recipe and that is just economics. Instead of letting every cook do whatever, there are standardized recipes. Of course the other thing too is that the customers acquire a taste and if the food is good, they certainly will come back.
With a standardized recipe when someone uses the ketchup as was previously stated, it would not be that difficult to take the label off the bottle or to have it reproduced in some way and placed in a manual.
I would like to stress very strongly that I do not see the need for every waitress or even one person in the restaurant at any given time having to be learned in the nutritional aspects of whatever the food products are that are being served. If someone does choose to inquire about what is in a food product, I would like to see that the written material is available and they themselves can sit down and make the judgment decision as to whether or not they are going to partake.
Those are my main points on this subject. If this moves into a WHMIS type situation, it is a whole new debate because there are a number of problems with the WHMIS program. I would hate to see that kind of thing arise.
When we get into the nitty-gritty of looking at this, it should move from recipes down to ingredients. There should be a definite stressing that the onus is on the individual. Also, the employees should have access to the information. They should not have to qualify, explain or whatever as the onus should rest with the individual and not the employee. If someone asks what this is, it is up to that individual to know what it is, not the waitress or the cook.