Three former Health Canada scientists and a former United States meat inspector, all fired for clashing with their government employers, were on Parliament Hill last week calling on MPs to scrap proposed new legislation for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
“Whistle blowers” Shiv Chopra, Margaret Haydon, GŽrard Lambert and American Lester Friedlander said the regulators in Canada and the U.S. are too close to agribusiness. They argued the CFIA bill C-27 makes it worse by giving CFIA more power and moving Canada closer to lower American standards.
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Chopra said the bill must be rejected and the regulators become more responsible.
Friedlander, who was fired by the U.S. Department of Agriculture a decade ago after he accused the department of hiding animal disease problems, has since accused the U.S. government of covering up BSE cases. He said CFIA should become a consumer agency outside the control of Agriculture Canada.
He also argues all use of animal protein in animal feed should be banned.
Friedlander said last week that like American regulators, the CFIA faces a conflict of mandate between assuring safe food and promoting trade by assuring foreign buyers that Canadian food is safe.
“It’s (the bill) headed in the right direction except that I feel it should be a consumer agency,” he told MPs. “There’s too many conflicts of interest so I do not support the bill.”
He repeated claims that he is 99.9 percent certain the U.S. has found and hidden BSE cases.
But the witnesses, heroes to many who bemoan the ties between government and agribusiness, received a rough ride from many MPs on the House of Commons agriculture committee who suggested they either had not understood the legislative proposals or were grinding axes from their firings.
Several MPs said they objected to the suggestion that Canadian food is not safe because of lax CFIA standards.
“I’m getting a little tired of the fear mongering that I’m hearing today,” said Saskatchewan Conservative David Anderson.
Prince Edward Island Liberal Wayne Easter wondered if their opposition was to the bill or to modern farming practices that require intensive use of antibiotics and pesticides.
Chopra said both because “the two go together. Modern management of factory farm operations has to be considered a bad thing to do.”
The witnesses did not offer detailed analyses of the proposed legislation, spending their time offering broad denunciations of the relationship between regulators and businesses.
New Democrat agriculture critic Charlie Angus, who asked that they be invited to appear as witnesses, said their warnings were a strong indictment of the Canadian rush toward lower U.S. standards. He drew comments from the witnesses that questioned the safety of Canadian food and the veracity of the inspection system.
Manitoba cattle producer and Conservative MP James Bezan, a critic of the CFIA bill because of what he considers too much power and too little oversight, dismissed the testimony and the NDP MP’s role in it as anti-farmer.
“You have to wonder what Mr. Angus and members of the NDP are thinking by bringing people of such little credibility before the agriculture committee,” Bezan said after the hearing.
