Transparency: It’s not just about windshields any more. Below: In real life, Canadian Food Inspection Agency meat inspectors at the XL Foods packing plant in Brooks may not appear exactly as illustrated.
As the E. coli crisis at XL Foods in southeastern Alberta clearly illustrates, food safety is too important a topic to be shrouded in the secrecy associated with privately held corporations.
This lesson ought not to be forgotten if XL Foods happens to be sold to a publicly traded company in the fire sale its parent company now appears to be organizing.
It is time for Canadians to talk seriously about the need to increase transparency and accountability among privately held companies that receive public subsidies or do work that has an impact on the nation’s wellbeing – and this obviously includes food-processing corporations on both counts.
The idea of providing financial and additional critical information to the public is anathema to Big Business, which values its ability to hide its financial shenanigans and corner cutting from the public behind a curtain of proprietary necessity and competition. It’s a commentary on the anti-public state of affairs in this country that at first any suggestion like this is sure to be treated as highly eccentric.
But when the health of literally millions of Canadians depends on the way these corporations operate their businesses, it is truly outrageous that companies like Nilsson Brothers Inc. and its XL Foods subsidiary can carry on largely without public scrutiny on the basis of obsolete, self-serving and unjustified corporate legal entitlements.
Naturally, if this idea were to become a real threat, a plethora of corporate meat puppets would soon rush to the TV studios to decry such interference in the “private” affairs of their principals. They would plead the necessity of keeping their corporate bosses’ practices a strict secret on the grounds it is they who are taking the risks. The only problem with this argument, of course, is that it is un-inspected baloney!
As we have seen in the XL Foods E. coli crisis and the food contamination crises that preceded it, it is not at all only corporate owners who take the risks. First there are literally millions of Canadians young and old who eat the food these places process, the thousands of workers, farmers, contractors and entrepreneurs who depend on them for their livings, the reputation of other Canadian businesses at home and abroad, and the taxpayers who subsidize and underwrite their operations through tax breaks, grants, interest-free loans and other outright subsidies. Yet if they are privately owned, they are required to provide virtually no meaningful information about their operations to the public or any government agency.
The public interest is clearly not served by allowing corporations that impact the public interest to operate in secrecy, and the competitive advantages to those companies that do not sell their shares on the market are wildly exaggerated. After all, public reporting requirements do not seem to be a particular competitive disadvantage for many well-run publicly traded companies.
Opponents of this kind of thing would no doubt complain that such a radical step would impact their ability to sell to foreign investors. But foreign investors don’t have a history of doing much more than stripping the Canadian firms they buy of their assets and resources and shipping money out of the country. So how is that in the public interest?
Why make them report financial numbers, you ask? Because the finances of a company – particularly the comparison of profits to revenue – tell the story not only of the efficiency of the company, but its willingness to cut corners in ways that can impact the health, even the survival, of citizens who are otherwise defenceless against such corporate activities.
In effect, major food processing companies, whatever their legal ownership structure may be, are public institutions about which citizens need and deserve transparency and accountability. Since it is axiomatic that they will never provide such information willingly, it needs to be imposed on them by legislation.
Concerns about entrepreneurs and other small businesses being caught in the net of such “red tape,” necessary and justified though it may be, can be dealt with at the stroke of a pen by setting a reasonable size under which companies would not be required to report – say, eight or nine employees.
At the very least, no company ought to be allowed to bid or file for government contracts, subsidies or bailouts without committing to full financial disclosure to ensure transparency and accountability for the taxpayers who are paying the freight and, in the case of food processors, taking a direct risk.
The same must apply to foreign corporations that decide to do business in fields that affect national security, which from a common sense perspective includes food safety.
After all, as they say, “one of the hallmarks of a stable and mature democracy is financial transparency and accountability in institutions that serve the public.” What institutions serving the public are more essential than corporations that are literally serving up our food?
The stakes (and nowadays the steaks too, sad to say) are simply too high not to demand this level of reporting by all parts of the corporate sector, regardless of its ownership structure.
