Canada-Food Safety.

CANADA-FOOD SAFETY.

When the president of Peanut Corp. of America was hauled in front of a congressional hearing in Washington last week, Canadians should have been paying attention. And cringing.

Few things have underlined the gap in the way our two countries approach food safety like the sight of company president Stewart Parnell sitting with arms folded while a congressman, in a theatrical flourish, offered him some of his company’s tainted peanut products. Parnell’s company is at the centre of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened 600 people and may have killed eight in recent months.

On this side of the border, Michael McCain of Maple Leaf Foods was named Business News Maker of the Year -- a year in which his company was found to be the source of a listeriosis outbreak linked to 20 deaths and hundreds of illnesses. To be fair, McCain took responsibility in a way that Peanut Corp. executives did not. He deserved recognition for his compassion and efforts to reassure a rattled public that it was safe to go back to the deli counter.

But that should not be the end of the story. The aggressive effort in the U.S.. to quickly get questions answered about the tainted peanut outbreak there is instructive. McCain was doing his job as head of a corporation, but now the Canadian government needs to do its job -- to better protect the health of Canadians.

Political theatre aside, the U.S. approach has already turned up what appears to be a smoking gun in e-mails that were released as part of the congressional hearings.

In one exchange, after discussing positive salmonella tests, Parnell gives the manager of the plant linked to the outbreak instructions to "turn them loose" after getting a negative result from another testing company. In another e-mail, Parnell expresses concerns over losing "$$$$$$" due to delays in shipment and testing costs.

The company knew it had a problem, in other words, and appears to have decided to sell its products anyway. Knowing that, the U.S. government can address government’s role in making sure the situation is not repeated.

The Canadian government’s philosophy is that it is in industry’s best interest to make sure the food it produces is safe. Shifting responsibility for food safety to industry reflects that belief. Yet the peanut e-mails suggest that companies might not share the philosophy.

Although a congressional hearing is not a court of law, the e-mail exchange suggests Peanut Corp. was more interested in money, and getting away with whatever it could, than protecting the public. In one congressman’s words, the company’s pursuit of profits "trumped common sense and morality."

While such rogue behaviour is not in a company’s best interest in the long run, the financial crisis has offered plenty of evidence that rogues are not unheard of in the business world and they can do a lot of damage when left to their own devices.

American authorities and the American public are waiting to learn more about the failures that led to toxic peanut butter sandwiches. But already Americans know more about the mechanics and timeline of this salmonella outbreak than Canadians do about the gaps and failures that might have exacerbated the listeriosis outbreak.

Almost seven months later, Canadians still don’t know exactly who knew what, when. There have been no answers to the crucial question of whether a quicker response could have saved lives and how a similar tragedy could be prevented or contained sooner.

Until we know that, nothing has been learned from the 20 deaths.

Instead of answers, we got a PR campaign, tasteless cold-cut jokes and a toothless and too-late investigation into what happened. It is no wonder the Commons agriculture committee is planning to hold its own hearings at the same time as the federal investigation.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the federal investigation last fall. The announcement was sidetracked by an election and a brief constitutional crisis, of sorts, when the coalition of opposition leaders threatened to take down the government.

But when the probe was finally launched last month, its mandate was disappointing.

Sheila Weatherill, a past CEO of Capital Health in Edmonton, is due to report on July 20 -- four months later than promised and a full year after the outbreak. But don’t expect much. She has no power to subpoena witnesses or compel testimony.

Oh, and her work will be done behind closed doors.

Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter calls the government probe "nothing more than an absolute farce" and accuses the government of "trying to sweep under the rug serious shortcomings in our system."

Is he right? Like many things surrounding the listeriosis outbreak, we just don’t know.

Elizabeth Payne is a member of the Ottawa Citizen’s editorial board.

Source: Times Colonist (Victoria)