Amir Attaran says Canadians should be skeptical about the U.S.’s ability to ensure food safety given the Trump administration’s cuts to regulatory bodies.
Deep job cuts at U.S. health agencies could put Canadians at risk because of Canada’s integration with and reliance on American health and safety systems, some experts are warning.
Among key concerns is that it may no longer be safe for Canada to rely on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for food safety assurances, given the extent of job cuts in recent days.
The two countries have a long-standing agreement to co-operate and exchange information when it comes to food safety, based on the understanding that Canada and the U.S. can trust each other’s regulatory systems for making sure food is safe. That food safety systems recognition arrangement essentially means that each country trusts the other country’s food safety and inspection regime.
But given the slashing of jobs and high-level resignations in the U.S., It is not clear that Canada can continue to have the same kind of confidence in its neighbour’s system, said University of Ottawa professor Amir Attaran, who is a lawyer and biomedical scientist.
He is calling on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to review or audit the U.S. food safety system to ensure it remains reliable in the midst of the unprecedented cuts by the Trump administration on health, science and regulatory bodies. There are still unknowns, but many concerning signs about the negative impact of cuts on food safety, he said.
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Until proven otherwise, Attaran said Canadians should be skeptical about the U.S.’s ongoing abilities to ensure food safety.
“We have to assume as Canadians that starting right now all of our food from the US. and nearly all of our drugs are not being properly regulated and are coming into this country without any assurance of safety and quality,” he said.
CFIA did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
This week, 10,000 employees of U.S. health agencies that are part of the Health and Human Services department, including the FDA, lost their jobs in an overhaul that has been described as a bloodbath. Some 3,500 of those job cuts were at the FDA, the department that inspects food and medicines to ensure they are safe. Other senior FDA personnel, including its chief medical officer, have resigned. Those 10,000 job cuts were in addition to 10,000 public servants who left voluntarily, according to reports.
It is believed that no inspectors are among the FDA cuts, according to reports, but others who support food safety, including people who test samples to determine if they are safe, researchers, administrators and others have lost their jobs. That includes cutting a laboratory where samples from inspections are tested. Even before the cuts, the FDA had fewer inspectors than it needed.
In a story about the cuts, Vanity Fair quoted former FDA commissioner Dr. Robert Califf as saying: “The FDA as we’ve known it is finished, with most of the leaders with institutional knowledge and a deep understanding of product development and safety no longer employed. I believe that history will see this (as) a huge mistake.”
As the dust began to settle on the April 1 job cuts, Democratic Senator Mark Warner was among those in the U.S. raising concerns about food safety and drug quality.
“This is life or death stuff – how much will the quality of our food and drug supply suffer under this gutted agency?” Warner asked in a post on social media website X.
Canadians have reason to worry about the impact of the cuts, said Attaran.
He noted that lettuce grown in California is regularly recalled for listeria, but finding and tracking cases related to outbreaks as well as letting people know about them are all parts of health institutions being gutted. It remains unclear how reliable that system will continue to be.
Attaran said it is also worrisome that, although the U.S. and Canadian agencies share information and reports, they do not publicly disclose them. That confidentiality agreement, he said, becomes problematic if the U.S. system is no longer reliable.
Attaran also said Health Canada is heavily reliant on the U.S. for drug production inspections.
“We depended on them enormously. At times, we even depended on them for the safety of drugs from Canadian companies (being produced overseas),” said Attaran. The FDA issued warnings and eventually temporarily banned products made by Apotex plants in India because of quality issues, he noted. Canada, meanwhile, failed to stop the company from importing suspect ingredients, the Toronto Star reported in 2014, and delayed sanctioning the company.
“This was an example that even though it was a Canadian company, we were depending on the U.S. to do the inspections.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA has been understaffed and lagging in inspections in drug plants overseas. With cuts to the FDA, Attaran said there is even more reason to worry about Health Canada’s dependence on the U.S. when it comes to drug safety. A majority of drugs used across North America are manufactured in India and China.
Attaran said there is an urgent need for Canada to reassess the U.S. food safety regime, and periodic reassessments, reviews or audits of the other country’s systems is something the agreement allows for.
He said he is more concerned about possible safety breakdowns when it comes to food from the U.S. than drugs. The EU and other countries also inspect and audit multinational drug manufacturers, but fresh produce from the U.S. is not travelling around the world.
“We are totally dependent on Americans for the safety of that supply. That is why I am worried about food,” said Attaran.
Many Canadians are not buying U.S. products right now, but it remains a major supplier to Canada.
Massive cuts to health research and institutions in the U.S. threaten Canadians in numerous other ways, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan, who is originally from the U.S.
“There are a surprising number of direct effects on Canada,” she said.
She said that one of many examples is the fact that the U.S. is stepping away from surveillance and data collection about influenza which could mean North Americans have less accurate seasonal flu vaccines in the future.
“People are going to die because of these decisions,” she said. “If the flu vaccine is not a good match it will increase the numbers of people who die (from influenza).”
She said eroding public health in the U.S. will mean more infectious disease in neighbouring Canada. She added that cutting funding to health research and surveillance for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases will make Americans and the world less healthy and less safe.
Rasmussen also believes the dramatic erosion of public health in the U.S. could also erode confidence in Canadian public health.
She said she has heard from many U.S. colleagues whose scientific research has been cut or is at risk, asking whether there are jobs in Canada. She has called for Canada to step up and hire scientists and academics who no longer believe they can do their work in the U.S. That would have to wait until after the federal election, she acknowledged.
“It is heartbreaking,” she said, “I am an American and I see democracy is at risk. When fascists take over, often the first targets are intellectuals, scientists and scholars. Those are the people who can show that (what is happening) is not democratic.”
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