Thursday, March 19, 2020

Canadian meat inspection flaws detailed

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has some shortcomings, according to a report by inspectors from the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture.

The report, filed in December, 2018, and released under Access to Information, said that “FSIS auditors identified deficiencies due to inadequate enforcement of sanitation standards operating practices and sanitation performance standards requirements by CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) personnel.”

The report also said “auditors identified deficiencies related to HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) design, monitoring and recordkeeping.”

It also said the CFIA “had not identified deficiencies nor documented deficiencies that could lead to potential unsanitary conditions affecting all audited establishments.”

The CFIA complained that the FSIS auditors should have said “some”, not “all”, audited plants.

The FSIS findings have been heavily censored, in some cases blocking out whole page-long descriptions of the auditors’ findings.

All of the FSIS findings are accompanied by CFIA comments, most of them simply citing what Canadian regulations and operating procedures require.

The FSIS has been auditing Canadian packing plants and CFIA labs for more than 50 years. 

In the 1970s, scores of Canadian plants were banned from exporting meat to the United States because they failed to meet Canadian Food Inspection Agency standards.

After decades of deficiencies, the federal government transferred CFIA inspection from the agriculture to the health department in October, 2013.