Politics trumps food safety

The Cape Breton Post
Last updated at 12:32 PM on 28/08/09

Does everything in Ottawa have to be so ridiculously political? The Commons agriculture committee met this week to look into what’s been done to improve the country’s food safety system a year after listeriosis in Maple Leaf brand processed meats claimed 22 lives. The opposition called the meeting and when the Conservative chairman couldn’t attend, the duty fell to Sydney-Victoria MP Mark Eyking.
Naturally, the meeting did not end without partisan rancour. With an opposition member moved into the chair, government members were able to push though a motion saying the committee doesn’t believe a public inquiry, urged by a subcommittee, is necessary.
Indeed, the case for a lumbering inquiry is dubious when so many knowledgeable people have a good handle on how the food safety system needs to develop. The country would be better served if energy was channelled into a comprehensive agenda to deal with modern-day challenges in food safety. But everything on Parliament Hill seems to reduce to tactics and manoeuvres.
Most experts agreed Canada’s food is safe, relatively speaking. But we’re nowhere near world leadership, the risks are growing more complex, and government talks a better game than it delivers. Sheila Weatherill, an independent investigator appointed by the government, offered 57 recommendations earlier this year but according to Eyking the government has done nothing with them. The number of inspectors looking after federally inspected meat plants remains an issue, according to testimony to the committee. But listeriosis, indeed the safety of the whole meat supply, is only one of many issues.
In the spring we saw another of those rolling recalls, this time because of a salmonella scare in pistachio nuts from California. Pistachio nuts? Who knew. The recall started as 25 products sold under three brands, and eventually grew to 70 products under 18 brands, but it all took time because of an outmoded tracking system.
The increasing globalization of the food web makes tracking all the more difficult but all the more urgent as well. Simpler and more localized food systems may be part of the answer but farm practices as well as consumer knowledge need to improve too.
Though Eyking and many others are quick to recite the mantra that Canada’s food is safe, it’s been estimated by public health officials that food-borne illnesses affect as many as 13 million Canadians every year and kill perhaps 500. These are not comforting numbers.
Rick Holley, a University of Manitoba microbiologist and member of an advisory panel for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, describes Canada’s ranking in food safety as the “top half of mediocrity.” Among 36 countries listed in a food-borne illness database, 80 per cent had lower frequency of E. coli illness than Canada.
We need to do a better job across the board in preventing pathogens from getting into food, but since contamination is going to happen we also need better ways of discovering it and tracking it quickly. If Parliament can’t work across party lines on a file such as this, the place really is dysfunctional.