“We were always hopeful that plant would open again and those workers could go back to work, cattle ranchers across this country could start to see their product moving again. Clearly what needs to happen to reassure Canadians is indeed that CFIA has done everything in its power to ensure that all of the things that are requested are indeed carried through on, and they bulk up their inspection forces,” said NDP MP Malcolm Allen (Welland, Ont.), his party’s agriculture critic, in an interview with The Hill Times.
“What they really need to do is, they need to do an audit that says how many folks should be in that XL facility? If they don’t do the audit, they’re simply grasping at straws to know if they have the right number or not. So they could put 100 in and that might be the wrong number because maybe the number is 65 or they could put 65 and maybe the number is 100, only the audit can tell them that. They need to do that,” Mr. Allen said.
He said since the dust has settled, there has not been any significant change. “We still don’t have a strategy. There’s no real, in my view, oversight. This should’ve been handled right from the get-go,” Mr. Allen told The Hill Times.
Liberal MP Frank Valeriote (Guelph, Ont.), his party’s agriculture critic, said that an audit on CFIA resources should have been done immediately after the Weatherill report recommended it following the listeriosis crisis in 2008.
“What they did instead is they did a modest in-house survey. They never did an independent third party audit. That’s why I’ve been calling for that since early October,” Mr. Valeriote told The Hill Times. “Upon completing the audit, he should’ve said to Canadians, once the audit’s done, we will provide the resources necessary to assure Canadians that their food is safe. He has not done that.”
Liberal MP Wayne Easter (Malpeque, P.E.I.) said that the CFIA dropped the ball on this specific situation but that Canada has a good food safety system.
“I will say this and I’ve always maintained it. Canada has a good food safety system. CFIA , in general, does a good job. In this case, there was a failure both on the part of CFIA and XL to take the appropriate action at the appropriate speed. They seem to risk offending the company and giving it a bad name, versus the risk of protecting the interests of Canadians and I think that’s where the danger lies there,” Mr. Easter said last week. “Whatever happened in this plant, CFIA was not on its game, and the plant was taking risks it seems.”
On Oct. 25, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz (Battlefords-Lloydminster, Sask.) told members of the House Agriculture Committee that government inspectors could have been “harder-nosed” at the XL Foods plant.
“I think CFIA would have been a lot harder-nosed on getting the material from XL rather than being nice. … You stand banging the door until you got it. But we weren’t seeing any illness spikes to drive us to decertification. That wasn’t happening,” Mr. Ritz told the MPs who are reviewing the Canada Food Safety Act.
More than 1,800 beef products have been recalled since Sept. 4, when two shipments of raw beef crossing the U.S. border were found to be tainted with E. coli. Canadians were not alerted to the situation until two weeks later when a recall and public health alert was issued. The CFIA then suspended the license for XL Foods’ plant located in Brooks, Alta., on Sept. 27 after more than 20 countries received its products. Sixteen Canadians across the country were affected by the tainted meat.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ritz said last Monday in the House that the government takes Canada’s food safety “very seriously” and said the opposition is trying to “muddy the waters” on the Conservatives’ record.
“Allow me to clarify our record right now,” he said, noting that since 2006, the federal government has invested in more than 700 net new food inspectors including 170 dedicated to meat.
In addition, Mr. Ritz said, the government has increased the CFIA’s budget by 20 per cent and increased the CFIA inspectors at XL by 20 per cent.
“Budget 2012 included an additional $51-million to further strengthen our food safety system. This is built upon our government’s food safety investments of $100-million over five years in budget 2011,” Mr. Ritz said.
“This government consistently provides the CFIA with the workforce and the resources it needs to protect Canadian food. As minister, my first job is to ensure that CFIA has the workforce, the budget and the regulatory powers it needs. Second, I work with CFIA to make use of this capacity to ensure consumer confidence,” Mr. Ritz said.
But Mr. Easter said Canadians have lost faith in the Conservative government when it comes to food safety issues.
“It was probably the worst case of the government communicating with the Canadian public and ensuring the Canadian public knew what was going on on a very grave issue that affects Canadians’ health,” he said, noting that when the listeriosis outbreak occurred, Chief Public Health Officer David Butler-Jones was front and centre on keeping Canadians informed. Mr. Easter said Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq (Nunavut) and Mr. Butler-Jones should have done the same this time around.
“He was assuring Canadians what was going on, and the public knew. This is the responsibility of government, to, on a day to day basis, inform Canadians where the situation’s at, what’s happening to protect the health and safety of Canadians,” Mr. Easter said. “They’ve failed dismally in that regard.”
Meanwhile, he said, the government is touting its Safe Food for Canadians Act, Bill S-11, as the “be all and end all” when it would not have prevented the XL E. coli outbreak.
“It might’ve pushed the plant in terms of documentation getting forward to CFIA faster, but my hope is at primary slaughter plants that CFIA inspectors are actually inspecting the animals’ carcasses, not just inspecting paper,” he said.
Bill S-11, which the government introduced in response to the 2008 listeriosis outbreak and the Weatherill Report, was introduced in June in the Senate and arrived in the House of Commons two weeks ago. It’s currently in the House Agriculture Committee.
Bill S-11 streamlines the Meat Inspection Act, the Fish Inspection Act, the Canada Agricultural Products Act, and the food provisions of the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act into one bill. It also makes changes to align inspection and enforcement powers for all food commodities. The bill creates fines for improper labelling, new rules for importing and exporting food, a review and traceability mechanism for all Canadian Food Inspection Agency-inspected foods, has new training requirements for inspectors and gives the CFIA new powers.
Mr. Allen, who sits on the committee, said he hopes the bill will go smoothly through committee and that the government will be open to amendments to improve the bill.
“We want to do it expeditiously, this isn’t about dragging things through committee, it’s about getting it done. Canadians expect it to get done quickly but they want it done well and that’s going to be our goal,” he said. “We need to enhance the legislation. We’re looking at whistleblower protection, we’re looking at amendments to make sure the AG—or at least it would be nice if it were the AG but we can’t actually make them do that—actually gets an audit at the beginning. We have a number of what we consider are constructive amendments we can put into this bill that will make it stronger and make it a bill that we can all recommend.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: BEA VONGDOUANGCHANH
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