Transparency

  • Former Health Canada chief goes public after safely retiring

    Posted: November 22nd, 2010 - 11:01pm by Doug Powell

    It’s not food safety, but it’s such an old and disappointing story that it’s worth repeating.

    Again.

    This time it’s the former head of Health Canada's nutritional sciences bureau blasting the federal department Monday for failing to explain why it is approving health claims submitted by the food industry.

    PepsiCo Canada had announced Monday that Health Canada has approved a new disease-reduction health claim for products containing oats. This means the company's 11 Quaker oats products will soon carry labels on the front of their packaging trumpeting a relationship between oat fibres and reduced cholesterol.

    Mary L'Abbe, the former director of Health Canada's nutritional sciences bureau responsible for the approval of health claims, said the department now has a transparency problem because it is not releasing the evidence to support such claims.
    Health Canada remains mum on the oats decision and has yet to publish evidence to support the plant sterol claim.

    "With regards to transparency, I am still disappointed that the plant sterol claim was approved last May, yet the evidence to support such a claim has still not been posted — only a summary document," said L'Abbe, who left Health Canada in 2007 after 31 years.
    "Health Canada's lack of transparency in this matter is disappointing, and opposite that of the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), which has published detailed scientific reviews of the evidence that was considered in approving or denying health claims in the U.S." L'Abbe said. "Hopefully they are planning to post the evidence that supports the oats claim."

    Why didn’t L'Abbe say anything about this when she was in government? I know there’s the whole oath to the Queen thing required of Canadian bureaucrats, but government is not some abstract entity, it’s run by people who chose to make decisions.
     

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    Bureaucrat, food safety, Health Canada, Transparency
  • Albert Amgar: The restaurant business, how to improve hygiene?

    Posted: June 16th, 2010 - 7:18am by Doug Powell

    Nikki Marcotte, a new student, tries out her translation skills on a piece from French food safety blogger, Albert Amgar.

    In Conseil National de l’Alimentation’s newsletter No. 13, dated June 11, 2010, we learn about health safety: an increased effort between the three unions of the Groupement National de la Restauration.

    “Given the issues with health safety and nutrition in the catering business, these three entities (the National Institutional Restaurant Services Union, the National Fast-Food and Food Union, the National Union of Themed and Commercial Restaurants, all three members of the GNR) have decided to combine forces and work together on these common problems. Three work groups have been created, each with two representatives from each syndicate, all experts in issues of ‘hygiene’, ‘nutrition’ and ‘quality’.”

    One of the work groups has devoted their time to food safety. What is their objective?

    The goal of the work group, in regard to regulatory requirements and their recent developments, is to pool together technical skills and the scientific expertise required to validate certain methods of disease control common to various restaurant activities: time-temperature combinations/storage temperatures of foods in certain conditions, microbiological monitoring methods…

    According to the Ministry of Agriculture, “Industrial and restaurant catering is comprised of commercial food services (approximately 15% of meals served) and collective food services (85% of meals served). The latter represents close to 4 billion meals.”

    Collective food service professionals contribute to three different areas: education (school catering, 1 billion meals, and university catering), health and social services (hospital, nursing home and prison catering), and the workforce (business and administrative catering). Likewise, process hygiene criteria have been implemented.

    The ministry also tells us that there are more than “…30,000 inspections conducted annually in the three large collective food service sectors, including nearly 13,000 in the school catering area. In particular, these checks are aimed at ensuring:
    - good food preparation practices (in terms of the hygiene and handling of the equipment), transport and storage (with respect to the hygiene and handling of the equipment);
    - the cold chain;
    - the recommendations concerning the use of pasteurized eggs to prevent foodborne illnesses associated with salmonella.”

    “More than 30,000 inspections…” of which we know nothing about, not even one annual statistic… (transparency, where are you?).

    This blog, which is always ready to help food service professionals with these excellent initiatives, wishes to make a contribution with this recent publication from the barfblog team, see, “Food safety information posted in restaurant kitchens can improve meal safety.” Source: Chapman, Benjamin; Eversley, Tiffany; Fillion, Katie; MacLaurin, Tanya; Powell, Douglas. Assessment of Food Safety Practices of Food Service Food Handlers (Risk Assessment Data): Testing a Communication Intervention (Evaluation of Tools). Journal of Food Protection®, Volume 73, Number 6, June 2010, pp. 1101-1107(7).

    This blog could also suggest to the Ministry of Food less opacity in these inspections so that the consumer is fully informed, and to maybe also think about the scoring system or grades on the doors of restaurants or to start slowly putting the inspection results online. Also look at the “smiley” example in Belgium (above right).
     

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    Restaurant Inspection  |  1 Comment
    belgium, France, restaurant inspection disclosure, smiley face, Transparency
  • Toronto takes on feds, province, issues own food safety agenda

    Posted: April 17th, 2009 - 6:16am by Doug Powell

    I hear from local public health officials all the time, and the ones in Canada repeatedly say the single food inspection agency -- known creatively as, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency – sucks.

    The provincial regulators also suck.

    So after years of taking it, the City of Toronto is once again trailblazing when it comes to serving the public – those who end up barfing from bad food – and has come up with its own idea of a food safety system that serves people.

    Robert Cribb of the Toronto Star reports this morning that in a series of three reports to be presented to Toronto city council on Monday (available at http://www.toronto.ca/health/moh/foodsecurity.htm), foodborne illness in Toronto is rampant and that in order to have fewer people barfing:

    • Ontario should consider compensating food handlers who  are too sick to come to work due to "gastrointestinal illness;"
     
    •  Ontario and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency should provide "full and timely disclosure of the food safety performance of all food premises
    they inspect;” and,
     
    • mandatory food handler training and certification, as recommended in the Justice Haines report of 2004 (that was my contribution).

    A related story maintains that cases of foodborne illness began to fall almost immediately after Toronto began making restaurant inspection results public in 2001.

    John Filion, chair of the city's board of health, said it is the clearest evidence yet of the public health benefits of transparency.

    Good for Toronto, especially when the feds and the province leave the locals out to dry on outbreaks of foodborne illness. In the Aug. 2008 outbreak of listeria linked to Maple Leaf deli meats, Toronto health types said they had plenty of evidence something was amiss in July, but CFIA and others refused to go public until Aug. 17, 2008. So with a federal listeria inquiry set to begin Monday, and Maple Leaf all focused on federal regulations, how are Maple Leaf executives going to handle pesky local health units like Toronto – the ones who actually do the work, uncover outbreaks and create their own headlines.

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    Dinesafe, Mandatory, Toronto, Training, Transparency