Notes for an Address by Carole Swan, President of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food Subcommittee on Food Safety

House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario

April 20, 2009

Check Against Delivery

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee. My name is Carole Swan and I’m the President of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. We look forward to assisting the Committee with its important work.

Let me start by stating how saddened and disheartened all of us at the CFIA are by the food-related illnesses experienced last year. We want to express our sincere sorrow to those families who lost loved ones or were otherwise affected.

Secondly, I want to clearly state that our Agency staff, be they inspectors, lab technicians, recall investigators, scientists or any other classification, are highly skilled and committed professionals dedicated to the protection of Canadians. This is an organization that truly cares about food safety.

Thirdly, we are not perfect. The lessons learned documents that we released on Friday were direct and honest. We did not use that process to point fingers at others. We are focussed on improvement.

In my remarks today, I would like to cover three areas:

• First, what the Agency does.
• Second, the challenges regulators face in a global food market.
• Third, what we are doing to continuously improve food safety.

I will then ask Dr Brian Evans to outline what the CFIA has done specifically in relation to the listeriosis outbreak.

1) What the CFIA does

The CFIA is a science-based regulator with a mandate to safeguard food, animal health, and plant protection. Our plant and animal mandates also relate to food safety, as foods are derived from these resources.

In support of this mandate, the CFIA works:

1. to identify and prevent risks to our food supply, whether the food comes from Canada or abroad;
2. to identify and control animal diseases that pose a risk to human health such as BSE (or mad cow disease as it is commonly referred to) and avian influenza; and
3. to protect the country’s animal and plant resources, both in the field and in the forest, from devastating foreign pests and diseases that could negatively affect the food supply.
   The CFIA has inspectors, veterinarians, scientists and other specialists in nearly 500 locations across Canada. It operates at border crossings, processing plants, slaughterhouses and in labs and research facilities throughout the country.

The CFIA is part of a national network responsible for food safety that includes Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, provincial and territorial departments of health, and the public health units found in local municipalities.

Health Canada sets food safety policy and standards. The CFIA puts these policies and standards into effect through regulation, inspection and enforcement.

The Public Health Agency of Canada focuses on disease detection, reporting and prevention. It is the primary federal contact with provincial public health authorities. Our work intersects with PHAC if there is an illness caused by food-borne diseases, as PHAC monitors and reports on such illnesses.

In terms of the CFIA’s role in food safety:

• We inspect, test and audit, and review food production to verify that industry lives up to its legal requirement to produce safe food. When they don’t, we take enforcement action to bring them into compliance.
• We conduct investigations when we think food safety has been compromised or when we are alerted to a problem.
• We issue food recalls where necessary.

All partners in food safety have a responsibility to be constructive in their efforts to improve the protection of human health using science, international best practices, and new techniques. We look forward to hearing from other witnesses, as well as this committee’s report and that of the independent investigator.

2) Challenges all regulators are facing

Like food regulators around the world, the CFIA is facing new challenges.

The trading and processing of food has become more complex than ever, due to globalization and the sourcing of food ingredients from all over the world going into processed finished food products.

This economic trend is also spurred by changing demographics and consumer preferences for fresh, convenient, exotic and imported foods.

Since the Agency was established in 1997, the nature of the challenges we face has evolved, as has the frequency of events having significant health or food safety implications.

For example, in the past two years we have dealt with several significant challenges, including melamine contamination in Chinese dairy products, E. coli in Canadian and American beef, Salmonella in US peppers, and, currently, Salmonella in US peanuts and pistachios.

I cite these to illustrate that the CFIA, like food inspection agencies around the world, is facing increasing pressures and challenges.

The listeriosis outbreak from contaminated Maple Leaf Food product last year was the largest food recall in Canada.

The events of last summer exposed vulnerabilities in collective surveillance and the national protective network.

In the Agency’s lessons learned review, our goal was to provide an assessment that was comprehensive, honest and sincere. We do recognize that our work to improve is never done; that continuous improvement is key to food safety.

Through the review process, we determined where immediate improvements could be made, and we made them. There is more to be done and we welcome the guidance of this committee and of the independent investigator to advance this effort yet further.

3) What we are doing to improve food safety

Given the increased complexity of challenges in food safety, a number of steps have been taken to make improvements. Let me provide some examples:

• In December 2007, the government announced the Food and Consumer Safety Action Plan to strengthen Canada’s food and product safety system.
• Over the past year the Agency has hired additional inspectors to provide front-line protection against food safety risks.
• Last year we established an Academic Advisory Panel of independent experts to review food safety and public health protection.
• We have established an external Audit Committee to provide oversight to the operations of the Agency.
• And for Listeria control, we put in place strong additional requirements for industry that will give us a better early warning system. We’ve stepped up our own verification testing to monitor industry compliance with those requirements. Dr. Evans will provide detail on this.

Conclusion

Let me conclude by assuring you that the CFIA is committed to food safety. Food safety is our number one priority. As an institution and as individuals, we are committed to doing the best job we can.

Following the events of last summer, we took a hard look at ourselves and immediately began to make changes. We did not wait to act.

The events of last summer continue to guide our efforts in providing strengthened protection and detection. While it is important to understand the past, the job is left undone if we don’t translate that understanding into action.

We appreciate the committee’s guidance, as well as that of Sheila Weatherill, the independent investigator, in considering further improvements for all of the partners in food safety.

Thank you and I turn it over to Dr. Evans.