Aug 26 2008

Canada has its own problems with food safety

The New York Times (August 23) reports a third death in Canada linked to cold cuts contaminated with Listeria, along with another 17 or more cases of illness. Nothing unusual here except for this statement: “The outbreak came as Canada’s Conservative government was considering a controversial plan to transfer all or some of the responsibility for food inspection to the food industry.” I hope they are kidding. Fox guarding chickens, anyone?

As of today, it’s 12 deaths and 26 confirmed cases with a bunch more under investigation.

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[...] Original post by Marion [...]

  • Jill
  • August 28, 2008
  • 2:17 pm

Marion, what do you think is behind the move of Maple Leaf Food’s CEO, Michael McCain, publically announcing that it is the company’s fault and not the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, for this outbreak?
The full story:
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2008/08/27/maple-leaf-comments.html

This outbreak of listeria is a good wake-up call for us in Canada that our food inspection/safety processes are no better than what we observe happening in the USA.

  • Marion
  • August 28, 2008
  • 5:21 pm

It sounds to me as if the Maple Leaf CEO knows the rules for dealing with recalls: take full responsibility, be fully transparent, take losses, and move on. I wish more company officials behaved as well in similar situations. He deserves high marks.

  • sid
  • September 1, 2008
  • 9:36 am

letters to the editor are mentioning food irradiation as a wonderful solution to any and all food-borne contaminant problems… Nothing at all about food production one-plant-serves-the-whole-country centralization and lowest-cost-of-production as a cause for the problem.

Marion has repeatedly said that we can eliminate food borne pathogens but industry’s shareholders reject a penny per product extra cost.

We should not risk death from our food!!!

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