Investigating food recalls and tracking animal disease is a daily job for Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspectors and veterinarians.
While BSE and avian influenza investigations capture the public’s attention, the agency also conducts ongoing surveillance for tuberculosis and other regular disease surveys for livestock.
CFIA disease control specialist Sandra Stephens said individual identification has simplified the job.
“Anything that can aid us in being able to shorten that period of time down in being able to track things, it would be great,” she said. “We really need to be able to find where these animals are in a timely manner.”
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She said it would be better if farm locations were registered and animal movement was recorded, especially in the case of a fast moving contagion or zoonotic disease affecting other species.
When avian influenza struck British Columbia in 2004, farm owners were listed with the poultry marketing board but that did not mean they lived near the premises where the disease was found. Correlating the owners with their animals and farms slowed the investigation and containment.
“You can have an owner of animals that might live hundreds of miles away from where the animals are actually kept,” Stephens said.
Garfield Balsom of the CFIA’s food safety and recall division said tracing extends in two directions: where the food came from and where it went. Most food recalls are voluntary and may be triggered by a consumer complaint, illness or food sampling.
A traceback investigation tells CFIA officials what went wrong and what can be done to correct it. Trace forward tells them where it went and assures them all defective product is removed.
“Having products adequately labelled and identified and showing that the invoices and the paperwork is done correctly helps us a great deal,” Balsom said.
Complications occur when a person becomes ill because it is difficult to document what someone ate and when and where it was consumed.
“If it is sourced from a multitude of different countries it can be extremely difficult to do trace back,” he said.
Once the CFIA identifies the product, it can trace bar code symbols and labels.
“The more a product is labelled and identified, the easier it is for us to move forward in having a recall or identifying it.”
The agency’s jurisdiction is limited to Canada but it has agreements with other countries to trace imported products and exchange information.
The CFIA has 2,500 inspectors across the country who work with laboratories and public health departments. They work every day of the year including Christmas so consumers can be informed of food problems in a matter of hours.
