[♪♪] -[Chef] Everything looks good. -[David] We're in for a treat. A taste test from an
award-winning chef. Robert, this looks so good. Anything added to it?
Or it's just-- This is as basic
as it's gonna come. Please dig in. -[David] Okay, I'm
gonna go for it. On tonight's menu, shrimp. No sauce, no strong spices. Chef Robert Clark says his
shrimp don't need anything. They're different. So, what's your secret? How do you get shrimp to be so
much better than I'm used to? The secret of my success is
basically sourcing quality. The more you can maintain
the integrity of the product, the easier it is. -[David] Chef Clark believes
it's tough to buy quality shrimp at the supermarket. I have not eaten a farm tiger
prawn imported into Canada in probably 20 years. They could be
filled with pesticides, antibiotics, insecticides. They're grown in cesspools. -[David] Cesspools
filled with antibiotics? [♪♪] Time for a<i> Marketplace</i> test to
find out what's really lurking on our shrimp. Fishmonger. -[David] And here's
what you might not know. Unlike chicken and beef, in
Canada antibiotic use is banned on all shrimp. This one is from India. -[David] But most of our shrimp
is imported largely from Asia. So, I've got some from
Vietnam, some from Thailand, some from China. -[David] So we buy 51
packages from Montreal, Toronto, Saskatoon, and Calgary. Let's get an organic one. -[David] We even pick a few
organic samples from Ecuador and from Vietnam. On one of the labels,
"raised without the need "for antibiotics." "Uncooked pacific
white shrimp, de-veined." "From India, de-veined." -[David] Then we
pack them on ice... And we are good to go. -[David] ..and ship them off
to a special lab at the University of
Saskatchewan. [♪♪] It's run by microbiologist
Joseph Rubin. He's testing to see if there
are dangerous bacteria on our shrimp. Joe, hi. What have you got here? I have some of the
results from your shrimp. -[David] These are our
shrimp here or, at least, bits of them? Yes, yes.
The organisms we grew. And what are you looking for? What we're looking for are
different types of antibiotic resistant bacteria and different
types of food-borne pathogens. -[David] Pathogens like
E. coli, salmonella, staphylococcus aureus. Potentially harmful bacteria
that can adapt into superbugs that many antibiotics
cannot kill. What's this one here? -[Joseph] What you can see is we
have these nice pink colonies. Which is very
characteristic of E. coli. In addition to showing us
that we have E. coli, also contains antibiotics in it
and so we think that based on growth on this plate,
we have an antibiotic resistant bacteria. -[David] First result
and it's positive for E.coli but Rubin still needs to
run a DNA test overnight to see if the bacteria
is antibiotic resistant. The possibility
is a big concern. He tells us about
recent research from the UK. They did a large study, and
were projecting forward to 2050, that the number of people who
would be dying of resistant organisms could potentially
even surpass cancer. -[David] They're
already killing people. The superbugs can
travel from farm, to store, to your kitchen. -[Wendy] I don't know where my
place is in this world anymore. -[David] But especially
in hospitals. -[Wendy] That's my husband. -[David] It looks like you
had the camera ready at the exact moment. -[Wendy] His beautiful eyes. -[David] Two years ago,
Wendy Gould's husband George was diagnosed with colon cancer. -[David] Did you think he was
going to live at that point? If I had anything
to do with it, yes. -[David] You were going to
try to keep him alive as long as you could. Everything in my power. -[David] But Wendy ran into a
problem that left her powerless. George developed
a serious infection. They had him on antibiotics
trying to kill this infection. Yeah. -[David] Why weren't
they working? Well, it would clear up,
but it's still in there. It didn't kill it, it
cleared up the infection. But the bug's still waiting. -[David] What was the nature
of this bug that meant the antibiotics weren't
working on it? Well, it was a superbug. [♪♪] -[David] They found out in a
letter from the hospital telling them about a
contaminated endoscope that was used
on George. "We're writing to inform
you that you are one of three patients who have been
identified as having been infected with the
bacterium that is called, New Delhi Metalo Eso--"
I don't know how to say that-- -[David] But the E.coli. Yup, E.coli. -[David] How does a New Delhi
strain of a bug end up inside George? From the endoscope. -[David] Doctors tried
to kill that bug using half a dozen
different antibiotics, some so powerful,
Wendy says George was violently hallucinating. -[Wendy] This is July 28th, 2016
so it was about a week after his surgery. -[David] He was hospitalized
23 times in just over a year. George became too weak to
