Fresh ground beef is packed at a local butcher shop Monday, October 1, 2012 in Levis Que. The Liberals and the NDP are ganging up on the government over the safety of Canada’s meat supply.
The leader of the Opposition on Tuesday urged the Conservative government and its agriculture minister to take responsibility for Canada’s burgeoning tainted meat scandal, one that’s prompted the recall of 1.5 million pounds of beef that may be contaminated with E. coli.
“On the 25th of September, the minister of agriculture said the contaminated meat did not make its way onto grocery store shelves but it was on the shelves,” Thomas Mulcair said in Question Period.
“Yesterday, the Conservatives tried to blame officials. The minister of agriculture is holding the [Canadian Food Inspection Agency's] feet to the fire. Does the Prime Minister think that food safety is the responsibility of the minister of agriculture — yes or no?”
The CFIA is a “specialized agency” equipped to deal with the crisis, said Prime Minister Stephen Harper, emphasizing that his government has increased the number of food safety inspectors by 700 since 2006.
“Food safety is the number one priority of our system and we have a specialized agency to deal with this,” Harper said in the House of Commons.
“We have to say the truth once again, which is since 2006, we have hired a great number of many new inspectors. It is important for us, Mr. Speaker, that we prioritize their work.”
[More]
See Also:
B.C. slaughterhouses not testing for pathogens
This may be just the tip of the iceberg. An older story tells us why we should all be concerned because there is much to be concerned about.
Update:
I’m going to leave this thread for SL to deal with. Yesterday I noted on another thread that my main concern was the length of time the government took to react to the problem. I asked why the “XL” license wasn’t lifted immediately until the problem was identified and fixed. I also noted that most consumers trust their local stores to supply safe products. “Stage” disagreed noting that everyone is aware of the problem and has been for long. That may be true — or not — I don’t know but judging by the way people vote I have my “druthers”. It seems to me Canadians live in a bubble. Nothing disturbs until something happens to burst said bubble.
For every person who reads and understands the information linked on this site there are probably ten thousand who have never heard of it and worse, couldn’t care less. Not until someone in their family gets seriously ill or dies from a pathogen easily dealt with. In this case it is simple to avoid a problem — serve all meat products “well done”. The heat kills the “bug”. It’s as simple as that.
And I think that is what “stage” and I are trying to tell people and so we should. If you want a “rare” steak or worse — “Steak Tartare” — beware. You have no idea what risks you are taking and that would be because “you don’t care” having never bothered to learn about that which can destroy you. That goes for politics also.
After all the testing is done and the results show that 99.99% of the recalled products was not contaminated what would this mean !?
Maybe that we a getting so good at detecting contamination that it’s easy to find some level of it just about anywhere, maybe ?
Obviously if any contamination is detected, over a critical amount that indicates some sort of possible danger to the public, some overreaction is a lot better than under-reaction and people getting very sick or dying.
The whole system of food processing could be very well regulated and inspected but one person in the production chain not washing his/her hands and touching the wrong thing can easily cause contamination(s) including someone at home not washing their hands when handling their purchased food.
In Québec a few years ago there was a listeriosis scare where tons of perfectly good and uncontaminated artisanal cheese was destroyed, when in the name of not taking a chance, there was a great panic driven sweep and destruction of cheese from makers who had no contamination at all: Many of these makers where ruined or almost ruined when their stock where arbitrarily destroyed without any compensation.
With a steak you only have to normally worry about the exterior of the steak so that if cooked on the outside the E. coli bacteria will be killed. With hamburger it’s perfectly safe if cooked well done, but it is much much riskier if undercooked in the middle, and I can see processed meats/sausages can be a problem where the bacteria could be mixed in processing all through the product.
Catching contamination early, identifying all products at risk and being quick in finding the source of contamination etc ….. is what we should expect, but I don’t think one can guarantee that contamination can never happen 100% of the time.
