Unhappy Canadian meat inspectors raise consumer concerns

Federal inspectors and veterinarians sound alarms about threats posed by understaffing and the advent of self-regulation in the meat industry

By: Paul Weinberg

  The people who inspect the meat Canadians eat are not a happy lot. For years, meat inspectors employed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) have been complaining about understaffing and unhealthy production practices. Now federal veterinarians from one of Canada's more conservative unions have gone on record with concerns about meat inspection in Canada.
  Last week the Auditor General of Canada (www.oag-bvd.gc.ca) released a comprehensive report raising concerns about staff shortages in food inspection. Apparently sparked by this, the union representing 500 veterinarians working in several hundred slaughterhouses under federal jurisdiction, has ended a lengthy silence on food safety issues and blasted the CFIA itself.
 

The Auditor General has validated staffing concerns that PIPSC quietly and PSAC noisily have been raising for years

  In 1999, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) (www.pipsc.ca), which represents veterinarians at the CFIA, had released its own damning document on the same agency, The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, A Failed Experiment. It listed concerns about a shortage of veterinarians in the meat plants, as well as a too-close relationship between the CFIA and the food industry.
  These issues were then taken up in discussions between PIPSC and the CFIA, which had been formed in 1997 with the merging of food safety and inspection functions of various federal government departments.
  Subsequently, however, the damning Failed Experiment document was pulled off the PIPSC web site. Before the release of the Auditor General's report this month, PIPSC media relations officer Francine Pressault had told Straight Goods the union would refrain from commenting on the agency because of the ongoing consultation with the employer. She termed union's position on the CFIA as being "neutral."
 

Glossary of acronyms and why they matter: CFIA - Canadian Food Inspection Agency - responsible for inspecting meat PIPSC - Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada - represents veterinarians who inspect meat for CFIA PSAC - Public Service Alliance of Canada - represents inspectors who inspect meat for CFIA

  PIPSC had not completely given up its advocacy role. It has defended the right of its members among the scientists in Health Canada to publicly blow the whistle on their department. But in the last two years, it refused to join other its sister union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) in the ranks of the Canadian Health Coalition, a labour/consumer advocacy group that outspokenly condemns various food safety practices of the CFIA and the Canadian food industry at large. The Coalition, for instance, opposes the use of hormones in beef by the food industry. The PIPSC takes no position, even though some of its members in the Health Coalition are also against the practice.
  This reluctance by PIPSC to antagonize, which contrasts so markedly with PSAC's stance, seems to have ended with the last week's Auditor-General's report. This could be merely because it will provide PIPSC with ammunition in its current negotiations for a new contract on behalf of the veterinarians and other CFIA scientists. But the report validates staffing concerns that PIPSC quietly and PSAC noisily have been raising for years.
  Thirty to fifty percent of CFIA staff veterinarians are set to retire within the next five to seven years. The agency has no contingency plan to deal with it, PIPSC vice-president Michele Demers told Straight Goods. "We don't see any focus planning for future recruitment needs; we don't see any incentive on their part to attract young veterinarians."
  Employment conditions are also an issue for the federal veterinarians, charged with examining animals upon arrival at the slaughterhouses, as well as the thousands of carcasses that go past them on the line per hour. PIPSC takes the position that its employees should have "a reasonable number of animals to inspect within certain time limits."
  Also, the federal veterinarians are under a lot of pressure by the meat industry itself not to slow down the production line and thereby mess up the companies' rigid quick delivery scheduling with the retail stores and supermarkets. "The plant managers will come and scream and shout [saying] 'what are you doing.' The employees are not paid if the production line is not going," says Michel Gingras, the PIPSC negotiator engaged in current bargaining with the CFIA.
  On the other hand, neither Gingras nor Demers could comment on the issues raised by the other group responsible for food safety in the meat plants, the inspectors, represented by PSAC. PSAC has been prominent in publicly supporting the Coalition on consumer issues such as federal deregulation of food inspection. Inspectors belonging to PSAC have filed 5,000 grievances as a result of effort by their employer to reclassify jobs.
  Food inspectors and veterinarians complement each other: the former have two years of training in public hygiene; while the veterinarians are scientists who are schooled in veterinary medicine.
  The approximately 1,100 inspectors stationed in the meat plants under federal jurisdiction watch the line of carcasses and viscera going by them and hold back anything of concern. It is the veterinarians who determine if this selection of meat or a portion of it is not fit for human consumption.
  Yves Ducharme is National President of the agriculture union within PSAC, which represents the non-scientific inspectors. He says his members are concerned the federal government will be proceeding later this year with self-regulation in the food production industry once a similar process is approved in the United States.
  CFIA spokesperson Doug Scott denies self-regulation is happening, but Ducharme counters that employees of the food producers themselves in the meat plants will play a greater role in the inspection process under new regulations being planned in Ottawa. He predicts federal food inspectors will eventually be relegated to the sidelines as monitors of the process. "The industry employees are not in an impartial position. If they transfer the inspections responsibility to the industry, this means we are going to have less inspectors," says Ducharme.
  Yet, during the interview with PIPSC, Michel Gingras told Straight Goods, he was not aware of the issues of self-regulation as raised by the PSAC. Also, while Ducharme is explicit about the impact of inadequate inspection on "the health and safety of the consumer," Gingras did not respond directly to this reporter's question whether PIPSC considers meat safe in Canada.
  Both the PSAC and PIPSC are concerned about the speed-up of work and insufficient personnel in the random meat inspection process in Canada. They would appear to be potential allies, but they don't seem to talk to each other much.
  PSAC, with 140,000 members, represents a host of federal government employees from clerks to blue collar workers, while PIPSC primarily speaks for professionals and scientists and has 36,000 members.
  "We are two different unions; we represent different interests. Some people may find that superficial. But to our members it is very important. We [in PIPSC] are dealing with professional issues, the public health issues. We work in a different way than other unions," says Gringras

Paul Weinberg is a Toronto journalist specializing in information technology issues.

Posted: February 12, 2001

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