The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has issued at least 28 high-risk-food recalls already this year, keeping food safety top of mind with consumers and voters.
Ten British Columbians fell ill last week after consuming tainted head cheese produced by Brandt Meat Packers for Freybe Gourmet Foods, the worst in a spate of scares including a warning just hours later that local Safeway stores were carrying ready-to-eat salads contaminated by E. coli. Then Tuesday came a warning that tahini paste is contaminated by salmonella, a product now subject to a nationwide recall. CFIA issues about 350 tainted-food notices a year; most are in the low-risk category.
The federal Liberal and New Democratic parties are poised to make political hay, watching each contamination scare with mounting anticipation. Each has produced platform documents detailing a comprehensive food policy including broad outlines of proposed changes to the regulations governing the industry that employs one in eight Canadians. The Liberals in particular are planning a thorough overhaul of Canada's food inspection systems, which they view as a vulnerability of the Conservative government.
The Liberals' national food policy paper, Rural Canada Matters, promises a review of the CFIA and the Public Health Agency of Canada and a cash injection of $50 million to improve food inspection with an eye to extending Canadian food handling standards to products grown and processed in other countries for import to Canada. CFIA employs more than 3,200 field inspectors and another 4,500 inhouse professionals in support of the nation's food inspection system.
The number of field inspectors has increased by 25 per cent since a 2004 outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, popularly known as mad cow disease. In the post-BSE period with additional testing and inspection required to keep the world's markets open to Canadian beef, the agency's annual expenditures have increased by about $100 million to $645 million. CFIA's resources were stretched again by last year's outbreak of avian influenza.
Beyond leveraging the rise in tainted food alerts, opposition parties are keen to pick a food fight with the government on multiple fronts. A change of government in the next federal election would also likely trigger consideration of mandatory labelling for genetically engineered foods and tighter restrictions on trans fats in processed foods.
"I think that everybody is worried about Food Inc. and the direction that Canada has gone with [genetically engineered crops]," said Carolyn Bennett, a Liberal member of Parliament from Toronto. "Especially when you consider the suicide rate of farmers and the fact that these people want to be independent and make their own decisions about what they put in the ground."
"Farmers want to produce food that is good for Canadians and good for their families," she said.
Four genetically engineered crops are widely grown in Canada (soy, corn, canola and beets) and ingredients from those crops are found in about 70 per cent of packaged foods, according to Greenpeace.