continue cancer treatment, too sick from the
bacteria to eat. And there he is January, 2018. And that was--
he passed away January 25th. This is what
the bug did to him. Then everything fell apart. -[David] Do you think he
could've survived? -[Wendy] Yeah. Maybe he wouldn't have
been here you know-- for years and years but
it certainly would've been longer than two years
and he wouldn't have had to suffer. -[David] What is the
thing that's important for people to know? You could have all the best
doctors in the world taking care of you with whatever it is
is the matter with you but if you get one of these
infections, that's it. [♪♪] I'm terrified by this stuff. Multi-drug resistance is
probably the biggest threat that we have to modern
medicine in the 21st century. -[David] Biochemist Gerry Wright
is the director of McMaster University's Institute for
Infectious Disease Research. So, this is your lab? -[Gerry] This is where most of
my students and staff work. What we're trying to do is find
new antibiotics and learn more about antibiotic resistance. Every time you have
a knee replacement, any kind of surgery,
cancer chemotherapy, you have anyone in your extended
family that's had a premature baby, they all rely on
antibiotics because their immune systems are weak. -[David] And what happens
if we can't use them, if we've sort of run out
of antibiotics because everything's resistant? All of what we consider
to be modern medicine becomes incredibly risky. -[David] One contributor
to the crisis, overuse of the drugs in
our food at home and abroad. And when it comes to
shrimp farmed overseas, they are often crammed
into disease-prone pools. As a result, antibiotics
are sometimes added to keep the shrimp alive,
contaminating our food. Canada is passing laws that say
no antibiotics in much of our food, just banning it. Doesn't that help? Our supermarkets are full of
food that come not just from Canada but come from all around
the world and the challenge that we have to deal with now is that
those countries don't have the same regulations that we do. -[David] That sounds
a bit like a backdoor. That's correct. That's the challenge
that we have. -[David] That backdoor means
that whatever Canada says about banning antibiotics
in shrimp, superbugs are still getting
into the country. Once these organisms are here,
once these genes are in Canada, then there's no good way to
keep them from spreading around. So, what would be a really good
idea is to prevent them from getting in,
in the first place. -[David] Yeah. -[David] Cross-country
shrimp shopping spree. [♪♪] Our mission testing for
superbugs on shrimp. 51 packages, shipped
to Joe Rubin's lab. The first results show
a troubling bacteria. Now we want to know if it's
also antibiotic resistant. So, this is the
final confirmation? This is the final confirmation. So, what we're going to see here
is whether or not we've been able to identify the
actual resistance genes. And here you can see... there's our bands. There's proof positive these
are ESBL producing strains. And what an ESBL is, is an
enzyme the bacteria produce that allows them to
break down antibiotics. -[David] The ESBL is almost
like an antibiotic killer? That's not a bad way of
thinking about it, yeah. It's a bacterial countermeasure. -[David] Overall,
Rubin finds 17 per cent, nearly 2 out of every 10
packages of the shrimp we test are contaminated with
antibiotic resistant bacteria. Of those, most are resistant
to more than one antibiotic. And of them, 33 per cent
test positive for ESBL, the antibiotic killer. ESBLs are really
effective at degrading penicillin-type drugs. -[David] So what about
the organic samples? Turns out Rubin finds
an ESBL superbug on one of those brands, too. We also had shrimp samples
that had this label on them "best aquaculture practices." Did any of those
turn up positive for antibiotic resistance? Yeah, so of the nine samples
that we tested where we identified resistant bacteria,
six of those were from products that had that indication
of certification on them. -[David] BAP says
to be certified, farmers should only use
antibiotics minimally. As a shopper, we asked Rubin
what he thinks certified means. A product that has maybe higher
quality than other products. Now, whether that's true
or not and, and what the particular certification is
actually aiming to certify is maybe an
open-ended question. -[Female Narrator]
We are the one-stop shop for aquaculture certification. -[David] We share
our findings with BAP. They agree that antibiotic
resistance is a worldwide problem but emphasize
their shrimp isn't "unsafe". Still, their certification
doesn't guarantee it wasn't treated with antibiotics. Many unanswered questions,
including why one country has more positives for resistant
bacteria than any other. Of the nine contaminated
