Shellfish safety monitoring poor, report says

Ottawa's policing of the shellfish industry is so fraught with problems that the health of consumers is being put at risk, says an independent study ordered by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

"Inconsistent implementation is posing a potential risk to the health and safety of Canadians," says the report, obtained by the Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

It warns that the federal program overseeing the shellfish industry is stretched to the limit, with not enough inspectors, research or money to properly guard against deadly toxins.

"Contaminated shellfish have the potential to enter the local markets because delivery of the [program] cannot provide complete assurance that all harvested and consumed shellfish were harvested from classified growing areas and processed through certified processing facilities," says the July report written by consultants at Stratos Inc., was

The report examines the Canadian Shellfish Sanitation Program, the roots of which go back to 1925 when contaminated oysters led to an outbreak of typhoid fever in the United States, killing 150 people.

Canadian inspection regulations were immediately toughened in response, and eventually formalized as a program in 1948.

Today, three departments — Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans and the food inspection agency — jointly administer the $14.6-million-a-year program, which monitors the harvesting of shellfish in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and British Columbia.

The primary species are clams, quahogs, geoducks, oysters, scallops and mussels, with a market value of about $200 million annually, or about 130,000 tonnes of shellfish. More than a quarter — about $60 million worth — are from the aquaculture industry.

Canada has suffered several shellfish health scares in the last two decades, including a 1987 crisis in Prince Edward Island that left three people dead after they ate mussels containing domoic acid.

More recently, there were 79 recorded incidents of norovirus poisoning in British Columbia in 2004, caused by eating toxic oysters. No one died, though there were severe cases of gastroenteritis.

And almost every year, recreational harvesters become ill with paralytic toxin poisoning.

The Stratos report notes that with Canada's vast coastlines, it would be impossible to police all shellfish harvesting, especially in the recreational and aboriginal sectors.

More pressure on program

But the authors observed that aboriginal peoples are demanding the program be extended to areas such as Nunavut and northern British Columbia, as a fiduciary responsibility of the federal government. The growing aquaculture sector is also making greater demands on scarce resources.

The report also found key laboratories are under pressure. A Halifax facility that tests for diarrhetic shellfish toxins, for example, has a turnaround time of seven days.

"In some cases, this delay poses a risk that contaminated shellfish will have entered the market before test results are available."

The program also lacks research dollars to determine whether emerging biotoxins are menacing Canadian shores.

The report warns that any outbreak of shellfish poisoning can damage the entire seafood sector, now worth $5 billion annually, as happened during the domoic acid crisis of 1987 when the loss of consumer confidence sapped $2 billion out of the economy.

'Canadians are safe,' official says

A spokeswoman for the food inspection agency, the lead department for the program, said that despite the problems, Canada's shellfish sector is well policed and that consumers need not be alarmed.

"It's been working well at the operational level. Canadians are safe," said Mary Ann Green, director of the fish, seafood and production division. "We have a very safe system."

The three departments have accepted the report's six recommendations, including creation of a special secretariat this spring. Stratos had noted an "absence of a cohesive management regime" to govern the program.

Green said a comprehensive risk assessment of the regulator will be finished in the fall, allowing a clearer determination of where money and resources are needed.

"We recognize there are challenges," she said. "We recognize that we need to do more."

The government has already been working with aboriginal groups and international agencies to improve the program, and is planning a better communications strategy to warn tourists and other recreational harvesters about the dangers of shellfish toxins.

Green also said the aquaculture sector may be asked to do more self-policing.