ONTARIO: Food industry needs to improve: Maple Leaf head

20.apr.09
Canwest News Service
Sarah Schmidt and Mike De Souza

OTTAWA -- A deadly outbreak of food poisoning from last summer could
have been avoided through better practices from industry along with
stronger resources and regulations from government, Michael McCain,
president and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., said Monday.
Testifying at parliamentary hearings, McCain said stricter requirements
to collect and to properly analyze test results have now been adopted
and may have prevented 21 deaths which occurred last summer when
Listeria bacteria contaminated some of his company's ready-to-eat meat
products.
"I believe that had we known then what we know now; had we done then
what we do now, we might have saved 21 lives," McCain told a
parliamentary committee studying food safety. "This tragedy was a
defining moment for Maple Leaf Foods and for those of us who work there.
We are determined to make a terrible wrong, right. That is our
obligation to those who died, and their families."
Opposition MPs praised McCain for taking responsibility for the tragedy
and questioned whether the government should do more to accept part of
the blame. The head of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency later told
the committee that industry and government agencies all share
responsibility for ensuring that food is safe, and that it has released
reports which review the problems and changes to come.
In a speech delivered to business leaders earlier in the day, McCain
said the food industry "has to raise its game" because it doesn't take
food safety seriously enough.
"The problems do not relate only to meat, but to cheese, seafood,
vegetables and nuts as well," McCain said in the speech. "In other
words, many things you might eat. This industry has to raise its game.
It has to take food safety more seriously, it has to invest more in food
safety, and it has to improve its record of delivering safe food to
consumers."
"Even though we had what we thought was an industry-leading food safety
program - better than the regulations required and better than any
Canadian food manufacturer we are aware of - it clearly wasn't good
enough, and the entire Canadian industry was not as good as we thought
we were."