Well, maybe not.

According to sources within the CFIA, a secret deal to win mention in the March 2011 budget that will be re-tabled next week may actually result in a cut to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency budget.

The CFIA is said to have made a commitment, no one has publicly disclosed, to cut its own spending by $35 million in exchange for the boost to its food inspection allocation contained in the pre-election budget. 

The problem for food safety is that Flaherty’s plan has only $18 million flowing to the CFIA in the first two years, leaving the Agency in a financial hole in the short term, with the balance apparently coming in 2013 and beyond.

Official spokespeople for CFIA have refused comment on this story citing budget confidentiality.

“If this is true, Finance Minister Flaherty has misrepresented a food inspection budget increase as something much bigger.  And, the CFIA has agreed to a $35 million budget cut in exchange for $18 million and an IOU that may never be honoured given the government’s intention to slash spending,” said Bob Kingston, President of Agriculture Union – PSAC, which represents federal food inspectors.

The upcoming operating and strategic review will require departments and agencies to cut spending by 10% or more which represents $72 million to the CFIA’s budget.  In addition, the CFIA has already had to absorb salary increases from existing budgets which has reduced the Agency’s food safety capacity.

According to the Budget tabled in Parliament on March 22^nd the $100 million investment over five years was to “enable the Government to complete its response to all of the recommendations of the Weatherill Report through targeted investments in inspector training, additional science capacity, and electronic tools to support the work of front-line inspectors”.

“The bad news for consumers is that Ottawa has not come close to fixing the food safety and inspection problems that Sheila Weatherill found at the root of the Maple Leaf deaths.  And, if this behind the scenes deal is true, the CFIA will not be able to.  I hope Minister Flaherty comes clean on June 6^th and comes up with the resources our food safety system so desperately needs,” Kingston said.

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The inspection of food imports in Canada is one of the weakest components of the CFIA’s work.  Consider:

There are no inspectors dedicated to imports for food safety purposes

CFIA cannot afford to dedicate full time inspectors to ensure the safety of imported food products. The only inspectors dedicated to food imports (in the Destination Inspection Service) are wholly funded by industry and their purpose is purely commercial — to determine the quality and grade of imported products, and therefore their market value — not to identify threats to public health and safety.

CFIA inspectors are responsible for the inspection of both import and export food products

For CFIA, certifying food exports is 100% mandatory.  When it comes to inspection of food imports, however, the CFIA has wide discretion to allow them onto grocery store shelves uninspected. This creates an impossible balancing act for inspectors and the CFIA who are subject to heavy pressure from the Canadian food industry to certify their shipments for export.  Everyone knows the unofficial priority is export certification.  In the present resource-starved circumstances, CFIA and its inspectors are too often faced with an impossible balancing act where the inspection of imported products always takes a back seat to export certifications.

Stopping unsafe food from reaching grocery shelves is not the purpose of import inspection and less than 2% of food imported into Canada is inspected

The vast majority of import inspections are conducted to protect plant and animal health, not human health.  Inspections of products intended for human consumption are conducted primarily to monitor trends and not to prevent dangerous good from reaching store shelves.  For example, in the unlikely event that the CFIA inspects a shipment of fresh produce that is observed to be contaminated by an insecticide or fungicide (because it is covered with a coat white powder, for example), results from laboratory tests would not be available until long after that product had reached the dining room table.

Inspectors and consumers have no way of knowing what treatments have been applied to imported raw products like fruits and veggies

Importers of raw fruits and vegetables must declare only those treatments required by Canadian import regulations; any other chemical treatments not required to gain access to Canadian consumers do not have to be declared.  Knowing this, CFIA inspectors take appropriate precautions, such as wearing protective clothing and/or breathing apparatus, when inspecting these kinds of imports because they have no way of knowing what poisonous or dangerous chemicals have been applied to the products they are handling.  Unfortunately, downstream food handlers and consumers are unaware that such precautions may be necessary.

CFIA is not able to ensure equivalency with Canadian standards in the food safety systems of countries that export food to Canada

To our knowledge, CFIA has not conducted any periodic foreign country equivalency assessments in 2010 with the exception of the United States (a report on this audit was posted on CFIA’s website on November 15^th).  Unless it’s a special situation they just don’t go to foreign countries.  This is in spite of the fact that the CFIA’s internal audit of the Management of Imported Food Safety released in July 2010 included this troubling finding:

“According to the Import Control Policy, greater emphasis was to be placed on foreign country equivalency assessments and audits to reduce dependence on downstream controls (e.g. for border point of entry or destination controls).  While initial foreign country equivalency assessments were conducted with some countries (e.g. United States), periodic foreign country equivalency audits are only partially delivered and no foreign country equivalency controls are in place for food commodity programs other than meat, fish and seafood, and egg. Imports of other food commodities rely almost exclusively on destination inspections and projects.”

