The CBC has made a big splash about discovering the Canadian
Food Inspection Agency allows tolerances for salmonella contamination of
livestock and poultry feeds.
It’s reporting estimates that about 10 per cent of feed
samples tested by the CFIA show some degree of salmonella bacteria contamination.
This is just the tip of a very big iceberg.
If the CBC digs further, it will find that the CFIA has
secret tolerances for all kinds of defects and flaws, including some that put
the public at risk of food poisoning.
In the case of salmonella in feed, the CBC interviewed Dr.
Rick Holley of the University of Manitoba who said he thinks salmonella in
livestock and poultry manure goes on fields and comes back into the human food
supply on vegetables, fruits and nuts.
Of course, it could also be circulating from contaminated
feed to animals and birds, then back to fields where more livestock and poultry
feed is produced.
It seems to me that these risks will be higher for
organically-produced crops because commercial fertilizers are banned, so there
is a higher degree of dependence on manures for soil fertility, and because
chemical sanitizers are banned from in-barn use.
But let’s take a look at just a few other CFIA
tolerances.
For fertilizers, there’s been a generous tolerance based on
total blended value. That means the fertilizer farmers are buying could be way
out of specification for nitrogen, or for phosphorous, or for potash, just so long
as the blended “value,” measured by price, is within the tolerance.
Even with that large degree of tolerance, the fertilizer
industry’s track record has been abysmal; sometimes half of the retailers have
flunked.
However, not to worry. Beginning April 1, the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency will stop enforcing any standard other than outright fraud
cases brought to its attention by customers who file a complaint.
With, of
course, the necessary test results and other documentation.
Given the track record under the old system, those
complaints are likely to be as rare as a frosty noonday in July, or hen’s
teeth.
For eggs, it seems from examining CFIA inspection reports
that up to five per cent is the tolerance level for Grade A.
That includes eggs
that are cracked, dirty or fail to fall within the size specifications.
And that’s the tolerance level that’s supposed to apply at
random samples taken from point-of-sale retail shelves.
In practice, the CFIA
applies the standard at grading stations which means that a lot of Grade A eggs
in supermarkets may be worse than even this secret tolerance level allows.
Adding to the risks with eggs is another tolerance for the
temperature of water for washing eggs. It’s critical to get it hot enough to
kill harmful bacteria, but it’s often not. Again, the evidence is in the CFIA
records.
I have stacks of them here in my office, ones I obtained by
filing Access-to-Information requests.
And the really damaging details have been censored out. Why?
I guess to protect those guilty of allowing flawed eggs to masquerate as Grade
A.
But a few details escaped censorship, enough to establish that the CFIA inspectors cleared lots with five per cent or less cracks, dirts or size problems to be marketed as Grade A. More than that and they ordered the eggs "detained" for another round of grading to cull out enough bad ones to meet the tolerances.
Consider, now, the risks arising from a combination of wash
water that’s not hot enough to kill harmful bacteria and eggs that are cracked
so the bacteria can get inside.
Maybe that’s where some of the average of 6,700 cases per
year of salmonella food poisonings arise. Those are Public Health of Canada
records, and everybody in the food-safety and public health system knows
reported cases are only a small fraction of the total number of people who
suffer food poisoning.
So let’s take another case – apples.
You can go online to the CFIA website and learn that the
tolerance level for “grade defects” is 10 per cent.
Add another five per cent for apples that are smaller than
the minimum size required, plus five per cent for apples that are too large.
If the grade is Canada Extra Fancy, the tolerance is cut in
half to five per cent in a lot of “fairly well formed” apples. Kind of
subjective, that, eh?
Moving on to apples for processing, up to five per cent with
“bitter pit” are tolerated for Canada No. 1 Peelers. It’s seven per cent for
Canada No. 2 Peelers. And the same five and seven per cent tolerances apply for
“other grade defects."
Are these tolerances a risk for food safety. I guess so, if
you consider that up to two per cent of fresh apples with “decay” are to be
tolerated.
I can understand that it’s difficult to achieve perfection.
I can understand that, for example, there are tolerances for
dead insects in breakfast cereals and flour.
What I cannot understand, though, is how the CFIA can
establish and apply secret tolerances.
Does the industry and the CFIA think Canadians wouldn’t care
if they knew?
I don’t think so. I think they know consumers would raise a ruckus, and I think that’s why there’s been so much
secrecy about the tolerances.
And so much censorship of inspection reports.