This post also appears on Rabble.ca.
A couple points. One of the big controls we have is to do a bit of research and simply not deal with such companies. So what if XL provides some huge percent of the beef market? Eat something else. Or do some investigation to find and support a local organization. Yes, it might be slightly more expensive, but what’s a few cents a pound against the health of your loved ones? Ask the various organizations you deal with where they get their meat, and tell them you won’t buy XL products.
These companies love to moan about red tape, and uncompetitive regulations, ect, ad nauseum. The point is that all companies in an industry act under the same regulations, so it’s a level playing field, and they pass the costs on to the customer anyways.
What are you going on about? The system worked. The tainted meat was caught and stopped.
There were government food inspectors doing their jobs and meat plant workers helping them.
This whole media blow up is just another “hot story” that means nothing.
@ Jeff:
…is it some kind of “dumb luck” you are going on about… or maybe you got a spare set of kidneys? Got any kids, nieces or nephews?
excerpt: “…More than 2,000 food products were recalled in every province and territory. It is dumb luck, more than anything else, that so few people became seriously ill. (Remember that a much smaller E. coli outbreak in Germany last year killed 57 people.)”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/despite-e-coli-scandal-its-business-as-usual-for-xl-foods/article4617285/
excerpt: “There have also been attempts to pass the buck to consumers. Repeatedly we have been told that E. coli is not a threat if you cook your meat properly.
That is not entirely true. In 1994, the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service reclassified E. coli as an “adulterant” that is not allowed in food. This change occurred after four children died and 600 other people were sickened by E. coli after eating Jack in the Box burgers. The beef was cooked but not enough to kill the pathogen.
“Just cook it doesn’t cut it,” says Doug Powell, a professor at Kansas State University who tracks food safety problems on his blog, barfblog.com.
Business as usual shouldn’t cut it either. We should be rethinking the current inspection rules if seemingly minor slip-ups can allow tonnes of tainted meat to slip through. We should even be rethinking the wisdom of having two massive producers account for almost all of the country’s beef production. Is that really healthy, economically and otherwise?
When it comes to food safety, and the enforcement of food safety rules, consumers should be asking themselves: Where’s the beef?”
Sam Gunsch
Also, some Costcos had a meat tenderizing process which would drive any E. coli bacteria on the surface deeper into the meat, so cooking a steak would probably not kill all the E. coli.
http://www.edmontonsun.com/2012/09/26/costcos-meat-tenderizing-process-halted-after-e-coli-tainted-steaks-linked-to-edmonton-store
today’s update re: Jeff’s “what are you going on about”
excerpt: ““He was a muscular, little two-and-a-half year old who loved to wrestle and ride his toy motorcycle,” Richard said.
“Now he’s in a wheelchair, wears diapers, and has to be fed through a tube in his stomach.”
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/Foods+faces+lawsuit+alleging+tainted+meat+left+severely+disabled/7424666/story.html#ixzz2A2SNpPuA
((( market-fundamentalist/self-regulation apologists/libertarian headline, 1st draft:
Stupid kid, criminally negligent lazy caregiver: Two year-old carelessly eats his hamburger soup before asking whether it was cooked enough. Victimized corporation counter-sues the little moocher.)))
excerpt: “…the company argues it bears no liability for a Winnipeg boy who a legal action claims lost mobility in three limbs, suffers developmental delays and endures severe, ongoing pain caused by eating food containing ground meat tainted with the potentially-fatal bacteria.”
excerpt: “An Alberta packer now at the centre of the country’s biggest ever beef recall is also fighting allegations that one of its plants was the source eight years ago of tainted meat that left a young child severely disabled.
Federal government reports indicate as many as 26 other people may also have become sick in 2004 from the same genetic strain of bacteria found in product that a lawsuit claims came from an XL Foods facility.”
Sam Gunsch
Corporate accountability is not going to happen with the neoconservative reformists in power. This is what Albertans voted for, and this is what all Canadians now have to accept – for a few more years, anyway.
