News of events at Harborside Farms has filled the pages of The Western Producer in recent weeks.
In some of the articles it has been suggested that Manitoba Agricultures is confused in the purpose of its activities. How can the awarding of first prize in the Great Manitoba Food Fight to Harborside Farms’ prosciutto ham be compatible with the seizure of hams by government inspectors three months later?
As one of the judges in the Great Manitoba Food Fight, I see no incompatibility: both events fit the available facts.
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Manitoba Agriculture’s duties include helping Manitoba food businesses commercialize opportunities that agricultural entrepreneurs identify as having local or global market appeal.
However, the department also has a duty to protect all Manitobans if a food processor cannot produce records on processing and preservation steps that assure the public that the processor’s food is safe.
At the Great Manitoba Food Fight, the Cavers presented a compelling story of pasture-raised hogs and the value-added processing they were pursuing to develop a great-tasting prosciutto ham.
However, assessments of their product’s marketing and quality attributes were only part of the discussions that day. Management of the dry-curing process is not easy, and we had a lengthy conversation about pH, moisture and salinity control, and the process steps that the Cavers knew they needed to pursue to ensure a safe product.
The seizure of the hams three months later cannot have been an easy decision for Manitoba Agriculture, but it has to act if it is not convinced the food is safe.
The vast majority of food safety regulations that governments implement are not corporation-driven exclusionary protocols.
Such regulations apply to all low-acid products, such as ham, because countless well-controlled scientific studies over the past 150 years have shown that these products demand greater oversight if they are not to become food hazards.
To some researchers at the University of Manitoba, ham seizure is not due diligence by Manitoba Agriculture. Rather, it is government interference with the free development of community-focused food systems.
Is a debate on the control of food systems one that should be undertaken? Yes, most definitely, because of the far-reaching implications for food security if the means of food production and preservation are concentrated in too few hands.
However, some of the language being used to frame this debate must be carefully evaluated and scientifically scrutinized. It is also important that the emotive pull of a good family farm potentially losing their livelihood be withdrawn from the debate.
The pertinent questions from this incident are not about Manitoba Agriculture’s action.
Instead, we should ask:
- In the interests of diversification of the local food economy, should taxpayers subsidize equipment purchase and training for all small processors to allow them to compete against large-scale processors?
- Are there certain regulations that are easy for large processors to implement but are especially onerous to small processors?
- Can these regulations be modified without compromising safety for certain types of food products?
Policies couched in benign terms such as “scale-appropriate regulations” and “balanced healthy (microbial) ecosystems” do not constitute a food safety solution, especially because their scientific and societal impacts are as yet far from clear.
Is it acceptable to any community that a small processor sickens one person per month because fewer people are affected than the 75 people sickened by a single outbreak from a large plant once every five years?
The context for this somewhat absurd comparison is that 23 Canadians have been sickened this year by a small cheese manufacturer, while 18 Canadians were sickened during the massive beef recall from Alberta’s XL Foods last year.
Society deserves a rational and dispassionate debate on how we want our food produced and by whom. What individuals in society cannot afford is the imposition of regulations dictated by emotion or ideology in place of scientific facts.
