Listeria Hysteria Can’t Hurt

(Globe and Mail – Sylvain Charlebois, University of Regina)

The latest listeria outbreak is a warning that cannot be ignored. It reminds us how vulnerable we are to threats generated from our food supply. And the simple fact is, our government-monitored food supply is no longer capable of protecting us.

It is chilling to read forecasts published in the past decade by food-safety experts. Some analysts suggest the next 9/11 will occur through our food supplies. Such a menace is particularly imaginable because our food-safety architecture is inadequate. It took seven months to find the source of contamination in the 2006 American spinach recall. Even worse, we still don’t know whether tomatoes were the culprit of the salmonella outbreak earlier this year. Our ability to track products in North America, let alone Canada, is highly deficient.

No individual organization is capable of meeting these challenges. In recent years, Canadians have had faith that government knows best when it comes to public health issues, and rightly so. Our public health system has served us so well that it has become unnatural to think that profit-driven organizations care for the common good. But while many Canadians believe we should rely solely on publicly funded authorities, the expanding scope of modern food systems is debunking such wishful thinking.

The food industry is a loose collective of organizations whose primary goal is to provide safe food. But its efforts are failing. Studies suggest that only 2% of everything we eat in Canada is audited by competent public authorities. The entire Canadian food industry represents more than $100-billion in annual revenue, so the scope of our food industry is barely riotous.

For the food industry to be capable of meeting its mandate, the private sector needs to play a pro-active role with public agencies in food-safety practices. Food-safety authorities need to build reliable partnerships to counter potential threats from the food supply, human induced or not. Accountability, transparency and responsiveness are key qualities we need to foster in order to manage risk.

With 5,000 on staff, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has the capacity to investigate outbreaks, but it needs to modify its role as authority. Since its inception in 1997, the CFIA has matured into a competent organization that is willing to learn from the past. Nonetheless, markets and consumer behaviour are changing rapidly. The CFIA and provincial/municipal food-safety authorities cannot keep up, and public food-safety resources are overdrawn. The CFIA’s priority should be to promote shared interests among food-industry players.

We also need to redefine the geographical scope of our food-safety systems. We import more than $25-billion worth of food products every year in Canada. We need to include the Americans in our monitoring practices. Setting up a continentally based system would be challenging but necessary to manage future risks.

When developing food risk management strategies, it is crucial to consider how consumers evaluate risk practices. Pro-active consumer protection, for example, is often positively related to consumer evaluation of risk management quality. Pro-active measures include enhanced food traceability, education and awareness, surveillance, proper risk management certifications, and improved supply chain control. These responsibilities should be shared between the public and private sectors. Closer co-operation will help identify problems and anticipate threats.

The “us versus them” culture is too prevalent in the food business. We are faced with a threat - but also an opportunity to improve Canadian food safety. Rather than forcing government to play the role of industry enforcer, we must protect the rapport between consumers and the food industry before it is too late. See also this article in the Regina Leader-Post.