Mr. Speaker, we are here today to discuss a private member's bill, Bill C-283. Bill C-283 proposes amendments to the Food and Drugs Act that would make nutrition labelling mandatory on raw single ingredient meat, meat byproducts, poultry meat, poultry meat byproducts, and marine and freshwater animal products. Products would be exempted if the sales are below a certain amount, provided the label contains no nutrition or health claims. For simplicity, let me refer to these products as raw single ingredient animal products.
Bill C-283 would also require that for foods sold for immediate consumption, information on calories, the amounts of sodium and the sum of saturated and trans fats per serving be provided on the printed menu. If the menu options are set out only on a menu board, only the number of calories would have to be indicated on the board, and the sodium and fat nutrition information would have to be provided to customers upon request. When food is sold in two or more flavours or in bulk or buffet formats, the nutrition information would be required to appear beside the name of the food on the receptacle from which the product is sold in bulk or buffet format, beside the name of each flavour or beside the general name of the food as appropriate.
I note that Bill C-283 proposes to require the same nutrition information for raw single ingredient animal products that is required for prepackaged foods under the regulations published by Health Canada in January 2003, which came into effect in December of 2005. These regulations exempt raw single ingredient unground meats, meat byproducts, poultry meats, poultry meat byproducts, and marine and freshwater animal products from carrying a nutrition facts table unless nutrition or health claims are made for them.
These exemptions were included because of the lack of representative data on the nutrition composition for these products that takes into account the sources of variability, such as season, species, feed or trim level. Lack of such data presents a risk of mandating the provision of inaccurate information to consumers.
Since nutrition labelling is mandated on comparable products that are prepared in processing plants, such as raw seasoned meats, it is expected that major cuts of raw single ingredient meat and poultry meat that are packaged in plants will be voluntarily labelled if satisfactory data is available.
In regard to the proposal in Bill C-283 to require certain nutrition information on printed menus, menu boards and adjacent to food for immediate consumption sold in bulk or buffet formats, I note that the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association recently developed voluntary guidelines for providing nutrition information to consumers. This voluntary program will provide consumers with nutrient values that are consistent with the core nutritional label information required for packaged foods and will include calories, fats, such as saturated and trans fats and so on, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, including fibres and sugars, and protein content of standard menu items.
Since the February 2005 launch of the nutrition information program, more than 25 of the major restaurant chains, representing about 40% of all chain establishments, have committed to implementing these guidelines. Many of these chains have already completed this process and are already providing nutritional information to their customers. The guidelines state that nutrition information be made readily available to restaurant consumers through in-store brochures or pamphlets and that the availability of the nutrition brochure will be predominantly displayed on menus, menu boards and such vehicles as takeout and home delivery packages.
In general, the chains that are making progress in implementing the voluntary guidelines are the larger firms who have some access to the expertise required to do so and these appear to be the target of Bill C-283.
The voluntary program has the potential to provide consumers with the important nutritional information without the need for new legislation which would be expensive and burdensome to implement. The voluntary guidelines may provide consumers with information that goes beyond the requirements of Bill C-283 while avoiding the need for complex and costly governmental regulatory and enforcement programs. It would therefore seem prudent to allow the voluntary program time to work and to assess its effectiveness.
Bill C-283 proposes to exempt persons whose establishments or vending machine business has a total revenue of less than $10 million from the sale of food including income from all subsidiaries and franchises. The intention may be that the bill would only apply to those chains with standardized menus and highly controlled production facilities, since these are the minimal conditions for providing reliable nutritional information. However, the bill would also apply to hotel chains, many of which have independent restaurants with their own menus and with more variable conditions of production.
A further concern is the fact that at present restaurants and food service establishments typically fall under provincial jurisdiction and inspection is the responsibility of the provinces. Consequently, there would be a need for consultation with the provinces and territories. Bill C-283 would create heavy additional inspection requirements either for the provinces, if they agree to undertake the work, or for the federal inspectors and laboratories if they do not. No federal inspection system currently exists at the restaurant level which represents thousands of establishments across Canada.
Finally, Bill C-283 contains exemptions based on the dollar volume of sales. It proposes exempting from its requirements for raw single ingredient meat, poultry, or marine and freshwater animal products, persons with gross annual revenue of less than $500,000 from the sale of the same food, provided no nutrition or health claims are made for the product. It also proposes to exempt from its requirements food sold for immediate consumption by persons whose establishment or vending machine business has a total annual revenue of less than $10 million from the sale of food including income from all subsidiaries and franchises. This introduces an economic aspect totally absent from the Food and Drugs Act which would need to be assessed.
The government recognizes the importance of nutritional labelling in assisting Canadians to make healthy and informed choices about the foods they eat. This is why Health Canada introduced improved nutritional labelling regulations which became mandatory on most prepackaged foods in December 2005.
Health Canada is also currently working with industry and other stakeholders to find practical ways to develop reliable nutritional information for consumers about specific meat cuts and to determine the best means to assist consumers in making informed choices when eating away from home.
The government remains committed to helping Canadians continue to maintain and improve their health. I commend the intent of Bill C-283 in this regard; however, a number of initiatives are already underway which address the intent of Bill C-283 as I have already described. These initiatives should be allowed to bear fruit without the need of potentially costly and burdensome legislated requirements. Those are my remarks and I look forward to continue this very interesting debate.