SASKATOON — Both consumers and farmers are worried that a conflict of interest could be created if food processors police themselves.
When federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale suggested last month that the food industry, rather than government, monitor its product safety, the National Farmers Union jumped.
Goodale said safety would not be compromised by this cost-cutting move because “if private industry allows their standards to sag, they not only cause a public health problem, they cause enormous problems for themselves because consumers abandon them in droves.”
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It is not acceptable to the NFU to have people sick and then “abandon a food product in order to enforce standards,” said president Art Macklin.
But customers have not been making any more complaints than usual about food safety, said Sylvia Scarfe, executive secretary of the Saskatchewan branch of the Consumers’ Association of Canada.
Quality may drop
“We have concerns,” Scarfe said, “about cutbacks and putting the onus on people to police themselves. There are lots who toe the line … but always there are people who go headlong into producing or importing without checking and then it’s found — or not — in the marketplace later.”
While the NFU charged that Goodale’s department inspectors have been uncovering “numerous instances” of unsafe food and other infractions of standards, one bureaucrat said imported food is safe.
The number of infractions found by the government is rising, but only because there is a “more effective targeting of commodities that are a problem,” said Eli Kneidert, chief of the chemical residue section of Agriculture Canada.
High meat standards
In terms of residues, meat isn’t a problem, he said. In Canada, inspectors can see the live animal and know when to check for residues. In the case of imported meat, Canada only allows products from countries that have equivalent health and inspection standards.
Fruits and vegetables are where the residue problem shows up. Kneidert said the number of “intolerances” from American products not meeting Canadian standards is rising. But even in this area “on a case-by-case situation the problems are going away.”
Removal of government inspection or residue testing “has not as yet happened. Whether that will happen is down the road or not.”
In the U.S., Reuter News Service reports the Food and Drug Administration has asked for public comment on whether the food safety system should be made mandatory for all foods including foreign processors and food transporters.
Under the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points system, U.S. companies perform a science-based analysis of their food production processes, from start to finish, to identify potential safety hazards. They also monitor critical control points and keep records to give government inspectors a clear picture of compliance levels.