I hope that not too many Canadians die before we realize that corporate self regulation equals no regulation.
“The public interest is clearly not served by allowing corporations that impact the public interest to operate in secrecy …”
Name one that isn’t; every business has an impact on the public. That is the social contract; we allow a limited (risk) business to exist because it serves the public interest.
You are, again, right on the money here David. This is the most important economic issue of our time. These so-called entreprenuers like to believe that they have built their business in some kind of vacume and that when they sell their product it is into another kind of vacume or void that has no repercussions or reflection back to them. So the profits they make are somehow magically cleansed of any kind of social reciprocity or any responsibility whatsoever.
But it’s not true, a flat out fantasy. Go ahead, take your increadible entreprenueral spirit to Baffin Island or the Sahara or the moon, anywhere where there is not a functioning society. In fact I dare say that there is a direct correlation between the smooth and well functioning of a society and the profits to be derived from therein.
We can have too much regulation; I will be the first to agree to that. But we must never forget that corporations are alien guests in our society; they are here ONLY to serve our interests however we decide to define ‘our’. We must have rules and regulations in place to ensure that our guests conduct them selves in accordance to our interests and that they can demonstrate this conduct in all their affairs. Hence the need for full public disclosure and periodic audits of not only finances but adherence to procedures (safety, employment, environmental) as well.
As one who worked for a long period in one of Albertas notoriously dysfunctional ‘departments’ once known as Alberta Forest Service I have a small grimace when I say …as Fred says (the favored idiomatic use by my coworkers of my former employer’s acronym) … we get exactly what we voted for in this society. Perhaps it will become widely recognised that the ‘alberta advatage’ is only for the few to the great disadvantage of the rest of us, but I’m not holding my breath.
@ rangerkim
Very important to keep pointing out what you have about the “fantasy” world that many of the corporate class and their fan boy cult live in.
This sort of insight is critical to keep sharing with your fellow citizens: “But it’s not true, a flat out fantasy. Go ahead, take your increadible entreprenueral spirit to Baffin Island or the Sahara or the moon, anywhere where there is not a functioning society. In fact I dare say that there is a direct correlation between the smooth and well functioning of a society and the profits to be derived from therein.”
Amazingly, a minority of the corporate class actually get this and sometimes speak out.
e.g. See the Bill Gates and Warren Buffet book review comments below on Gar Alperovitz’s Unjust Deserts study of how wealth comes to be and gets distributed and hoarded:
http://www.garalperovitz.com/unjust-deserts/
“One of the wealthiest men on the planet, Warren Buffett, with a current net worth of $60 billion, acknowledges that “society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I’ve earned.” Bill Gates, Sr. agrees when he writes, “Success is a product of having been born in this country, a place where education and research are subsidized, where there is an orderly market, where the private sector reaps enormous benefits from public investment. For someone to assert that he or she has grown wealthy in America without the benefit of substantial public investment is pure hubris.”
http://www.garalperovitz.com/unjust-deserts/
Just one example of how those might cattle industry entrepeneurs live off the public dime:
With billions of dollars for dams and canals on Alberta’s southern from Albertans general tax revenue in the 1970′s/80′s the public has subsidized the industrial meat industry in southern Alberta, by subsidizing the massive corporate agriculture industry in southern Alberta with water infrastructure. Northern and Central Alberta’s relatively widely distributed meat processing industry and feedlot industry was wiped out in the 1970′s and 1980′s by this use of public money.
And now, as water battles loom, now the irrigation industry is setting up to profit off all their water licenses as the rivers dry up from global warming by holding the public/government purse to ransom if we try to keep enough water in the rivers for living rivers with actual fish life and so on.
But Alberta’s industry sectors have a lock on our democracy via corporatist policy/legislation/budget making which became standard political practice under Ralph. See Mark Lisac, the Corporate State, Chapter 9, The Klein Revolution (1995). Obviously we’ve got a long battle ahead to get back to some semblance of citizen-based democracy.
Sam Gunsch