SUPPOSE you have questions or concerns about the safety of a certain food. Suppose you ask a food inspector for his analysis and he tells you the food is absolutely safe to consume.
Suppose you later learn the inspector is being paid to promote the food in question.
Would that knowledge colour your impressions about his opinion?
That’s essentially the scenario suggested by the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association. In a recent presentation to the Senate agricultural committee, CCA president Hugh Lynch Staunton suggested the Canadian Food Inspection Agency move beyond regulation and administration of the food industry and become a promoter of Canadian beef.
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The concept is rife with problems.
It is vital that Canada maintain a government controlled agency, the CFIA, which regulates, inspects and verifies the safety of food, including Canadian beef. Using scientific principles, it is able to advise on safety measures and regulations that protect domestic and international consumers. In doing so, it furnishes them with the necessary assurance that Canadian product is safe.
Through the auspices of the CFIA, Canada has been able to attain the minimal risk designation from the world animal health organization four years after the BSE crisis began. The CFIA’s scientific approach to regulation and risk mitigation has provided proof of safety that will hopefully enable international beef trade to fully resume.
If the CFIA were saddled with the additional responsibility of promoting beef trade, would its trading partners believe its science was sound? The more likely scenario is that CFIA claims of safety and quality would be seen as promotional rather than factual.
Canada already has an agency tasked with promoting agricultural produce domestically and internationally. It is called Agriculture Canada. And it is no accident that Agriculture Canada operates separately from the CFIA. Conflict of interest, or the perception of same, is the primary reason.
Even if the CFIA was able to perform the dual role of inspection and promotion in a completely above board fashion, few would believe its motives were pure. Perception is the same as reality in such cases.
As the BSE crisis played out after May 2003, the CFIA was of major assistance to the Canadian beef industry. It did the traceouts on infected animals. It tested hundreds of animals to gauge level of infection. It studied the science and the method of spread. It devised regulations designed to eliminate BSE in the Canadian herd within a specified number of years. It made officials available to explain the science to the Canadian public and the country’s trading partners.
Given all that activity, it’s understandable that the CCA has come to see the CFIA as an ally; one that could effectively promote Canadian beef. But explaining the science and promoting the product are two entirely different things.
The CFIA can legitimately explain how it does its job and how it protects the safety of Canadian beef.
But promotion of the product is the job of Agriculture Canada and various beef industry agencies.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, D’Arce McMillan and Ken Zacharias collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
