The federal government decision to end its decades-old practice of supplying federal inspectors to provincially licensed meat plants in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba brought swift opposition condemnation last week.
New Democratic Party agriculture critic Malcolm Allen and Liberal MP Frank Valeriote quickly issued statements accusing the Conservatives of putting Canadian food safety at risk in those provinces to save money.
But Allen, a southwestern Ontario MP who served as his party’s food safety critic during hearings into the deadly 2008 listeria outbreak from tainted meat, went further.
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He accused the government of “creating a two-tier food safety system in this country.”
He said federal inspectors have been contracted for decades by those provinces to “fill a gap in federal-provincial standards.”
At the University of Manitoba food science department, food safety specialist Rick Holley said Aug. 12 that Allen has it wrong.
The decision by Ottawa and the provinces to transfer inspection at provincially licensed plants from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to a yet-to-be-created provincial inspection staff changes nothing in inspection standards.
“It really is status quo,” he said in an interview. “I think the effect on food safety and inspection standards will be minimal. It changes the people doing the inspection and who pays them.”
He said it will be up to the provinces to hire and train qualified inspectors. “And my take here in Manitoba is that I don’t think the government will have a choice but to put the money up and cover off what federal inspectors now do.”
Holley said the charge that this creates a two-tier inspection system is wrong. It has been around for decades.
There traditionally has been a federal standard at plants that can export inter-provincially and internationally while provincially regulated plants have less stringent rules and are not allowed to sell beyond the province.
And as to the charge that the presence of federal contract inspectors at provincial plants helped “fill a large gap in federal-provincial standards,” the University of Manitoba professor said that also is wrong.
One of his fundamental criticisms of Canada’s current food inspection system is that there are two tiers and the presence of federal inspectors at provincial plants does not change it. He advocates harmonized standards.
