Canadian Perspectives Winter 2005

Deep Integration of our Food Safety Regulations

"There are two sets of regulations in the U.K. There are those which the big corporations campaign against; and those which they tolerate and even encourage, because they can afford them while their smaller competitors cannot. This is why it is legal to stuff our farm animals with antibiotics, our vegetables with pesticides, our processed food with additives and our water tables with nitrates, but more or less illegal to use any process which does not involve stainless steel, refrigeration and fluorescent lighting." (George Monbiot, "The Age of Entropy Is Here," The Guardian, August 24, 2004)

In September 2004 the federal government’s External Advisory Committee on Smart Regulation recommended a government-wide shift to regulation based upon risk management. They urged harmonization with U.S. regulations because "A key irritant for industry is the proliferation of minor differences between Canadian and American regulations, given an increasingly integrated North American market."

Health Canada’s proposed new legislation, the Canada Health Protection Act, is based upon risk management. Coincidentally or not, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently shifted to a "risk management" approach for new drug approvals

The proposed changes to Canada’s regulatory regime linking our regulatory system so strongly to the American system have disturbing implications.

Canada is far too dependent on exporting meat and livestock to the U.S. The vast majority of our exports go to the U.S., for two reasons: we allow certain veterinary drugs for use in factory farming (including antibiotics promoting antibiotic resistance and growth hormones leading to cancers) that have been banned in Europe, and Canada refuses to do extensive BSE (mad cow) testing.

Due to the trade-based agriculture policy of the post-FTA/NAFTA era, we produce far more beef, poultry and hogs than Canadians can consume, and production has shifted from a family-farm based system to an industrialized, capital-intensive factory farm system. Any interruption in U.S. exports quickly becomes a national economic disaster, as we have seen with BSE and avian flu, and potentially with hogs as well.

Industrial livestock production creates fertile ground for compromised food safety - but you can be sure that plenty of stainless steel, refrigeration and fluorescent lighting is involved at every stage. Thousands of animals are confined in the smallest space possible in order to produce the maximum quantity of meat in the shortest time at the least cost. Antibiotics are added to the feed in order to prevent disease and to promote growth. Hormones are administered to increase weight gain. Feed made from rendered carcasses is used as a protein supplement. Animals are finally shipped long distances to huge centralized meat-packing plants where they are killed, processed and shipped out to the retail supermarkets across the country.

Canadians would be more economically secure, eat higher-quality meat and have a more vibrant rural economy under regulations and policies designed to ensure meat was produced by farmers in a healthy, environmentally friendly and economically viable way and that did not depend upon harmful drugs, hormones and animal protein feed supplements. This is possible if we break the dependency on the U.S. export market and create a made-in-Canada regulatory regime, which would permit Canadian producers to export to Europe, Japan and other countries that put the health of their citizens ahead of the shared values of their agribusiness and pharmaceutical corporations.

As a first step, our regulator must put the health of Canadians ahead of the profits of our own pharmaceutical companies. The Council of Canadians is calling for an independent and transparent inquiry into the July 2004 firing of the three Health Canada scientists, Shiv Chopra, Margaret Haydon and Gerard Lambert, who have consistently objected to Health Canada’s approvals of veterinary drugs that have serious human health implications.

The Council of Canadians joined with the Canadian Environmental Law Association in calling upon the External Advisory Committee on Smart Regulation to recognize protection as the overarching priority of regulation; to emphasize the need for federal scientific, regulatory and enforcement capacity; to acknowledge regulations, not voluntary initiatives, as the foundation for ensuring protection of the public; and to inject precautionary measures into risk assessment and risk management processes.

The Council of Canadians, as a member of the Beyond Factory Farming Coalition, continues to promote livestock production for health and social justice. For more information, see our web site at www.beyondfactoryfarming.org.

Cathy Holtslander is the Project Organizer, Beyond Factory Farming, for The Council of Canadians.

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