Information slow coming Ritz says the Food Safety Act will give the CFIA 
authority to demand timely information if violations are suspected
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency should have been tougher in demanding information from XL Foods when E. coli was detected in meat from the plant, says agriculture minister Gerry Ritz.
At least 16 Canadians reported becoming sick from contaminated meat connected to the plant in Brooks, Alta., although Ritz insisted last week not all of those cases were connected.
However, he told the House of Commons agriculture committee Oct. 25 that there were problems with how the company responded.
The packing plant was slow in providing the information CFIA was demanding and it was almost unusable when it arrived.
Read Also
Land crash warning rejected
A technical analyst believes that Saskatchewan land values could be due for a correction, but land owners and FCC say supply/demand fundamentals drive land prices – not mathematical models
“You can have timely access but if you receive 12 boxes of paperwork and have to sit down and start to analyze and go through all of that, that’s time wasted, time lost,” Ritz said.
As a result, several weeks went by before the Canadian public was notified of the E. coli problem, meat recalls started and the plant temporarily closed.
Ritz said that is an argument for quick parliamentary passage of Bill S-11, the Food Safety Act, which would give the CFIA increased power to demand timely information from companies suspected of food safety violations and information that is electronic and in an easily digestible form.
In hindsight, what could have been done better, asked New Democrat John Rafferty.
“We followed all the protocols that were laid out,” Ritz said.
“(In retrospect), I think CFIA would have been a lot harder-nosed on getting the material from XL rather than being nice and (following) the format with a letter and so on. You stand banging on the door until you get it.”
Ritz said he did not think XL was deliberately trying to hide information, but it was not speedy in its co-operation.
“I think we would have been more vociferous in demanding that XL come forward with paper.”
Once the information was made available and examined, inspectors realized that what the company said it was doing to ensure the safety of its meat products did not match what it actually was doing in the plant.
“What tripped up XL at the end of the day when their certificate (to operate) was pulled is that what they had written down and what they said they were doing did not correspond to what was actually happening on the plant floor,” Ritz told MPs. “That was decertification at that point.”
However, in the face of opposition criticism that the government and the CFIA were too slow to react after both the United States and the CFIA found E. coli contamination, Ritz said closing a plant is the last and most drastic option available that requires proof positive of problems.
“That’s a nuclear strike,” he said. “CFIA is loathe to do that because of the re-certification process that is required.”
Ritz bristled at NDP agriculture critic Malcolm Allen’s suggestion that the U.S. inspection system is more thorough and effective than Canada’s because it caught E. coli contamination and closed the border to XL products from the Brooks plant well before Canadians were informed.
“He continues to do this despite knowing full well that Canada detected E. coli on the same day that the U.S. notified Canada of their finding,” Ritz said.
“Furthermore, he knows that no product associated with this initial finding entered the marketplace.”
Ritz said the U.S. food inspection system is equivalent to Canada’s.
