OTTAWA – Canadians should worry just as much about the safety of the fruits and vegetables they eat as they do about the meat they buy, says a food safety expert.
While the 2008 listeriosis crisis, where 22 people died after eating contaminated sandwich meat, put people on alert about meat, produce can be just as bad.
“The produce thing is a little more insidious because we've grown up to consider that produce is not a problem. We couldn't have been more wrong,” said food safety expert Rick Holley, pointing to cases around the world over the past 15 years.
“The barn door is wide open. We don't have rule or regulation in place that prevents produce from being contaminated by bacteria (that) cause people to become sick.”
Bacteria, including dangerous salmonella and E. coli, can get into produce if improperly processed manure is spread on fields. Plant roots can pick up bacteria from soil. In one case, apples that fell on a field where cows grazed were bagged and sold.
Holley, a University of Manitoba professor with 30 years experience in the food industry, says Canada doesn't properly track what people are biting into.
“We don't have any data in Canada,” Holley said. “We don't know whether more cases of food-borne illness are caused by ice cream or chicken wings.”
Paul Mayers, associate vice-president of programs at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, says the agency enforces limits on pesticides and chemical contaminants set by Health Canada. And he says they work with the Public Health Agency of Canada to track food that causes outbreaks of illness.
“We've proven to be adept at linking foods and then undertaking recalls to minimize the exposure of Canadians to those foods,” he said, though he admits the ability to track illness and food to a particular location depends on the food involved.
Holley says people have to be careful how they prepare food. The leading cause of food poisoning is restaurants, but the next is food prepared at home. Consumers have to keep raw meat at the right temperature and avoid getting meat juices on other food. People get sick when, for example, they put raw meat on a cutting board and use the same board for preparing salad. Washing and peeling produce also helps get rid of bacteria.
“While consumers are crying for more and more inspection to make the food safer, the irony is that we consumers are doing it to ourselves by messing up at home,” he said.
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