Editorials

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Thought for food

By: Editorial

Posted: 10/4/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Whether it is because Canadians are eating more food or growing less of it, an increasingly large proportion of the food we consume comes from other countries. This is not really anything new. Everyone knows that mangoes don't grow in Manitoba -- at least not naturally -- and that kangaroo stew usually comes from Australia.

Neither is it usually a matter of concern. Most foodstuffs that are imported to Canada are inspected before they ever get to our tables or into our tummies. As the volume and variety of imported food goes up, however, it is becoming a worry, or at least more of problem than it has been.

This new wrinkle worrying our brow does not come from some group of eco-nuts or 100-mile food fanatics. Rather it comes straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak -- the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, whose job it is to ensure that food imported into Canada is safe for Canadians to eat.

That is not so easy a job as one might assume and as, the CFIA has discovered. Meat, eggs, fish and seafood are subject to Canadian controls and inspections, but many other food products are subject only to inspection by their country of origin, things such as canned goods and fruit, or even peanut butter. Because there are no Canadian inspectors on the ground at their points of origin, they can be contaminated -- China, for example, where Canada gets an ever-increasing amount of its food, is infamous for exporting lead-laden products.

The United States is beginning to recognize the problem; it has 22 food inspectors in China -- Canada has not kept pace, but even if it did, proportionally, it would have only 2.2 inspectors in a nation that has become a huge exporter of food. So far, Ottawa has avoided or averted any major catastrophes through good luck and "border blitzes" when an alarm is sounded. What Ottawa really needs, however, is a plan, because it does not seem to have one for a problem that could get worse.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 4, 2010 A10

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