Canada's food inspection agency under fire over late recall of tainted beef

 

 

Canada's federal food inspectors have been accused of failing to detect E. coli contamination in ground beef that had been sold in supermarkets before they were recalled.

 

CBC News Canada reported that the discovery of the contaminated ground beef was not made by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) but by the little-known organization FoodNet Canada, which does tests on random samples of meat and produce from grocery stores.

 

Dr. Frank Pollari, FoodNet manager, explained after their discovery: "We're just trying to see what the end product looks like, what the consumer is getting. We randomly select the retailers, and then [staff] go out to those and select the specific package that we get, and they ship it to our labs."

 

Following FoodNet's discovery, the CFIA recalled 31,000 pounds of ground beef from Walmart stores.

 

According to the CBC News report, the recall was publicized only on Dec. 2, three or four days past the "use by" or "expiration" dates stamped on the meat packages.

 

NDP agriculture critic Malcolm Allen commented, "That's not a safety inspection system, that's actually just a failure. If by the time they actually make a recall, it's days after the best before date, there's nothing on the shelf to recall. 

 

"It's either been bought, in people's freezers, been consumed, or the retailer themselves removed it--not because they knew it was unsafe but because the best before date expired and they took it off the shelf themselves."

 

The meat had been shipped by Cargill Meat Solutions from its Calgary processing plant to Walmart stores.

 

Cargill said in a statement that it maintained a "robust food safety program."

 

"We are currently reviewing our processing and testing procedures as part of our investigation to determine if any changes are appropriate," the statement added.

 

According to the CBC News report, the CFIA had suggested the recall was the result of a normal process.

 

Federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose, to whose agency the CFIA is attached, maintained that Canada "has one of the safest and healthiest food systems in the world" and that, based on a recent Conference Board of Canada survey, Canada had one of the best food-safety systems among 17 developed economies.

 

Food scientist Sylvain Charlebois, of the University of Guelph, however, said Canada's rank mattered little after CFIA recalled the contaminated meat after its "best before" dates and that CFIA's system was "absolutely not" good enough.

 

"You're exposing consumers to unwarranted risk, essentially.  By the time you actually issue the recall, some consumers may have actually eaten contaminated meats", he explained.