Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the House on the ongoing matter of the beef recall that has been much in the news today. I welcome the opportunity to talk about this issue and to clarify the situation. Let me reiterate that the health and safety of Canadians, particularly when it comes to food safety, is the top priority for this government.
Please allow me to list some of the facts for the record. First, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency acted to contain contaminated products beginning on September 4 and it has been acting ever since. Second, the XL plant will not be allowed to reopen until the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has certified that it is safe. Third, our Conservative government has hired over 700 additional net new inspectors since 2006, including 170 meat inspectors and, I might add, with no help from the opposition, which has voted against this and other valuable initiatives to fortify our food safety system.
Fourth, our government has implemented all 57 recommendations from the Weatherill report. Fifth, we have increased CFIA's budget by $156 million, which is a 20% increase and once again, the opposition voted against this. Sixth, we have tabled legislation in the other place, Bill S-11, known as the safe food for Canadians act, to strengthen the authorities under which CFIA acts.
The bill will be coming to the House for debate and voting. If the opposition believes that the powers of the agency are not sufficient, then it should support our government's legislation to make sure that the CFIA has greater authorities. The opposition needs to change the way that it has been voting on food safety issues.
Now that we know the basic facts, let me put it into context. As many are already well aware, XL Foods, which operates an Alberta-based meat processing facility, is implicated in a very substantial recall of beef products. The recall is a result of E. coli 0157:H7 having been found present in products that originate from this facility.
E. coli cases in Canada have dropped 50% since 2006. There is a great deal of information about how to avoid food-borne illness. In the case of E. coli, washing hands, keeping food preparation services clean and cooking food to proper temperature is usually all that is ever needed to avoid getting sick. The fact that this particular producer provides a large amount of beef product to further processors and retailers across Canada and for export to the United States adds to the complexity of this particular situation.
That being said, despite the efforts of the CFIA to provide disclosure and transparency about the events surrounding this issue, there persists a perception, a narrative, if one will, that is at odds with the facts. Last Friday, CFIA experts in food safety and public health held a press conference where they delivered detailed information and informative statements and took many questions from the media. All questions were fully answered.
Furthermore, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's website contains detailed information about what happened, where and when. The full chronology is there for all to see. People will also see information such as what the issue is, when it was first discovered, likely factors and actions taken. All of that is available to the media and to the general public.
I appreciate that much of the information being delivered leans to the technical side in terms of detail, so I will try to bring some clarity to the issue. For the record, allow me to share some of the misconceptions that still persist and must be set straight. There is the idea that American inspectors discovered the problem, while the CFIA did not, and that Canada was alerted to the problem solely due to American inspection efforts. This is not true. It was found in Calgary by the CFIA and the CFIA and Americans were communicating with each other about their test results on the same day.
It has been said that cuts to CFIA's inspection capacity, specifically the number of inspectors, has contributed to the XL problem and that this food safety issue is a direct result of the agency being under-resourced in this facility. This is false. Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, our government has hired more than 700 net new inspectors since 2006, and we have consistently increased funding for food safety multiple times since 2006, including by $52 million in our last budget alone.
It has been alluded to that our government is shying away from making any positive link between E. coli and beef and certain people who have become sick with E. coli. There has been no such evasion. Five cases have been connected by the Alberta public health authority. As a government, we feel for these people and understand how difficult this situation is.
Going back to the beginning when problems were first discovered, it needs to be understood that the CFIA discovered E. coli in a beef product on September 4. This product, discovered in one establishment, had originated from the XL Foods establishment in Alberta. On that very same day, the CFIA was informed that inspectors working for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, or the FSIS, had discovered E. coli in a sample of beef trimmings that had originated from the same XL Foods plant in Alberta.
The CFIA was alerted by the FSIS about the discovery on September 4 and the meat products were destroyed. The CFIA, through a trace out investigation, was able to determine that the meat products found to be positive in the U.S. were not distributed anywhere in Canada. The CFIA immediately launched an investigation into the causes of the problem on September 4. There was no delay.
Canadian and American inspectors had discovered the problem in parallel and that information was shared. The source of Canada's information was our own inspection service turning up positive samples for E. coli in Alberta and the American find served to confirm it. This information can be verified simply by looking at the statements made on both the CFIA and FSIS websites. The idea that had the Americans not found a positive sample, our own inspection service would have missed the E. coli is false, as the problem was uncovered by the CFIA through routine testing.
Throughout the course of the CFIA investigation, inspectors stepped up their oversight of operations within the plant. By September 18, the CFIA determined that there was no single cause that it could link to E. coli-positive meat at the plant. However, there were a number of issues uncovered having to do with some protocols not being strictly followed. These are the sorts of issues that the CFIA discovers from time to time.
