The report is damning:
Mr. Rattray’s office also conducted on-site inspections of 54 food-manufacturing facilities in Canada, with a focus on those that produce plant-based products, including non-dairy milk and cheese, which – much like regular dairy – can be at risk for pathogens.
The Inspector-General found that 26 of those sites had never been visited by the CFIA, even though “the Agency’s program direction requires that all domestic establishments be subject to an annual inspection.”
About 40 per cent of the 54 sites were not in compliance with food-safety regulations, “resulting in failure to identify Listeria as a potential hazard and therefore a lack of documented control measures,” the report said.
Three of the sites investigated, or 5 per cent, “were found to have critical food safety issues that required an immediate response by CFIA inspection staff to protect public health.”
In these cases, one food manufacturer’s licence was suspended, while two facilities voluntarily surrendered their licences, the report said. The CFIA did not disclose the identities of those factories.
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Much of the information inputted into the algorithm – 12 of 16 key data points – that determined how often a facility would be inspected was supplied by the companies themselves, often on a voluntary basis, and was not verified by the CFIA, The Globe found.
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One data point used to calculate risk at a food-processing facility – consumer complaints – wasn’t being fed properly into the algorithm because of formatting problems with government databases, the report said. That meant signals about potential problems, including sicknesses or reports of quality-control issues such as mould, weren’t being tracked properly, “which may incorrectly impact the risk rating.”