Follow up to: Another Meat Recall--The Continuing Deadly Problem With Meats in Canada.

Published, by Al (Alex Alexander)D. Girvan, on 09/09/2009 17:18 Pacific Daylight Time

Unacceptable a year after listeriosis, our food is no safer.

A year after listeriosis, the foods we buy are no safer (Vancouver Sun). As usual, we haven't learned the lessons that we should from those outbreaks. When the Canadian Food Inspection Agency first announced a recall of foods containing pistachios in early spring, 25 products sold under three different brand names ( brand names no longer mean anything), were ensnared in the salmonella scare. By the time the food-safety investigation was finally completed in June, the recall captured 70 products and 18 brands in Canada all containing potentially contaminated pistachios from Terra Bella Inc. of California. At the end of it all, the second largest pistachio company in the United States admitted that; not knowing their own business, they didn't realize salmonella contamination could occur on raw pistachios. I can only wonder how many other cases went unreported? The striking revelation, made on the heels of a recall that was drawn-out because took time for manufacturers to figure out whether they used the tainted ingredient, is hardly a boost of confidence for consumers who are still digesting a string of listeriosis post-mortems about how Canada's food system and government??? failed Canadians last August. Twenty-two people, most of them elderly Canadians living in provincial long-term facilities or hospitals, ( good way of reducing health costs), died after consuming deli meats contaminated with listeria produced at a government-inspected plant operated by a leading food Company.
Whether the listeriosis outbreak has led to an overall improvement in the awareness of food safety among industry is very, very, arguable.
There's no doubt more rigorous tracking of listeria and sophisticated sanitation protocols are in place at Canada's federally regulated meat plants, where operators were shaken by the realisation that steps taken at Maple Leaf Foods Inc., an industry leader in Canada, (one can only wonder about other countries), weren't as good as they needed to be to deal with the ubiquitous bacterium. But the agency is still wrestling with a resource problem (maybe it's time we cut politician?s salaries and put our resources where they belong) that sees one meat inspector responsible for an average of five facilities?? --the ratio probably should be about five inspectors for one facility--while struggling with a new oversight system that favours auditing of company paperwork over time on the plant floor. And the food safety system is much more than listeria and ready-to-eat meat plants, especially as the Canadian Government becomes more and more kiss-ass and the system becomes increasingly globalized (Americanized) and the ingredient chain (some Canadian fast-food chains are now, illegally, importing beef blood from Mexico, in order to improve the flavour of their hamburgers) in processed foods becomes more complicated.
Far exceeding the danger of Swine Flu, public health officials believe cases of food-borne illnesses affect between 11 to 13 million Canadians every year and kill up to 500 people. The globalized food system makes food-borne illnesses the largest class of emerging infectious diseases in Canada, a fact that appears to have caught the POLITICIANS and Public Health Agency of Canada off guard, according to Sheila Weatherill, who came to this conclusion after completing her independent investigation into, last year's listeriosis outbreak.
I still feel reasonably good about the level of safety of food in Canada, but our vulnerabilities are substantial. We could have a food-borne illness outbreak tomorrow that would affect people from one end of this country to another. We don,t know how to address that appropriately at the moment. We are continuing raw manure on crops and we also feed these organisms that cause food-borne illness in humans to animals that we then eat as food and produce that is fertilized by the waste materials from them. Look people, try to think, that's just not too terribly bright in my mind.
I really believe what is fundamentally changed about food safety in Canada,and it is probably the best omen for the future, is that some level of public awareness has arisen at a number of levels of the past 12 months because, ultimately, I don't think you can affect the kind of cultural change that I think most people would say is fundamental to the strongest possible food safety system without that level of awareness. We need to seriously rethink our SPENDING PRIORITIES and FREE TRADE agreements.
In the meantime, watch for the latest recall to trickle out, and watch for more people mysteriously dying.