Agency May Be Too Cosy with Industry it Monitors
Ottawa Citizen
March 13, 2001
By Kelly Cryderman
The latest auditor general's report hints the Canadian Food Inspection Agency may be a bit too cosy with the industry it's supposed to be watching over.
Key agency boards draw heavily from industry, says the 2000 report, which was released last month. The Ministerial Advisory Board has eight industry representatives, three academics and one consumer representative. The agency's key stakeholder group, the "Group of Thirty,'' includes 30 industry groups, but only seven academic and professional groups and one consumer group.
And in several areas, "the agency did not maintain sufficient dialogue with stakeholders, particularly Parliament and the public,'' including during the implementation of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) food-safety system, says the report.
Last spring, for example, it was revealed the agency was paying for ads in Canadian Living and the Quebec consumer magazine Coup de Pouce to provide ``balanced, factual, unemotional information about biotechnology and the regulatory system,'' and assert the safety of genetically engineered foods.
But in January, an expert panel on the future of biotechnology from the Royal Society of Canada, a national body of senior Canadian scientists and scholars, recommended "Canadian regulatory agencies and officials exercise great care to maintain an objective and neutral stance with respect to the public debate about the risks and benefits of biotechnology in their public statements and interpretations of the regulatory process.''
A member of the panel said the fact that the agency -- and Health Canada -- is both regulating and promoting the industry is a conflict of interest, giving the appearance of being "more closely allied with the industry interest than with the public good.''
And a 1999 report from the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, entitled The Canadian Food Inspection Agency: A Failed Experiment, was cited as saying it was disappointed the agency was set up to report to the minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food instead of to Health Canada because historically Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada was primarily concerned with the production and the sale of food.
"Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly apparent to employers and onlookers that market access is definitely the only important one,'' the report said.