this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
354 points (99.4% liked)

Canada

9642 readers
822 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

American food safety checks have nearly stopped now that the FDA has been cut so bad|y. They can't even follow up on investigating reports anymore.

Why are we importing and allowing dangerous foods to be sold here?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ecoli-bacteria-lettuce-outbreak-rcna200236

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca 103 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Food imported into Canada still has to pass our regulations and inspections. We don't let it slide just because the US government does.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 18 hours ago

Trouble is how often they inspect vs how much slips through. If for example contaminated packaged food comes through, the inspectors aren't opening every package, because that becomes destructive testing.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

How do you test food for the growing conditions?

Like Ecuador may use some terrible banned pesticides or fertilizer. When a banana boat arrives at Vancouver, how the hell would you know if you can't test for its presence in the peel or flesh?

[–] Dearche@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Banned pesticides and fertilizers are banned because they leave traces that are harmful to the human body. Otherwise they generally won't be banned in the first place. So all they have to do is take random samples and do proper checks. If it was impossible to detect the presence of after effects of such banned substances, there would be no point in banning them since the end product would be no different from normally grown varieties, hence no reason to ban them.

That said, I don't know how good our processes are, but I do think that more funding needs to be allocated now since the FDA won't be doing any of their own testing. Turning cargo back at the inspection centers would be an easy way to ban US foods without changing a single law or policy in the country with a high degree of deniability that this was the intent in the first place.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Not true, don't be so selfish.

Many things are banned because the human body that is harmed is the farmworker. There may be no delectable harm to the consumer.

We should still ban imports of shoes from companies that employ child slave labor. And we should also ban bananas that use chemicals that cause reproductive diseases and cancer in farm workers

[–] Glide@lemmy.ca 57 points 2 days ago

This. Canada's food standards have always been leaps and bounds ahead of the states, and we won't sell American food that doesn't meet Canadian standards.

That said, fuck Trump and the US right now (sorry to those of you that are along for the ride) and look for Canadian alternatives anyway.

[–] m0darn@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

When we import food/drug manufacturing equipment we often accept American certifications as compliant with Canadian standards. If a company can say they are compliant FDA or NSF while facing no risk of facing an actual inspection/audit then we may have to exercise more scrutiny ourselves.

[–] abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I'm not sure how accurate this is, but from https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/can-canada-still-trust-u-s-food-safety

However, this recognition does not exempt food imports from meeting the regulatory requirements. All food sold in Canada, whether it is domestic or imported, must meet Canadian food safety requirements.”
Canada has a robust system in place through onsite inspections and verifications to verify imported products comply with Canadian regulations, it said, adding that the CFIA is tracking any changes in the U.S. and other exporting countries “and will take any necessary action to continue to protect the health of Canadians and maintain a safe food supply.”

The implication being that they can inspect produce already certified safe by the FDA and that they will do so if they consider it necessary.

Whether or not they're already determined that's the case (vs still thinking about it), well....

It's bigger, as it's not just food safety at risk, but medication and medical device safety is at risk too, as explained in https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/amid-deep-cuts-to-the-us-fda-experts-warn-canadians-could-lose-vital-safety-information/

[–] miguel@fedia.io 11 points 2 days ago

Same with Mexico, who hasn't considered USDA guidelines sufficient for ages. There's articles from 2008 and before about it, and it took super heavy threats from the US to force them to accept some of our trash quality produce (GMO, beef, etc).