79% of food imports come from ten countries – US, Mexico, China, France, Italy, Brazil, Chile, Thailand, Australia and the UK.  Apart from the US, were any periodic equivalency audits done in 2010?

The Management of Imported Food Safety Audit also found:

• “Consistent, comprehensive training was not evident in all programs particularly where higher work pressures exist.”
• “Staff resources have not been re-allocated to address changing import priorities, leading to difficulty in providing sufficient staff resources where significant increases in import related workloads have occurred.  Workload increases were particularly evident in Toronto region.”
• “Sampling plans in some programs are partially under-delivered making it difficult to assess to what extent compliance is achieved.  Systems to track current compliance and verification activities are not available for all programs.”

CFIA needs additional resources for import food inspection and has asked Treasury Board for more

In its response to the July 2010 Audit of the Management of Imported Food Safety, CFIA declare that it is awaiting a response to its Treasury Board submission for additional resources.  Details of CFIA’S request are unknown.  In the meantime, every CFIA program apart from processed meat inspection is under tremendous resource pressure.  For example, vacant positions in all programs except meat hygiene are not being filled.

CFIA faces funding cut

Against this backdrop, CFIA faces a significant cut to its budget of $1.8 million due to the salary freeze announced in the 2010 Budget, according to the Supplementary Estimates (B).  The CFIA’s plan to eliminate clerical positions will shift a significant administrative burden to frontline inspectors who will have less time to do their jobs to safeguard Canadian consumers.

CFIA’s plans to regulate food imports are a good idea in principle, but who will enforce the regulations?

CFIA simply does not have the inspection and enforcement resources to adequately discharge its mandate when it comes to domestic food production. So, regulating and licensing food importers will improve appearances only.

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For information: Jim Thompson 613-447-9592

The government’s attempt to obscure this conclusion through a quiet release and by misrepresenting the findings of one of three reviews cannot hide the central conclusion that the number of meat inspectors is so inadequate and the workload imposed by a new inspection system (Compliance Verification System or CVS) so great that verification tasks to ensure industry compliance with food safety requirements cannot be completed. 

According to Bob Kingston, President of the Agriculture Union – PSAC which represents federal food inspectors: “effectively, this means that consumers are eating high risk ‘ready to eat’ foods that have not been adequately inspected, produced in factories that may or may not be meeting safety requirements.”

The first of three reports, a Front-Line Assessment of the Implementation of the Compliance Verification System, is based on interviews with 53 front line meat inspectors and supervisors across the country conducted in March and April this year. 

The assessment found that inspectors remain under-trained, lack modern communications equipment, and continue to struggle with an inspection system (CVS) that lacks enforcement teeth, is unrealistic in its design and is applied in a patchwork across the country.

The assessment mirrors the findings of Sheila Weatherill, the investigator appointed by the Prime Minister more than two years ago in the wake of the listeriosis outbreak.

Weatherill concluded that the Compliance Verification System which was implemented just before the outbreak was flawed and in need of “critical improvements related to its design, planning and implementation”.  She also found that the CVS was “implemented without a detailed assessment of the resources available to take on these new (CVS) tasks”, and that a shortage of food safety inspectors was in play before the outbreak.

According to the front-line inspectors interviewed for the assessment:

• “several participants commented that, in their experience, there was insufficient staff to ensure full delivery of CVS in all plants.” 
• the new inspection system does not allow inspectors enough time to complete verification tasks and lacks effective compliance and enforcement tools when food companies violate safety requirements.
• While some inspectors have access to laptops and high speed internet connections, others “continued to work primarily with pencil and paper”. 
• Inspectors are further hobbled because they do not have direct access to historical information about companies’ food safety records contained in the central CVS database.

Training in CVS Inadequate

The assessment identified major gaps in CVS training which is widely acknowledged to be delivered most effectively through a combination of intensive classroom education and mentoring of new staff by experienced inspectors.

Yet, according to the assessment, comprehensive training is impossible to deliver because “the frontline inspection staff complement is not deep enough to regularly free up inspectors for learning and development, as one inspector’s absence must be covered by a colleague”.  The assessment further notes “that the resources required for the mentorship program could not be maintained.”

PriceWaterhouseCoopers Review Misrepresented

The findings of a PwC review have been completely misrepresented by the government.  The government is positioning the PwC report as an independent review of the resources required for CVS.  According to the government prepared summary, PwC concludes that 260 full time inspectors are required to effectively implement CVS, a finding that conveniently confirms the CFIA estimate.

This totally misrepresents the PwC report which clearly states that “This review does not constitute certification or guarantee the accuracy of CFIA’s calculation (of the number of inspectors required to effectively implement CVS).”

Fifteen months after Sheila Weatherill called for an independent review, the government still has not have a third party assessment of the resources required to effectively implement its meat inspection system.