samples China accounts for two, Vietnam and Thailand,
one each, and India,
five. Does it prompt questions
for you that five of the nine contaminated
samples came from India? Absolutely. Yep, I would be
really interested to know, sort of, where there may
have been breakdowns in the production cycle
that would have allowed this contamination
to occur. -[David] Most shrimp in Canadian
supermarkets come from India- 15 million kilograms a year. India also uses more antibiotics
than any other country, doubling their use in
less than 20 years. How did these bacteria that
we found in the shrimp become resistant to antibiotics? There's always a low level of
resistance but the kinds of resistance that you--
that were detected, is really connected in a
very straight line towards-- with antibiotic use. -[David] So, it's pretty clear
to you that someone has used antibiotics on these shrimp? Or in the ponds at some
point for other organisms, or something,
there's got to be a way for those resistance
genes to be there. -[David] We can't say for
sure the shrimp in our test were farmed in antibiotic
contaminated pools. When we share the results
with the companies, including the organic brand, they tell
us those superbugs may have been picked up
during processing, shipping, or elsewhere
in the environment. -[David] How safe
is your shrimp? On your<i> Marketplace.</i> Our tests have found
antibiotic resistant bacteria on supermarket shrimp. Imported from around the world. Pandora's box is open
when it comes to resistance. We can't scrub the
planet of this problem. -[David] Companies and
certifiers say these superbugs can be killed by cooking
your shrimp thoroughly. Easy, right? We're putting that to the test. [♪♪] Researchers at the University of
British Columbia coat shrimp with an opaque gel and then
invite home cook Charlotte Lee to prepare a dish. So, over here we have
your shrimp for you, all your ingredients. -[David] She has no idea
what she's getting into. The gel will stick to
everything she touches, a way to illustrate how
easily bacteria on the shrimp
could spread. She is very careful
in her preparation. Constantly wiping her
hands and her cooking area. -[David] Hi Charlotte,
I'm David. Hi, David. -[David] That was
really quite something. What is this? -Thank you. This is scrambled egg
with shrimp, yeah. I think the way to make it
is to make the egg really creamy and silky. -[David] So, one of the
things that we're doing in our little experiment
here that we didn't tell you about before is that
the raw shrimp is actually coated in a luminescent gel. -Okay. -[David] We just want to see
where it ended up. We're going to turn all these
lights off and give it a go. Okay, yeah, you see
there's some on the counter, there's more on the counter. Gel from the shrimp
on the corn-starch box. On the egg carton. Even on the tap where
Charlotte washed her hands. And remember that handshake
when I introduced myself? Watching with us, food
safety scientist Siyun Wang. So, we've just
done this experiment, you've seen the results. Does that surprise you at all? Well it doesn't surprise me. The lady who was
doing the cooking, she actually handled the things
really well but as a result we are still seeing the dye while
in reality it could be harmful bacteria being
spread to the utensils, to the other
parts of the kitchen. -[David] If this were bacteria,
it could live on this surface for months. The thing is, they are capable
of just staying there, and once there are
better conditions they might be
able to grow again. So, this is pretty alarming. -[David] It's a good reminder
for us that even if we cook meat, shrimp, really, really
well, that there's still a way for bad stuff on
it to get into us. We actually saw, for example,
that dye ended up getting onto the green onion. So if the different ingredients
are mixed up then there's a chance that these harmful
bacteria can still get to people through other means. -[David] Make a salad from
that green onion and you're potentially eating live
antibiotic resistant bacteria. And that can now sit in your
gut building up resistance for years to come. So who's making sure
that doesn't happen? That our food is safe? That's the job of the
Canadian Food Inspection Agency. But we tried for weeks to
get an on-camera interview with no luck. So we're here in Quebec
City to ask their Minister, Ginette Petitpas Taylor,
about why CFIA isn't testing for antibiotic resistant
bacteria on imported shrimp. They're only testing for
traces of antibiotic residue, and that's supposedly going to
prove whether antibiotics were ever used on the shrimp. If they find it, the CFIA
can send the shipment back. But that test provides no clues
about what kinds of superbugs are coming into the country. Should the CFIA be
doing the test we did, testing for antibiotic
resistant bacteria? It's a gap.
