WINNIPEG, MB (NEWS1130) – Inspectors are back at the XL Foods plant in Alberta at the centre of the country’s massive beef recall.

As the Canadian Food Inspection Agency checks for fixes of the deficiencies that led to the E. coli outbreak, one expert has some fixes for the system that monitors the safety of our food.

Rick Holley is a Professor in the Department of Food Science at the University of Manitoba who hopes a new, unified inspection bill (Bill S-11) will lead to changes.

“I want to see the new regulations that come with the new act. As it’s structured right now, I don’t have a lot of confidence that just the conversion from three acts to one is going to make an awful lot of difference,” Holley says.

“The bill itself is set up to allow the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to operate in its inspection responsibilities in a more efficient fashion. I’m all for that, but the bill is entitled Safe Food for Canadians — it only applies to federally inspected plants, not provincial plants that look after meat and the other commodities. Federally inspected food represents about 50 per cent of the food dollar that you and I spend so I think a less misleading title for the bill would be Safe Food for 50 per cent of Canadians.”

If he could make changes, Holley would address what he calls a major deficiency in our food safety system.

“The first thing that I’d do is develop a foodborne illness surveillance system in Canada. We don’t have one right now and you cannot expect any food safety system to operate properly if you don’t know what the obstacles are,” he believes. “If you don’t know what foods are causing most cases of foodborne illness and you don’t know what organisms are creating the problems, how can you possibly put in place a strategy to address the pressing problems? You are more or less stumbling around in the dark, chasing after outbreaks. The bigger issues associated with where the next outbreak will come from are not being addressed in this country.”

“We have regulatory structure that is second to few countries. I’d say out of all the different federal regulatory agencies in the world, I’d prefer to have the Canadian Food Inspection Agency responsible for the safety of food I eat. They are a progressive organization, sure they make mistakes but they are working with information that should be developed by Health Canada on foodborne illness surveillance in order for them to know where to put the biggest chunk of their resources they have available to them to address these problems. This is just not happening,” Holley explains.

“As long we don’t know what the problems are how can we effectively prevent them from happening? The government puts in place HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point Program) plans that really are the guts, if you like, of any food safety system. These are installed at the majority of food processing plants in Canada but, even then, there are some that are not officially recognized by the CFIA. Why are these plants are operating?” Holley asks.

“The new Food Safety and Modernization Act in the US has been developed to require plants above a certain size to have HACCP plans in place. We have no comparable initiative in Canada, the new food safety bill does not make that requirement. To be proactive, that’s the direction we must go in.”

“HACCP plans for small business are a real barrier, they’re an incredible hurdle, but if we put our minds to it, there’s a way in which we can develop systems that are consistent with HACCP plans that can be applied to smaller businesses. There’s no excuse for larger businesses not have these plans fully approved and operational today. That’s where the pressure’s got to be.”

There have been 11 confirmed cases — including one in BC — of E. coli poisoning from tainted beef processed at the XL Foods plant in Alberta.