Up to 13 million Canadians, more than 40 per cent of the population, will suffer from food-borne illnesses this year, an epidemic that medical experts say costs up to $1.3 billion annually in lost productivity and medical expenses.
E. coli-tainted spinach from the U.S.; cantaloupes from Costa Rica contaminated with salmonella; and pet food containing a toxic chemical imported from China -- recent safety scares have raised serious questions about the security of Canada's food supply and sparked criticism that the government and food industry don't do enough to ensure food imported from other countries is safe to eat.
It's an epidemic some fear will only worsen as large and small grocery stores rely increasingly on food grown on foreign soil that Canadian officials will probably never see or inspect.
In 2006, Canada imported $19.2 billion worth of food from 195 countries and jurisdictions, according to Statistics Canada. While the bulk of imports -- about $11.6 billion -- came from the U.S., Canada also imported about $756 million in food from China, $607 million from Brazil and $599 million from Mexico. Imports from the Philippines hit $91 million, nearly $66 million from Malaysia, about $26.8 million from Iran and $24 million from Ghana.
Food imports increased 21.5 per cent from 1996 to 2006, according to Statistics Canada.
A major portion of the food Canadians eat will never be inspected by the federal government before it goes on store shelves.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency also doesn't scrutinize products based on the country of origin, but instead looks more closely at high-risk food products.
High-risk food, such as meat, faces the most rigorous checks and 100 per cent of shipments into Canada are inspected, said Paul Mayers, executive director of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's animal products directorate. The agency is also currently inspecting 100 per cent of shipments of leafy greens, like lettuce, into Canada as a result of last year's outbreaks.
But the agency inspects less than 10 per cent of shipments of low-risk products, which includes a majority of fresh produce that comes into Canada.
It's a "risk-based" approach to food safety -- which the agency and many food experts say helps the government manage resources and focus on areas that have the greatest potential risk.
But as the number of outbreaks and illnesses linked to foreign food continues to mount and an increasing proportion of the Canadian diet is made up of food imported from other countries, there are serious questions about whether food growers and sellers, as well as the government, are doing enough to keep what Canadians eat safe.
Produce safety is a relatively new concept and there are still many farms in North America -- let alone less-developed countries -- that haven't adopted the systems needed to help prevent problems with food, said Ben Chapman, a PhD student at the University of Guelph's plant agriculture department. Mr. Chapman, who is doing his doctoral thesis on food handlers, has visited about 500 farms as part of his research and says simple things like controlling water sources and having permanent, clean bathroom facilities can help prevent bacteria from getting in our food supply.
"There's lots of different factors that lead to foodborne illness," Mr. Chapman said. "The things that make people sick are hard to inspect for."
Federal health officials say they're becoming more and more worried about the fact fresh fruits and vegetables shipped to Canada from other countries, including those with lower safety standards, are making up an increasingly large proportion of cases of foodborne illness.
"One of the more recent trends that we've observed that is of some concern to us is we are seeing an increasing number of outbreaks linked to produce," said Paul Sockett, director of foodborne, waterborne and zoonotic infections at the Public Health Agency of Canada, which estimates up to 13 million people in this country will suffer from a foodborne illness this year. "I'm talking about plants, fruit, types of materials, even nuts. A lot of this, actually, is coming into the country rather than the stuff that's actually produced within Canada itself."
While imported products help keep prices down and give consumers choices, the reality is that the farther away our food originates, the more difficult it is for the government and food industry to guarantee it's safe.
"It's getting worse, not better, because of the fact we're importing more and more food from places like China, where food safety is a joke," said Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association. "It's endemic, inherent in an industrialized food production system that you have a lot of filth and disease spread."
Foreign-grown produce has brought new types of bacteria and foodborne illness into Canada in recent years, such as a parasite found on soft fruit grown in central South America and salmonella bacteria on bean sprouts and lettuce from the United States.
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