They need to close the gap. We need to get on top of it. The problem right now is
other than your little study, we don't know. -[David] So we should
be watching for it? We should definitely
be watching for this. So we're going to try to
ask the Minister of Health, right here why no one
seems to be watching. I'm David with<i> CBC Marketplace.</i> I'm trying to understand whether
you, whether your government, is concerned with antibiotic
resistant bacteria showing up on our shrimp. Well, they absolutely need to
be watching it on our shrimp and I'm convinced the CFIA
is doing the work that is needed to be done in order
to protect our food supply here in Canada. -[David] If they aren't doing it
should they be doing it now? This is absolutely an
area that is a priority for our government. -[David] Is it your commitment
to look in to the issue of what is on our shrimp being
imported into this country? I am absolutely committed to
make sure that I get in touch with our CFIA officials to find
out what exactly is being done in this area and then from there
making sure that we ensure that Canada's food supply is
safe for all Canadians. We'll follow up with
that, thanks very much. Thank you so much. [♪♪] -[David] While we wait for
our government to act, others are already
finding solutions. So these are all the tanks. This is the farm. -[David] We're visiting
a Canadian shrimp farm, Berezan Shrimp in Langley, B.C. -[David] It's huge. There's a lot to take in. -[David] Like if we look up
here through all of this, how many shrimp live here? At peak there's going to
be about 3-4 million shrimp in this building. 3-4 million shrimp in all these? Yes. -[David] And it's
just an early start. If things go well, they're
hoping to boost production and become a major supplier
to the Canadian market. You don't use antibiotics? There's no
antibiotic use in this farm. Why is it that abroad we
see antibiotic use en masse, and you've got zip in
this huge facility? We're an indoor facility. We control the engineered
air, engineered water. -[David] Keep the water clean,
the shrimp stay healthy, so there's no need
for antibiotics. We even checked, running our
test on Berezan Shrimp. No antibiotic
resistant bacteria. Overall, their approach
seems to be working. -[David] You want to go fishing? Or, I guess, shrimping? Shrimpin'. -[David] Oh, yeah. So how old are these? These guys are batch 12, so
they've been on the farm here now for a couple of months. -[David] With Chef Robert, we
taste test that Canadian shrimp. Delicious,
though a bit pricey, about 30 per cent
more expensive. But this top cook says
cleanliness has a cost. Food shouldn't be cheap. Our priorities in North America,
our priorities are wrong. It's more important to us
that we have the right car than we feed the right
food to our children. That's where our society is. -[David] Do you think our
demand for food at the lowest possible price has somehow
caused us to live in the world that we now live in? Absolutely, you get
what you pay for. -[David] Do you eat shrimp? Yes, I do. I love shrimp. -[David] And when you think
about what we're finding in imported shrimp, what
does it cause you to do? I'm very careful when I'm
cooking shrimp for all the same reasons I'm careful
when I'm cooking chicken. I just assume that there
is going to be bacterial contamination on it. -[David] What you need to know. Look for wild shrimp. Always cook shrimp
carefully and thoroughly. Buy local shrimp
whenever possible. Buying organic is
no guarantee the shrimp are free of antibiotic
resistant bacteria.
