Canada’s health minister says she is looking into reports the Canadian Food Inspection Agency cut back on daily inspections in domestic meat processing plants in Northern Alberta for nearly two years because of staffing shortages.

“Certainly the health and safety of Canadians is of utmost importance and the role of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is to make sure that Canadians have safe access to the foods that they eat,” Jane Philpott told reporters Tuesday after a cabinet meeting in Ottawa.

“I will certainly be working with my officials at CFIA to look into this particular matter and make sure that the appropriate inspections regime is in place,” Philpott said, adding she’s talking with her department “to get more details.”

Unedited, internal documents obtained by iPolitics in 2015 showed the CFIA had made cuts to domestic meat inspections in Northern Alberta processing plants. Those cutbacks were initiated after the agency conceded it was “not able to complete work as per program design” because of tight finances and a shortfall of six inspectors.

Those cutbacks, new documents obtained by iPolitics show, continued until October 11 – nearly two years after the initial January 2015 orders.

The policy reversal was first flagged by Agriculture Union President Bob Kingston in an Oct. 27 interview. It came despite ongoing staffing shortages. Northern Alberta’s staffing shortfall was estimated at 33 per cent in June.

Then-Health Minister Rona Ambrose repeatedly denied the cutbacks in inspections in Northern Alberta, saying reports of the cuts were “irresponsible and inaccurate.” Ambrose insisted Canada’s food safety system remained one of the best in the world.

She repeated those claims in testimony on May 7, 2015, in front of the House health committee.

“There are absolutely no cuts. I understand the president of the union says there are cuts, but the president of the CFIA has said there are no cuts,” Ambrose said. Former CFIA president Dr. Bruce Archibald, who retired Monday, was also at that committee meeting. The union has accused Ambrose of misleading MPs with that testimony.

CFIA officials have insisted repeatedly that the agency has the necessary resources “to keep food safe for Canadian consumers.”

As of January 5, 2015, domestic plants that were inspected once a day were being inspected every second day; those plants were going without a visit from an inspector two days a week, documents showed. Meanwhile, plants that previously had received inspections twice a day saw their inspections cut back to once a day, the documents said.

“Only 1 shift will have inspection coverage over the 24-hour period,” the document stated — a change that affected 40 per cent of the region’s domestic meat processing plants.

Daily inspections, the document noted, remained in place for plants exporting to the United States. Cuts to general sanitation inspections and other low-risk tasks were also made.

The cutbacks prompted one CFIA inspector to accuse the agency’s senior bureaucrats in Ottawa of “blatantly lying” about the cutbacks. “Morale is in the toilet,” the inspector told iPolitics.

CFIA Vice President Paul Mayers was accused by the Agriculture Union of misleading a parliamentary committee about inspection levels in federal meat plants. Those allegations were made in a May 13 letter to the chair of the Standing Committee on Health, Bill Casey.

“The assurance of the CFIA witness that there are inspectors present in every meat processing plant for every production shift is simply false,” the letter reads.

“You need a reliable source of accurate information about the state of food safety and inspection,” it continues. “Unfortunately, you and your colleagues do not have that at the moment.”

https://ipolitics.ca/2016/11/01/philpott-looking-into-meat-inspection-cutbacks/