It’s a situation that has persisted for at least 50 years.
This time, however, the Americans have found fault not only
with conditions at individual packing plants, but also with the whole system.
They have complained that the Canadian Food Inspection
Agency no longer checks every carcass to ensure it is free of manure or other
harmful material contaminated with food-poisoning bacteria.
A spokesman for the CFIA told a CBC reporter that both
Canada and the United States have regulations prohibiting contamination from
entering the food chain.
A Canadian reporter first revealed evidence of Canadian
shortcomings detailed in a report by U.S. inspectors in the late 1970s on a
Burns Meats plant in Kitchener.
Subsequent investigations established that the Americans
banned more than 20 Canadian plants that year from exporting to the U.S. on the
basis of their failures to comply with Canadian standards.
Then agriculture minister Eugene Whelan responded by sending
inspectors to check U.S. meat-packing plants and banned an equal number from
exporting to Canada.
