A bone to pick: Agriculture minister admits to problems in Canada's meat inspection

By Sarah Schmidt
Postmedia News
August 5, 2010

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz has acknowledged last week's massive recall of all Brandt ready-to-eat deli meats exposes gaps in Canada's meat inspection system.

OTTAWA — Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz on Thursday acknowledged last week's massive recall of all Brandt ready-to-eat deli meats exposes gaps in Canada's meat inspection system.

"I'm concerned that the paperwork that Brandt had was less than strenuous, I'll call it. We are in there looking through some of that. We're looking at different protocols, at having them reporting in different ways," Ritz told Postmedia News. "At the end of the day, we'll have a better plant."

Ritz's comments come a day after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed federal meat inspectors didn't find any problems that needed fixing at a meat-processing plant in the months leading up to last week's massive recall of Brandt deli meats, raising concerns about the state of Canada's meat inspection system on the second anniversary of the deadly listeriosis crisis in August 2008 linked to tainted Maple Leaf deli meats.

In the Brandt case, the agency identified sanitation issues, deficiencies in the company's environmental testing program and concerns about undercooking only after public health officials told CFIA to take a closer look at the plant.

The July 31 national recall of all ready-to-eat meats manufactured by G. Brandt Meat Packers at its Mississauga, Ont., plant followed 23 confirmed cases of salmonella associated with Brandt headcheese by public-heath authorities in British Columbia and one case in Ontario.

After CFIA launched its food-safety investigation at the plant on July 14, the agency issued the first of nine corrective action reports, including one singling out how well the meat was cooked and related record-keeping.

Not cooking food to the appropriate temperatures can result in the growth of food-borne pathogens such as salmonella, and "evidence began to suggest that ready-to-eat meat products at Brandt were at risk of under-processing," according to CFIA's assessment of the Brandt plant following its two-week probe that wrapped up July 30.

In addition to finding salmonella in headcheese products manufactured at the Brandt plant, CFIA also found Listeria monocytogenes in the company's Ham Suelze.

These newly issued corrective action reports, the main tool used under CFIA's inspection system to compel companies to fix problems in a specified time frame, have been the only ones issued this year for the Brandt plant.

"It takes a combination of work between CFIA, public health and the industry of record. I think everyone learns from every one of things. We always do that 'lessons-learned' aspect of it," said Ritz. "Having said that, we always strive to do better and I think in this case, certainly it could always be worse and we try to make a better system as we move forward."

Bob Kingston, president of the union representing CFIA meat inspectors, said the case indicates the same strains in Canada's meat inspection system two years after 22 Canadians died following the consumption of listeria-tainted Maple Leaf deli meats, also produced at a federally-inspected plant.

At the time of the listeriosis outbreak, CFIA meat inspectors complained the new inspection system in place at the time, called Compliance Verification System, put too much emphasis on reviewing company paperwork, leaving little time for inspectors to conduct in-depth visual inspections of plant operations.

"If people had time to look at everything they are supposed to look at, you would expect it would be caught. But they don't have time to do their own confirmation and analyze what they're looking at. They don't have time to do that, that's what it boils down to," Kingston said Thursday.

In her damning report into the Maple Leaf recall, issued last summer, independent investigator Sheila Weatherill said CFIA's Compliance Verification System was "implemented without a detailed assessment of the resources available to take on these new tasks."

But after hearing "differing views" about the question of resources earmarked for meat inspection, Weatherill couldn't determine whether inspection staffing was at the root of the issue, calling instead for a third-party audit to arrive at a conclusion.

Ritz on Thursday declined to say whether he has received the final report of the resource audit, calling it a "work in progress" on which "we're doing analysis."

He added, "we hiring people as fast we can."

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