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The impact of $56 million in federal budget cuts on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and food safety continues to fuel a war of conflicting claims in Ottawa.
Last week, Public Service Alliance of Canada union president Bob Kingston said announced cuts will make the Canadian food system less safe, creating a system of “cross your fingers” and hope for the best.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz fired back that the issue is saving money by finding efficiencies in CFIA.
“We would never put food safety at risk.”
And while it would not make a senior official available to respond to union charges, CFIA issued a statement insisting it is “strengthening its approach” to food inspection.
“The bottom line is clear — protecting the safety of the Canadian food supply remains the agency’s top priority.”
At an April 24 news conference, Kingston offered a far different version of the impact of changes at CFIA.
Citing comments made by operations vice-president Stephen Baker at private meetings with employees to explain the changes, he said the future includes:
- the end of pre-clearing imported meat before it gets to the border
- a major revamp of inspecting product labels
- a new inspection system that “will radically alter the way in which we actually do verification and compliance and enforcement activities in the inspection space”
In answer to a question about the impact of a 10 percent CFIA budget cut and claims that front-line inspectors will not be affected, the union says Baker replied: “I don’t know how you can take 10 percent of your budget and not deal with the front line.”
Kingston said the clear message from agency executives is that while some front-line inspectors will remain, they will not be experts in the commodity they are inspecting but rather generalists whose main job will be to review company records of what they have done and decide whether they followed the rules.
“With fewer resources and inspection staff, CFIA is being forced to water down food safety inspection and introduce more industry self-regulation,” he told the Parliament Hill news conference.
In its statement, CFIA said the end of pre-clearance for imported meat is part of an “inspector modernization” plan.
“The CFIA is planning to supplement traditional inspection methods that focus on the processing environment and the end product with more sophisticated science and risk-based approaches in order to verify that industry’s controls are effective and that industry is producing safe food on an ongoing basis,” it said.
During a news conference, Ritz said changes at the agency are meant to move it from the world of paper records to an electronic information technology age.
Meanwhile, CFIA announced on its website last week that within two years it will be closing three prairie quarantine stations that it says are no longer used — at Monchy, Sask., Coutts, Alta., and Nisku, Alta.
It said services will not be affected and no inspector positions will be eliminated.
http://www.producer.com/2012/05/staff-reductions-will-make-food-system-unsafe-union%E2%80%A9/
