Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  We extended, actually, the data analysis system for the patterns that develop. Then actually, if I remember right, there are stricter sanitation and safety requirements that have been put into the regulations. Those are only four I can think of right now. I'm wondering how that fits in with the comment that deregulation of the food safety system seems to be happening.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  What we do is look for places where we don't expect to find it, where we're not having issues, and we look for it there and we clean there. There's no substitute for having a good sanitation program in all departments on all shifts. So the maintenance people—

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  First, it's not a silver bullet. This is not something that lets you take it easy and slack off on your sanitation or your plant hygiene or your good manufacturing practices. You have to be as diligent as if you didn't have this equipment, number one. But absolutely, if someone can't afford it and others can, and somebody may charge someone to put it through, why not?

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Hazards such as drug residues, broken needles, and bacterial contaminants are controlled on the farm through the implementation of strict protocols related to the use of medications, whether these are administered directly to the pig or delivered through feed or water; the storage, mixing, handling, and delivery of feed; barn sanitation and bio-security, including rodent control; and staff training. Bio-security will also be addressed through the newly created Canadian Swine Health Board, ensuring that hog producers have the latest information and approaches to minimize disease risks.

Health committee  They will be forced to be put on their products a misleading claim, because a symbol of “C” on sunscreen or hand sanitizers is not accurate, as the end product is safe, even though they contain IARC-listed substances. Right now Health Canada does not allow companies to make a claim unless it's true--for example, the level of calcium or vitamin C in products.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Our supplier groups, the slicer manufacturers, equipment suppliers, the people who supply sanitizing supplies--all have worked to try to improve their systems. So we've worked collectively to “eliminate” sites for harbourage, but we still have those in some cases. Do we have different standards?

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Two, continual improvement of preventative process control systems is needed. Mandatory HACCP and sanitation programs that focus on prevention versus detection are critical, and the rigour of the control systems should be proportional to the public health risk. Three, government agencies must be fully funded to help assure the safety of domestically produced and imported food products.

Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act  Under this agreement, they will be able to ensure that their communities receive appropriate services, such as health and sanitation services. They will decide where to build their communities' hospitals. We know that many of these communities, which are located on the shores of James Bay, ranging almost as far as the Inuit communities of Quebec's far north, are isolated from one another and often have trouble working together.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  You're talking about the old days. Things have really changed in terms of expectations of cleanliness and sanitation and how meat is handled, haven't they?

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  But the other things are part of your prerequisite program, which should be part of your sanitation program and all the other things I discussed, and as I said, even looking at new equipment coming in. Probably everybody in Canada is looking at slicers, but there are all kinds of other equipment out there apart from slicers.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Where it appears that they should go in at an odd time, perhaps when the plant might not be expecting them, or take a look at their pre-op processes for sanitation, I believe that we would recommend that it proceed.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  But did you know that the CFIA did not have any specific requirement for slicer cleaning and disinfection practices prior to September 5? Their requirements included sanitization once a day. Those procedures had to be documented by the companies, verified, and validated, and it was on September 5, 2008, that they issued the advisory to industry that gave them very specific instructions for the full assembly of these slicers.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  If you had two times the number of inspectors in processed meat inspection and they were able to do all the verification tasks as laid out on paper--which means all the visual checks for pre-operation and sanitation would have been done--I think it's likely that it may not have happened. They might have seen the problem, because they have done so many times in the past. We're talking about a situation where you've removed them.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  In the briefing note issued by the Agriculture Union on April 20, 2009, to the committee, on page 3 it stated: Faced with budget constraints the CFIA has taken a variety of cost cutting measures such as banning overtime before last summer's tragedy. As a result, CFIA inspectors were unable to verify that pre-operation and sanitation inspections at Ready-to-Eat meat processing plants in Ontario and Quebec were properly conducted...including at the Maple Leaf plant that was the source of the contaminated product.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Based on our feedback from inspectors in both Quebec and Ontario, they were routinely refused overtime to come in early to do either the pre-operation or the sanitation verification checks. I understand that in some areas that might have been more of a communication issue than an overtime ban, but the effect from the inspectors' perspective was a ban.