XL Foods was informed of these deficiencies and was ordered to correct them before a firm deadline. Based on the in-depth investigation conducted by the CFIA from September 4 through to September 16, it was decided health hazard alerts should be issued to the public. During that time period there was not a single day that the CFIA was not actively investigating the issue on an urgent basis.
By September 16, XL Foods had begun recalling beef trimmings from three days of production from its clients. We must understand that beef trimmings coming out of one facility can go out to many different clients who further process these trimmings into other food products. Some of it might end up as ground beef. Some of it might be turned into fresh or frozen hamburger patties. Some of it could end up in sausages, frozen lasagna, meatballs or soup, and all under different brand names. The food supply system in this particular case is vast.
What we have is the CFIA actively tracing products into the supply chain based on a limited number of specific production dates. The agency tracked down the various companies, food processors, destinations and further processing points that the meat could have gone out to as quickly as possible and then food recalls for those food products were announced. As soon as a product was discovered to have had its origins in a high-risk run of production, it was recalled. As a result, what looked like recall after recall was really just one recall, with the group of affected products expanding as the different companies, processors, product lines and products were identified.
This is the tracing out process. It can take some time to go through various company records in multiple locations with information presented in vastly different formats. When a food recall gets under way the CFIA works literally around the clock to get the products off the shelf as fast and as comprehensively as it can. In fact it is considered to be the best in the world at food recalls.
Through further investigation it was decided, based on data that the CFIA collected, that production runs from two other days showed a higher than usual risk for E. coli and so products originating from these batches of trim were also added to the recall list. On September 27, the establishment's licence was suspended. The suspension resulted from the company being unable to fully implement the corrective actions requested by the CFIA. The suspension followed established agency protocol for when a food producer is unable or unwilling to comply with corrective actions requested by the agency.
Let me be clear. The XL plant will not reopen until the CFIA has certified that it is safe.
The CFIA acted swiftly to address the problem once it was discovered. It was discovered by CFIA inspectors during routine testing. Although it looked like a staggered recall to outsiders because the recall got wider and wider as more information on products became available, it really was a single recall of products produced on five production dates at the facility.
I will now address the budget issue. As we are all aware, our government, in its efforts to reduce the deficit, asked officials to make proposals that could find savings for budget 2012. Did budget 2012 expose Canadians to more food safety risk? Absolutely not, and for the opposition to say otherwise is just wrong. In budget 2012, as I mentioned earlier in my comments, we put forward more than an additional $50 million for food safety. That is what is in budget 2012. That is in addition to $100 million that was in budget 2011. Our government remains committed to ensuring that the food Canadians and their families eat is safe.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has not made any changes that would in any way risk the health and safety of Canadians. Contrary to what some have asserted, we have made significant investments in food safety. Recognizing the challenges and opportunities of the current environment, our government's budget last year committed over $100 million over five years for the CFIA to modernize its food inspection system. This included new resources on inspection delivery, training for inspection staff, scientific capacity on food laboratories, and information management and technology. Once again, the opposition voted against all of this.
In the case of this particular XL Foods facility, CFIA inspection staffing levels have actually gone up over the last six years, not down. There are 40 inspectors and six veterinarians assigned full time to the XL facility. That is six more inspectors and two more veterinarians than were assigned there in 2006. In this case in particular, and as a general rule across all of the agency's inspection services, there has been no cut in food safety service delivery. Budget 2012 is not relevant to this food recall and, as I mentioned, there have been additional resources allocated to CFIA through budget 2012.
I will now deal with the issue of illness. The agency has been very transparent about providing to the public all of the information it has around links to recalled food and human illness. At the press conference last Friday, a knowledgeable spokesman from the Public Health Agency of Canada addressed this issue. The PHAC website is being continually updated when information about cases of food-borne illnesses linked to the XL Food recalls becomes known. Further tests are required and it must be firmly established that people who actually ate products originating from this XL facility have been affected. This requires interviews about what people consumed in the recent past and the testing of any food that they may still have in their homes to establish a clear link. This work is done collaboratively by provincial public health agencies, the CFIA and the PHAC. It is a high scientific and evidentiary standard that must be adhered to. Anything less would be speculation and our government is not in the business of speculating on the health of Canadians. We need accurate information to make informed decisions.
We have a strong food safety regime here in Canada and we aim to make it even better with the proposed safe food for Canadians act. This government is committed to making these instances even rarer and to having a robust and efficient recall system when situations like this occur.
