Health and Safety

-by Caitlin Crawshaw

As you weave through the aisles of your local grocery store, you’re probably more concerned with gathering ingredients than with the possibility of health safety hazards due to what you toss in the cart. But each month, almost a dozen nationally distributed food products must be pulled from the shelves of grocery stores. Chances are, you haven’t heard about most of them.

Nelson Fok, associate director of Environmental and Public Health for Capital Health, says surveys show that consumers don’t always hear about food recalls.  “Or, when they hear it, they may not remember the whole thing or understand what the recall is about,” he says. Fortunately, there are a number of government bodies working behind the scenes to ensure the food on your table is safe.

Recalls are a federally mandated process overseen by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA, carried out by local divisions with occasional help from provincial health regions such as Capital Health. While the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food (which oversees CFIA) can mandate a company to recall a product, most are done voluntarily. “They don’t usually get to that point. It’s rare that they are mandated,” says Sonia Worobec, CFIA’s Supervisor of Food Safety and Fair Labelling Practices for Alberta North.

The reasons for a recall vary. Sometimes microorganisms such as salmonella sneak into food products, as was the case with a large batch of canteloupes recently recalled from the produce sections of grocery stores across North America. In other instances, traces of an allergen not indicated in the ingredients’ list can threaten lives (think peanut allergy) and products must be destroyed or re-labelled. And, as a March recall of Fresh Mint and Orange Tic Tacs revealed, particles of packaging materials can wind up in the products. Also in March, two kinds of pear juice, President’s Choice Organics Pear Juice for Toddlers and Beech Nut Pear Juice, were recalled because of a possible arsenic contamination, a substance that is both carcinogenic and linked to developmental risks in children. How the toxic heavy metal may have contaminated the juice still remains unclear. Recalls can be initiated a number of different ways, says Worobec. The process can be triggered by a consumer complaint, inspection results from the CFIA or other government agency, or an outbreak of illness.

The CFIA must validate the claim by collecting background information about the product’s origin and creation, including the precautions taken by the manufacturer to ensure safety. “You would check to see if they have a control program in place for that kind of issue, for instance, allergen control,” she says. “If the inspector finds out there’s been a violation, they’d have to see if it’s a food safety risk or not, and not just a technical violation.”

If a health risk is suspected, data is sent to the Office of Food Safety and Recall in Ottawa for risk assessment by the CFIA and Health Canada. When the case is determined to be a Class 1 risk (posing serious threat to health) a federal advisory is made and the national media are informed. Class 2 (medium risk, causing temporary harm) or Class 3 (posing minimal risk; like a quality issue identified by the manufacturer) are posted online, but a public advisory isn’t made.

Most Class 1 recalls happen within about a day of a concern being reported, says Worobec. Retailers must pull the items off the shelves as soon as they receive the notice from the manufacturer, and within a few days, the CFIA and Capital Health inspectors (if the recall is widespread) perform an effectiveness check to make sure retailers have been informed and have followed through.

“What we’re looking for is that they received a recall notice from the company and that none of the product is on the shelves,” says June Stevens, a Calgary-based CFIA fair-labelling and food safety inspector. “We ask when they got the notice, how they received it, if they had any of the product, what they did with it, and did they distribute to other places where we might have to follow up?”

Most grocers act quickly.

“As far as I know, with all of the major stores we deal with, the minute they get a recall notice, they act on it,” she says.

In fact, in the nine years she’s been with the CFIA, she’s never dealt with an unwilling retailer – only the occasional situation where the business hadn’t received the notice. This is good news for consumers. While there are legal fines and possible jail time associated with non-compliance, there aren’t enough inspectors to check up on every retailer in the province. Consumers don’t necessarily hear about a recall through the news media.

“There are recall issues almost every day, in different places in the country. And whether the media picks it up and makes an announcement or not is beyond our control,” she says, adding that busy news days sometimes mean little attention is paid to recalls. “So it’s very dependent on the grocers following the directions they get when a recall is issued.”

However, Albertans needn’t be beholden to either media or grocers. Worobec points out that consumers can get the information themselves by going online. Last year, the CFIA and Health Canada created www.healthycanadians.gc.ca.

as a singular access point for people to find out about food and product safety issues. The site regularly posts food recall information, and an e-mail subscription service can deliver the same information to your inbox. “I recommend this highly to people with allergies,” says Worobec.    

Consumers can also call 1-800-442-2342 to register a food safety incident (1-403-661-7505 after hours.)

Sometimes microorganisms such as salmonella, sneak into food products, as was the case with a large batch of canteloupes recently recalled from the produce sections of grocery stores across North America.