The Stows operate a mixed farm near Graysville, Man.
In my initial submission regarding the Robert Arnason article (“Inspection plan causes little stir, WP, July 24) on federal food inspection plans, I expressed concern over the proposal to cut $75 million from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) budget and hand over more responsibility to the feed mill and meat producing industry. I suggested that placing the foxes in charge of the poultry could lead to serious repercussions down the line.
Before it could be published, the listeriosis outbreak occurred, further emphasizing the folly of the planned deregulation. The cuts, apparently already approved by Treasury Board, had not been formally announced for fear of public backlash.
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The timing of the listeriosis outbreak has managed to throw a wrench into federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz’s plans and should be a lesson for any government contemplating cutting, privatizing or in any way messing with what was once a thorough and reliable food safety system.
In an article in the Aug. 30 issue of the Globe and Mail, Bill Curry reported on criticism of Maple Leaf Foods in a 2007 audit. The article states that “all Canadian plants that are approved for exporting to the U.S. must allow U.S. officials to audit their facilities.” Thus it was that a U.S. inspector discovered a “mousetrap plugged with discarded pieces of meat and animal fat in Maple Leaf’s Brandon plant” and “gave the facility a failing grade in pest control.”
Through this process, several Canadian plants have lost United States Department of Agriculture approval to export to the U.S. The Curry article carries on to state that “19 out of 20 audited plants were not complying with sanitation standards while Canadian inspectors were not always aware of their duties and were not well trained in the performance of their inspection tasks.”
Other reports since the outbreak have revealed that the Maple Leaf plant at the source of the outbreak had only one inspector on site and that plant officials had been signing their own reports since some time in March 2008. Any further cuts to an already wobbly system reveal political and bureaucratic intentions that are either mad or bad.
Initially the proposed cuts apparently failed to raise alarms with the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association or even a professor of Food Science at the University of Manitoba. The CCA reaction is scarcely surprising since many of its policies cast doubt as to whose side it is on anyway.
As well, according to the Arnason article, Rob McNabb, CCA manager, downplayed the effectiveness of visual inspections, apparently ignoring the impact of the video that shut down the appalling goings on at a California meat processing operation earlier this year and justifiably caused a continent-wide scandal involving both animal welfare and food safety.
If these visuals, as Mr. McNabb comments, are ineffective, why does CCA not press for something that would be effective, such as random, frequent lab-tested samples conducted at public expense, since everyone from the farmgate to the consumer would benefit?
Attacks by the transnational corporations on the protective regulatory structures of our country have reached dangerous levels. Under the radar of the current headlines, the packer/feed mill lobby obviously has dealt with malleable politicians and CFIA senior bureaucrats and the result is a weakened regulator, which opens the doors wide for unpreparedness and vulnerability in any event of a food industry related disease episode, the arrival of which is not a question of “if” but “when.”
After BSE was first identified in Great Britain herds in the 1980s and before the first human case, Prince Charles, in his 1993 book Highgrove – Portrait of an Estate, warned of future consequences of the disease and the risks involved in feeding animal byproducts to herbivores. For whatever reason, the CFIA, instead of acting early and decisively in the face of irrefutable evidence of danger, stumbled along until 1997 when it finally enacted what we later discovered was an incomplete ban on ruminant content in ruminant feed.
Then, in 2003, the Alberta outbreak produced closed borders and catastrophe for ruminant producers across the country, catastrophe which, by the way, was not shared by other sectors of the industry.
Apparently having learned nothing from the BSE episode, CFIA appears to be again listening to corporate lobbyists instead of its mandate to protect Canada’s food supply and citizens.
The listeriosis outbreaks most certainly caused a scramble in the offices of the federal agriculture ministry and a lot of back pedaling. Recent press reports have minister Ritz firing one whistle blower and congratulating one of his own creation, denying that the cuts were ever being planned, and calling for irradiated food either in rapid succession or all at the same time. It is hard to figure out which.
Finally, the headline phrase in the Arnason article, “causes little stir,” reveals an enormous problem with our national media. For whatever reason, they seem to pick up on a story only after there is a full-blown crisis.
This applies especially to anything to do with rural Canada and the most-important-of-all-businesses – food production. The speed with which the listeriosis outbreak followed the report of upcoming cuts to food inspection should be a lesson that more blanket coverage of these issues from the start could have saved lives and livelihoods.
Consumers should reasonably be able to expect that food recalls, salmonella scares ending in illnesses and even deaths have become numerous enough to warrant constant and intense media focus on the entire food system from the federal minister through the regulators on down.
Only well informed public outrage will fix this situation. Having spent its way through a huge surplus, the Conservative government finds itself on the brink of deficit and appears to be hunting for more money.
There will never be a more opportune time than an election to drive home the message that cuts to food safety regulations will not be tolerated.
