FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ottawa – Inaction on food safety has earned the federal government a failing grade six months after the Prime Minister’s special investigator Sheila Weatherill tabled recommendations on how to prevent a repeat of the Maple Leaf Foods listeriosis outbreak which killed 22 people and sickened many more.

A mid-term report card on the government’s dismal performance was released in Ottawa this morning by the food inspectors union and Canada’s largest consumer organization, Option Consommateurs, giving the federal government a D-.
“Six months after Sheila Weatherill’s report, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency efforts to improve have been hamstrung by the absence of political will and commitment to improve on the part of the federal government,” said Bob Kingston, President of the Agriculture Union – PSAC, which represents food inspectors who work for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

“Consumer confidence in food safety has been shaken to the core.  The absence of any visible action six months after the Weatherill report will do nothing to repair this,” said Option spokesperson Anu Bose.

Almost half of Ms. Weatherill’s recommendations to prevent another outbreak were directed toward the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.  With its mandate to inspect sanitation practices and enforce food safety requirements, the under-resourced CFIA was widely seen as failing to protect Canadian consumers.  Ms. Weatherill established these important findings of facts in her report:

  • The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) failed to do mandatory safety audits of the Maple Leaf Foods plant which produced the tainted cold cuts for years prior to the outbreak.
  • A new inspection system (the Compliance Verification System or CVS) implemented just before the outbreak was flawed and in need of “critical improvements related to its design, planning and implementation”.
  • The CVS was “implemented without a detailed assessment of the resources available to take on these new (CVS) tasks”.
  • A shortage of food safety inspectors was in play before the outbreak.  “In the lead up to the outbreak the number, capacity and training of inspectors assigned to Bartor Road (the tainted Maple Leaf plant) appear to have been stressed due to their responsibilities at other plants, the complexity of Bartor Road including its size and hours of operation, and necessary adjustments required by the implementation of the CVS.”

“In short, Ms. Weatherill found that there are too few inspectors covering too much territory, hobbled by a new inspection system that never worked properly,” Kingston said.

Weatherill called on the federal government to conduct an audit to determine the number of inspectors required to ensure food companies are complying with food safety requirements, and she recommended an overhaul of the new inspection system – the Compliance Verification System or CVS.

“Six months later, the federal government and the CFIA have yet to begin work on either of these key recommendations.  An audit has not even begun and the CVS remains unevaluated.  The inspector shortage is as acute as ever and we continue to be hobbled by an inspection system that is deeply flawed,” Kingston said.

According to the report card, the federal government and the CFIA have not begun to act on the vast majority of recommendations aimed at improving food safety inspection and enforcement.

“With Parliament prorogued, there is little that consumers can do to hold the government to account for this dismal performance,” said Kingston, who pointed out that Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz warned a few months ago that little progress on food safety improvements are possible if the opposition provoked the dissolution of Parliament.

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For information:

Jim Thompson 613-447-9592