More inspection staff, round-the-clock response teams and a national surveillance system are some of the measures announced by the Canadian Government as part of its revamp in the wake of listeria contamination incidents in 2008 in which 22 people died after eating meat produced by Maple Leaf.
Kick-started government response
Chris Kype, president of Food Processors of Canada, applauded the government’s action as a good first step in addressing the issues raised by Sheila Weatherill following her investigation into the crisis that revealed systemic failures in the nation’s food safety regime.
“This money has kick-started the government’s response to the report,” he said. “The Government should be commended for taking these measures.”
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced the programme would act on all 57 recommendations made by Weatherill’s report.
"We are making significant investments to hire more inspectors; update technologies and protocols; and, improve communication so that Canadians have the information they need to protect their families,” said Minister Ritz.
A spokeswoman for the Agriculture Ministry told FoodProductionDaily.com that the cash was new and was not being pulled from any other budget in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).
New measures
The ministers said the funds would improve the Government’s ability to “prevent, detect and respond to future food-borne illness outbreaks”.
Under the measures, 166 new food safety staff will be employed, with 70 of those focusing on ready-to-eat-meat facilities. The government has also pledged to provide 24/7 availability of health risk assessment teams to improve support to food safety investigations. This last development comes as a direct response to Weatherill’s report published in July 2009 which highlighted the fact that Health Canada’s Health Risk Assessment Team was not working on a round-the-clock basis in summer 2008 which left “gaps in the coverage” during the response.
The cash will also be used to improve communications among federal and provincial department and agencies – another shortcoming identified in the listeria probe.
The new programme will further bid to improve communication to those most vulnerable to a food-borne outbreak During the Maple Leaf outbreak consumers were not given the necessary information, said investigators. Federal communications were characterized as “slow off the mark” and they “ceased too quickly”.
The plan will see improvements in detection methods for Listeria monocytogenes and other hazards in food to reduce testing times and enable a faster response during food safety investigations. This will also expand the Government's ability to carry out extra Listeria testing.
Beginning
The minister said a third-party audit of the food safety system would be launched to make sure resources were “dedicated to the right priorities”.
Kype added: “I think this is just the beginning. I also think we have to put it into perspective as the Canadian food safety system is relatively good.”
But the president said the body agreed with the main findings of the Weatherill report.