Food from other countries is coming into Canada without full assurance it meets the country's safety requirements, says a newly released report.
Most agreements Canada has with other countries to verify the rigour of foreign food-safety programs are outdated by up to 15 years, auditors at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have found.
They also found periodic audits to ensure imports meet Canadian standards are "under-delivered," and the level of scrutiny on food coming into Canada varies at different border entry points.
These and other findings are among a slew of problems with food imports that the auditors say puts the health and safety of Canadians at risk.
"In my opinion, CFIA management of imported food safety has deficiencies that represent multiple areas of risk exposure requiring significant improvements related to the governance, control, and risk management processes," concluded Peter Everson, the agency's chief auditor.
In 2005, Canada imported food from 193 countries. Most of that nearly $22 billion in food came from 10: the United States, Mexico, China, France, Italy, Brazil, Chile, Thailand, Australia and Britain.
Food coming into Canada must meet its health-and-safety standards. Sometimes foreign suppliers have to meet Canadian requirements before shipping. Other times, checks are done at the border.
"In a place like China, we can't even get legitimate stats from them in terms of internal disease and pest spread," said Bob Kingston, head of the union that represents federal food inspectors.
"Our inspectors have a hard time putting a lot of stock into what they read coming out of some of those countries, just because they know that the conditions are very largely unreported over there.
"So, yeah, there's concerns."
The agency audit found inspectors struggle to get samples of fruits and vegetables, as well as other products that aren't registered with the federal government, such as baby foods, alcohol, and bakery and cereal products.
The audit also found the move to convert import manifests into electronic documents has made it more difficult for inspectors to track shipping destinations for some of these products, especially processed foods, fruits and vegetables.
Meanwhile, departments aren't promptly sharing information on food imports. It can take up to two weeks before the food inspection agency gets shipment data from the Canada Border Services Agency, the audit says.
"It is of limited use for tracking and controlling imports," the document says of the usefulness of the delayed data.
Senior management is apparently kept in the dark about much of this. Top officials aren't regularly briefed on the agency's enforcement and compliance activities, the audit says, even though all that information is tracked.
A committee within the agency that oversees import programs is supposed to meet four times annually, but the audit found the group only meets about once a year.
No one from the agency was immediately available to comment.
CFIA auditors interviewed more than 100 employees between 2005 and 2008. Staff complained they were overworked, particularly in the Toronto area.
