More Food For Thought

Oops, it's always so inconvenient when details are revealed, but that's life and it's most certainly politics of a certain kind. While Stephane Dion and Jack Layton are busy-busy smearing the record of Stephen Harper, and warning Canadians that the deep dark agenda (hitherto-hidden), of the Conservative Party will be revealed the moment that the current prime minister obtains a majority in next Tuesday's election, they gave us a sneak preview of that agenda.

Prime Minister Harper and the Conservative Party plan to continue their love affair with big corporate interests, sacrificing the safety of Canadians' food supply. Maple Leaf Foods and the listeriosis event that made so many people ill and was responsible for the deaths of at least ten people - admittedly elderly and immune-impaired - is a mere tip of the iceberg. Food inspection deregulation is the cause of the outbreak and the evil agenda of the Conservatives the culprit.

The Liberals would never endanger the health of Canadians by investing in such dangerously slack oversight. They take the situation seriously indeed. Elect the Liberals and Stephane Dion as prime minister and Canadians can be assured that food safety will always be foremost and uppermost in the government's capable hands. Except it's the Liberals, alas, who initiated the much-maligned Compliance Verification System.

Federally regulated meat plants were essentially handed the primary responsibility for policing themselves, and ensuring sanitary, safe and precise hygiene would be unremittingly practised, with a minimum of interference and oversight by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspection agents. Agents would still be present, still check that industry standards were upheld, but the bulk of the policing would revert to the industry.

Oddly enough Ujjal Dosanjh, now running for re-election in his Vancouver riding, had been in charge of food safety policy at the time this new initiative was put in place, as minister of health. And since a party does well to utilize the experience of its seasoned members, Mr. Dosanjh is currently health critic for the Liberals, in the shadow cabinet of the Official Opposition.

Yet their initiative and the unfortunate listeriosis break-out that caused a massive recall of products and fear among consumers was due to that original 2005 initiative. Which hasn't stopped the Liberals during this election campaign from thundering outrage at the Conservatives who inherited the system from the Liberals. Shrilly warning the electorate that this type of deregulation reflects the Conservative ideology.

No fewer than nine news releases damning the Conservatives for their uncaring attitude toward the health and welfare of Canadians were released throughout the campaign, branding Stephen Harper's government as irresponsible and in league with the manufacturers. As though, in any event, it isn't in the best interests of food handlers to produce impeccably safe products.

Who, after all, will continue to buy and to use products proven to be unsafe? The listeriosis event did have one benefit to the industry: it has taught them that their best-practise techniques in ensuring slicing-machine routine cleaning and safety had some very serious problems, despite that they were following the manufacturers' instructions for cleaning the devices.

They have now adapted additional, increased cleaning methods necessitating a laborious and time-consuming disassembling of the machines to ensure the erasure of the deadly bacteria, on a regular, timely schedule. They are, after all, in the business of providing a product that people will value for its taste, convenience and safety. They won't be long in business if that trust is misplaced.

The entire unfortunate occurrence resulting in untimely deaths and hospital visits for less severely affected victims, is not yet over. There is a considerable time lapse between exposure to the bacterium and resulting infection. The simple truth is no food production and distribution system is entirely safe. Listeriosis bacterium can thrive on fresh produce, on any kind of food products.

We are exposed to those bacterium constantly, and always have been. Most peoples' immune systems are capable of dealing with mild infections. And there's another funny thing; the public is in an uproar over a perceived fault in the safety of the food processing industry's practices and products, yet many more instances of food poisoning occur in peoples' own homes.

And those instances occur because we ourselves do not practise good hygiene techniques when we handle food. From ensuring that food likely to harbour bacterium doesn't come in contact with other foods to contaminate them, to adequately cleaning the kitchen appliances, including kitchen counters and cutting boards after each use, and properly refrigerating foods prone to quick deterioration.

Perhaps worst of all is the really miserable fact that although we know better, we don't practise the most elemental of all hygienic proven techniques, to protect ourselves from bacterium and viral contamination. How do these following statistics fit into our comfortable notion of taking responsibility for health outcomes?

The Health & Hygiene Council Canada revealed yesterday that an international survey on hygiene awareness and practise places Canadians far down on the intelligent compliance scale. Yes, a high proportion of us acknowledge the importance of washing hands but in fact we're failing in teaching our children, of whom a mere 37% will wash hands before mealtime. Little wonder, since only 44% of adults do.

And here's the cruncher. We're so alert and assaulted when we suspect hygiene to be faulty in food production, but we fall down personally in ensuring our own hygiene. Not so in other parts of the world. Take, for example, 80% of parents in Malaysia, 79% in India, and 70% in India who ensure their children wash hands before mealtimes.

Handwashing and food surface disinfection are fundamental things we do ourselves to protect ourselves from germs. We get a failing grade. We don't handle or cook food properly. And yet we go into hysterics when we feel that government isn't adequately protecting us from harmful after-effects of ingesting food inadequately protected against contamination by food-preparation companies.

And we're all so gullible, believing what antagonistic politicians claim is the other guy's failings, never their own.