Food Inc. [moved from Quebec board]

[blondee_47]

how does Canada differ in their food trade and are we more concerned and more regulated? I would love a condensed version of what would be considered quality ratings of meat, poultry etc.

[Bryn]

For beef we have grades a, aa, aaa, and prime, Prime being the best (http://www.cbef.com/beefquality.htm). For poultry we have grade a, utility and grade c, but I've only seen grade A in the stores in Alberta (http://books.google.ca/books?id=EzSwC...).

[estilker]

The beef grading is purely based on marbling. It is some indication of quality but is not THE determing factor of taste. The breed, the food, the cut are all really important. BTW: Angus is totally overbred and has little to do with the original Scottish Aberdeen Angus cows, same for real Wagyu Kobe beef. I found this link particularly interesting: http://www.slate.com/id/2152674/

[Maximilien]

There's probably a bigger difference between Québec (the province) and the rest of the NA continent than just Canada vs. USA.

This is mostly from "Terroir" products like cheese, veggies and now some meats; but like everywhere, there is a big paranoia in the government about "food poisoning". They all want to regulate against normal things just to be certain that there will be no problem on their current administration.

Refer to last year cheese "fear" that nearly (and they succeded) closed down a good number of raw cheese makers because they were not prepared to handled a case of "infection" (the word is not good... ) and they trow out tons of cheese "just in case" and now, because there is still no agreed rules for inspection of raw cheese makers, a lot of them just stopped doing raw milk cheese because they never know if that particular inspector will decide to shut down the production and waste all the cheese already done without appropriate testing.

[estilker]

I seriously doubt there is a bigger difference between QC province and the rest of NA.

Other provinces and states also have "terroir" products like locally produced cheeses, organic vegetables and fruit, biodynamic animal farms, etc . Let's not confuse a French heritage for a superior quality of food. (quite an unfashionable statement on St Jean, I know).

We're all foodies here and are more focussed on buying our food from a reliable source (farmer's markets, etc) but I think the average quebecer buys his food in the larger chains as Provigo, Loblaws, etc where most of the food is flown in from all of the world. I doubt they all buy Kamouraska lamb, but settle for those cheap frozen lamb chops from New Zealand. Clementines come all the way from Marocco and I have yet to see the first homegrown QC banana.

I haven't seen the movie yet and have far too less knowlegde about Canadian food regulations vs American but I don't think QC is any different on this than ROC.

Re: raw cheese I'm saddened like you to see that the government tries to crack down on raw cheese makers (and raw milk by extent). If only there were clear regulations and proper food labelling then it should be up to the consumer to decide how they want to "jeopardize" their lives: by eating an unpasteurized creamy goat cheese or a stringy rubbery mass produced cheddar.

[Bryn]

Excuse me? Last summer there were recalls of raw milk cheese in Canada because they did find Salmonella spp. and Listeria monocytogenes in different products. http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/c...

I know about this because we used them as case studies in some of our Foodbourne pathogen classes in University last year.

I'm not saying all raw milk products are bad or that they shouldn't make them, but they do need to have HACCP and recall plans in place in order to ensure the gov't that they are making safe products.

[estilker]

I am on the same page Bryn. We just need clear regulations and better tracking of food to the source. But the enforcement of the rules is completely arbitrary now and the government is clearly trying to get rid of raw milk cheese. They are afraid of it because it's more uncontrolled. Salmonella and Listeria only recently occured in Maple Leaf products as well. So let's not just single out raw milk, it's "just as safe" as your breakfast bacon.

[Bryn]

There was no Salmonella on the maple leaf products.