The Canadian Food Inspection Agency may have to impose drastic import restrictions on fresh produce from California if Canadian concerns about its safety are not cleared up, a senior CFIA official said last week.
Bashir Manji, acting director of the agency’s food-of-plant-origin division, told the House of Commons agriculture committee Oct. 17 that CFIA officials are discussing with U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials what steps they are taking to control the risk of contaminated fresh produce coming out of the state.
He said Canada is asking how California spinach that made Canadians sick became contaminated and what American authorities are doing to make sure it does not happen again.
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“Until we have that assurance, it will be very difficult for us to open the border,” Manji told MPs. “So right now, spinach from the U.S. is not allowed in Canada.”
The concerns go beyond spinach. Manji said contamination problems with lettuce, tomatoes, green onions and other leafy greens from California have prompted CFIA to increase border surveillance of imports at a cost to the agency.
Manji was responding to complaints from Ontario Conservative Larry Miller that cattle producers in his riding think there is a double standard because one case of BSE that caused no human health problems led to a closed American border and billions of dollars in losses. Earlier, limited infestation in Canadian potato fields led to a closed American border.
Meanwhile, human health problems from imports of tainted American produce do not result in the same drastic action in Canada, Miller complained.
“It seems to me like there’s different rules here,” said the rural MP. “I would suggest that until they clean up their act, that we should be doing something a little more drastic and maybe just shutting (the border).”
The following day during an appearance by a U.S. embassy official before the agriculture committee, Ontario Liberal Paul Steckle also raised the issue of the BSE border closing and the continued restriction on Canadian export of animals older than 30 months.
“I’m wondering sometimes if political science gets in the way of animal science,” the veteran MP told Gary Groves, minister counselor with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service at the American embassy in Ottawa.
Groves said politics always are involved in government decisions.
“But we are trying to base this on science.”
