Listeria Lawyer & Attorney : Marler Clark Law Firm : Listeria Blog

For its year-after editorial about the Maple Leaf listeria outbreak that killed 22 mostly elderly Canadians living in provincial long-term care facilities or hospitals, the Vancouver Sun sought out some experts.

The newspaper waned to know if Canada's food was safer after all those who died after consuming deli meats contaminated with listeria produced at a government-inspected plant.

"And on the eve of the one-year mark of the outbreak, the verdict is still out on how far we've come to improve the food-safety system in the intervening year.

"Oh, hell no," Rick Holley, University of Manitoba microbiologist and member of the academic advisory panel at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, says bluntly when asked if we're better off.

Mansell Griffiths, director of the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety, is more measured, but hardly makes a definitive pronouncement about the shape we're in today.

"In some respects yes, in some respects no," says Griffiths, a professor in food science at the University of Guelph.

"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 realization that steps taken at Maple Leaf Foods Inc., an industry leader in food safety, 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 that sees one meat inspector responsible for an average of five facilities, while struggling with a new oversight system that favours auditing of company paperwork over time on the plant floor."

Read the rest in the Sun.

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Before we get going, let’s acknowledge the obvious. We pay such little attention to Canada that we are far from experts on our neighbors to the north.

When we do pay attention to Canada its usually because of some natural or man-made disaster. Canadians tough out what mother nature sends their way, but man-made disasters are another story.

In America, we try and get both truth and justice in our Courts. If policy-makers learn any lessons along the way, we consider ourselves lucky. In Canada, it’s a different story. Up north, the man-made disaster playbook requires multiple inquires in hopes of placing some sharp-edge political blame.

There was no doubt man was responsible for the 2008 listeria outbreak that was eventually traced to the ready-to-eat meat cutters at the Maple Leaf plant in Toronto.

Maple Leaf paid out $27 million to the survivors of the 22 mostly elderly Canadians who died in the listeria outbreak. Members of Parliament have already weighed in with their own report on the tragedy.

The latest play in the inquiry game comes from independent investigator Sheila Weatherill, a public health expert and former CEO of Edmonton-based Capital Health. Her report to the government in Ottawa is a big deal.

Here’s how the Calgary Herald puts it:

A "void in leadership" within the federal government during last summer's deadly listeriosis outbreak came after company officials and over-worked meat inspectors failed to identify a persistent listeria problem at the Maple Leaf Foods plant, according to a highly critical report by an independent investigator.

No player in the listeriosis outbreak escaped criticism from Sheila Weatherill, who released her report Tuesday.

But Weatherill zeroed in on a "vacuum in senior leadership" among government officials at the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that caused "confusion and weak decision-making.

She makes 57 specific recommendations in the report.  Maple Leaf president Michael McCain said the report was "tough" on the company and "it ought to be."  Ag Minister Gerry Ritz added the most worn observation, saying the outbreak was the result of a "perfect storm."

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Grant Robertson from National Farmers Union-Ontario has some comments today in Canada's Sun Times newspaper about the investigation into Maple Leaf listeria outbreak.  In part, he says:

"The Maple Leaf Listeria outbreak pulled back the curtain on an inspection system that was no longer serving Canadians. It revealed a government agenda of removing inspections and a minister not up to the job of working in farmers' interests, in my view.

"On June 18 the federal Subcommittee of Food Safety released its report into the listerosis deaths caused by tainted meat from the Maple Leaf plant and into food safety in general.

"It seems to me as though the government was more concerned about covering a posterior part of their collective anatomies than really getting down to brass tacks on how to fix a system that clearly has problems.

"And if the deaths of 22 Canadians were not enough to send the government signals that there are serious problems then it is hard to understand what it would take. Many of the 21 recommendations in the dissenting report basically boil down to recommending the government should actually do the job Canadians expect and a bunch of motherhood statements.

"Missing from the report is any sense that food inspection should be completely independent of government and political considerations and not take place in a self-policing environment on the plant floor. "

Check out the rest in The Sun Times.

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