CANADA: Maple Leaf executive backpedals on listeria quip

25.aug.09
TheStar.com
Robert Cribb

A high-level Maple Leaf Foods executive has been caught on camera joking
about last year's listeriosis outbreak that killed 22 people.
Rory McAlpine, vice-president of government and industry relations with
the food giant, was speaking at the Couchiching Institute of Public
Affairs Conference in Orillia on Aug. 8 when he delivered a quip about
the outbreak, with a punchline even he now says was tasteless.
"Just shortly after the (listeria) crisis ... the Stanley Cup came to
Orillia," he tells the crowd on a video that has made its way to the
YouTube video hosting site. "There was a woman so excited that she went
and she kissed the Stanley Cup. But then she got home and she began to
worry and she began to wonder, `Oh my God, am I going to get listeria, I
kissed the Stanley Cup.'
"So she phoned up Health Canada and the nice lady at Health Canada said,
`Oh, no, no, no, no, you don't need to worry. The Stanley Cup hasn't
been in any contact with a Maple Leaf product for 42 years."
After pausing for laughter from the crowd, the former B.C. deputy
agriculture minister explains the outbreak is a "serious issue" with
personal importance to him because his university-aged son was made ill
for 24 hours by "tainted meat that my company produces."
Doug Powell, a Canadian food safety expert at Kansas State University,
called the joke "gross."
"It's nice that he apologized, but it would be better if he'd put
warnings labels on products for old people and pregnant women and make
(listeria test result) data public."
After a link to the video clip appeared on Powell's blog yesterday,
McAlpine posted a mea culpa.
"I want to sincerely apologize ... for the joke," he wrote. "These were
my personal remarks, and I appreciate in hindsight they were not
appropriate given the listeriosis outbreak and the death and illness it
caused. I didn't in any way mean to make light of this tragedy and I
feel terrible that my early remarks conveyed a callousness that I don't
feel."
In an interview yesterday, McAlpine repeated his regrets, calling his
comments "ill considered."
"It wasn't appropriate and I know that," he said.
The incident echoes a bit of jocularity from federal Agriculture
Minister Gerry Ritz last September.
During an election campaign and an outbreak investigation, Ritz jested
to scientists and staffers that political fallout from the tragedy was
"like a death by a thousand cuts. Or should I say cold cuts."
Tony Merchant, a Regina lawyer who represented more than 4,000 alleged
victims of the outbreak in a class-action suit last year, said
McAlpine's comments reflect insensitivity.
"You'd think people would feel shame for what has happened. You get the
feeling that because they handled the media well and got heralded for
handling the public disaster well, it may have gone to the hands of the
Maple Leaf executives."
Maple Leaf settled the class-action lawsuit last year with a payout of
up to $27 million to victims.
McAlpine's comments come as Maple Leaf Foods has placed full-page ads in
newspapers referring to the anniversary of Canada's largest ever
listeriosis outbreak.
"We have a deep commitment to becoming a global leader in food safety to
prevent this kind of tragedy from ever happening again," says the open
letter from company president and CEO Michael McCain.