Expert Panel

The third review of CVS is based on the views of two food safety experts: Dr. Ronald Usborne and Dr. Kerri Harris.  Many of their recommendations for improving CVS are in line with the concerns raised by inspectors consulted in the Front-line Assessment.

Meat Inspector hires overstated

Yet again, Minister Ritz overstates the number of meat inspectors his government is funding, claiming in press reports that 170 have been funded since the Weatherill report.  In fact, his own press release from September 11, 2009, announced that only 70 meat inspector job were funded.  Of these, only about 30 new meat inspector positions have been filled to date, a number that has little impact on the ability of meat inspectors to ensure safety.  Subsequent to that announcement, CFIA hired a further 100 slaughter inspectors to meet higher USDA standards, and not to inspect process meat.  

“Clearly, the CFIA remains resource starved and the inspection deficit continues. This is another red flag that the next food borne illness outbreak related to ready to eat meat products could happen at any time because the inspection system is full of holes.  The picture painted in this assessment should make consumers demand immediate action from the federal government to fix this mess before more people suffer needlessly,” Kingston said.

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For more information: Jim Thompson 613-447-9592 www.foodsafetyfirst.ca

The work you are about to undertake is critical to the safety of all Canadians. That’s why it’s important for you to know the unvarnished truth about the food safety inspection capacity shortfall at the CFIA.

When it comes to delivering the legally required oversight of Canada’s meat and food safety systems, it’s mission impossible for CFIA. The Agency simply does not have the resources to do the job Canadians expect and the CFIA’s own policies demand.

Food safety oversight will only get weaker and the risks to Canadians higher without decisive action from your committee. Consider:

• CFIA does not have an emergency fund to deal with outbreaks of food or animal-borne illnesses that are not declared as national emergencies. For the first time, CFIA is setting aside existing resources for this purpose. Sources within CFIA estimate this will result in a 10 – 15% reduction in CFIA operational budgets. This will likely delay and/or cancel plans to hire additional food inspectors, reduce industry oversight and increase risk of an emergency outbreak.
• CFIA rarely conducts Full Systems Audits of federally registered meat establishments even though this was a mandatory annual requirement until April 2008. The inspector shortage has derailed these extensive audits because they require several CFIA staff for up to five days at a time. These audits require resources the CFIA simply does not have. For example, all Full Systems Audits require a senior CFIA inspector to lead the audit. In all of Western Canada, only one CFIA staff person is qualified to fill this role.
• It’s important to note that the Maple Leaf facility, which was the source of the listeriosis outbreak last summer, was not subject to a Full Systems Audit for at least a year prior to the outbreak.
• Inspectors responsible for more than two Ready-to-Eat (RTE) meat plants do not have enough time to verify that RTE facilities under his/her oversight complying with food safety requirements, according to the following analysis of required food safety tasks.
• Yet, most RTE inspectors are responsible for three or more facilities. The inspector at the contaminated Maple Leaf plant in Toronto was responsible for seven facilities at the time of the listeriosis outbreak.

Annual Hours Required to Complete Food Safety
Inspection Tasks per RTE Facility

• The tasks and time requirements outlined above do not take into account:
  • Import/Export Requirements
    Inspectors are expected to place a priority on meat import/export inspection. This function conservatively accounts for 200 hours/year.
  • Travel
    While travel time can vary considerably, RTE facilities tend to be located in large urban centres like Toronto and Montreal where travel through metropolitan traffic can consume a considerable portion of the day and can account for hundreds of hours a year.
  • Leave
    Just like other employees, most inspectors take holidays. The typical processed meat inspector is entitled to at least 4 weeks annual leave or 150 hours a year. In addition, sick, training and other forms of eave take inspectors off the job for a period of time every year.
  • Enforcement
    It’s difficult to quantify the average time inspectors spend on enforcement actions but it can be significant.
  • Other
    We estimate inspectors spend dozens of hours every year completing tasks related to the CFIA’s own Quality Management System and Canada Labour Code health and safety requirements.
• When you add it all up, the CFIA simply does not have enough inspectors to ensure RTE meat producers are in compliance with food safety protocols.
• Faced with budget constraints the CFIA has taken a variety of cost cutting measures such as banning overtime before last summer’s tragedy. As a result, CFIA inspectors were unable to verify that pre-operation and sanitation inspections at Ready-to-Eat meat processing plants in Ontario and Quebec were properly conducted by plant employees, including at the Maple Leaf plant that was the source of the contaminated product.
• Prior to the introduction of HACCP in November 2005, pre-operation and sanitation inspections were conducted by CFIA inspectors and often resulted in orders to disassemble slicing equipment for cleaning.

These are some of the symptoms of the critical budget shortfall at the CFIA which undermines the safety of the food Canadians eat.

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For more information, please contact:

Jim Thompson
613-567-9592