I could be all wrong here but just playing ” devils advocate ” and just asking questions.;)
Re: “After all the testing is done and the results show that 99.99% of the recalled products was not contaminated what would this mean !?”
Good question, Jean .
You are correct but unfortunately Canadians cannot take that chance. In no way can any company assure 100% purity “at this time” as you point out. So what to do?
Canadians are going to have to get used to charcoal (extremely well done) burgers and pretty much everything else because we don’t know what has been declared safe and what has slipped through the cracks.
That’s what is happening here and it’s a damned good debate.
Keep it going.
Goodnight all.
In light of your comments I’ve thought about it some more, and I still lay the lions share of the blame on the consumer – there are a couple of problems to address.
The first, at least in my mind, is general consumer unwillingness to punish the slackness that results in these problems. At (and after) this point a consumer eating XL Foods Inc. processed, or Costco purchased, meat is a consumer that is (IMO) part of the overall problem — punish them both, and let them serve as an example to others.
We should expect 100% safety at the production level, and if we do not get it we should not reward those who screw up with continued patronage, that is not how you encourage better service, a better product, and greater safety. 4 years later have a look in my cupboard or fridge – you will not find Maple Leaf Foods products, I do not trust them and will not knowingly purchase them.
A further issue I think we should be wondering about is the (apparent) lack of competition in this industry. How many major slaughterhouse operations do we have in Canada? IIRC from a news cast I saw the answer is 3, maybe 4 (but don’t quote me on that), and that is why contaminated meat has been found from coast to coast to coast. 34.5 million people and less than a handful of major slaughterhouses serving the entire Canadian industrial meat industry – I gotta ask, why is that?
Yes, government and the CFIA need to be questioned closely, and someone high up in the chain (not necessarily as high as a government Minister unless it can be shown that a decision they made contributed to the the issue) needs to find they are unemployed.
– but ultimately Canadians need to re-discover with this fiasco that we should have discovered with the 2008 Maple Leaf Foods listeriosis outbreak, putting faith in government and government regulation can land you in the hospital or the graveyard. And they need to start sending personal messages to producers and suppliers instead of hoping the government will do that for them.
With all due respect SL our ‘expectation’ of absolutely safe food is a large part of the problem. While it is ideal that government or its agencies keep us safe ultimately it is up to us to Make Sure that what we put in our mouth is safe and nutritious. E coli is quite easily controlled by properly cooking the meat and making certain that there is no cross contamination after the meat is cooked.
XL is not innocent and should be punished as should the CFIA. However trying to blame elected officials for something they had no prior knowledge of is just plain silly.
I’d be willing to bet that far more people die each year due to failures in our health care system than do due to food borne illness.
Yet this is a national crisis? No system is perfect.
Car accidents, drunk driving, slipping in the bathtub, jay walking with eyes closed, medical errors in hospitals, swimming pool drownings: Probably all more likely to kill you statistically speaking.
Not that all reasonable efforts should be made to safeguard food safety, but it can never be 100% perfect !
Government oversight, inspections by bureaucrats are necessary but it should also be in the interest of big and small food processors to ” clean up their act ” ( Pun intended ) as they pay and pay big when their reputation, as well as their food, is tainted !
stageleft makes a good point that the most power lies in the hands of consumers punishing sloppy and negligent companies by massively refusing to buy their product: The company could go bankrupt and all those ” union ” workers would also be out of work if their lackadaisical work ethic was the cause of the contamination(s).
Maplelief Foods took a very serious P.R. and economical hit when they where the source of contaminated food and I think lost for a while money due to fear of their brand by the public: So I’m not so sure that the public didn’t punish them at the time ?
“I’d be willing to bet that far more people die each year due to failures in our health care system than do due to food borne illness. ”
According to a Reader’s digest story I read just yesterday 24,000 people die each year in Canada due to doctor error. Now where can I get me a hamburger at 8 in the morning? I’ve got one hell of a better chance of surviving that than going to the hospital it seems.