Listeriosis investigator insists politics played no role in probe

By Sarah Schmidt, Canwest News Service July 20, 2009

'I have been able to conduct my investigation independently and
impartially. There has been no interference from any party whatsoever,"
said Sheila Weatherill, the investigator hired by the Conservative
government to probe last summer's deadly listeriosis outbreak, in a
statement about the 'preventable incident' that cost 22 Canadians their
lives.

OTTAWA - The investigator hired by the Conservative government to probe
last summer's deadly listeriosis outbreak made a pre-emptive strike
Monday against potential critics of her work, declaring she conducted
her investigation "independently and impartially."

Confirming the report will be released Tuesday after delivering a copy
to Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz on Monday, Sheila Weatherill issued a
statement to emphasize the process has not been tainted, despite how
politically charged the issue has been over the past year.

"I have been able to conduct my investigation independently and
impartially. There has been no interference from any party whatsoever,"
Weatherill said in a statement about her six-month-long investigation
into a "preventable incident" that cost 22 Canadians their lives.

About one hour later Monday, Weatherill's office issued an edited
version of the English statement without the paragraph about the absence
of political interference; a spokesman said it had been cut from the
final version for length, but a clerical error meant the lengthier draft
was inadvertently released in English alongside the revised, shorter
version in French.

A spokeswoman for Ritz reiterated that no political staff "interfered,
edited or influenced the independent investigator's report or release in
any way."

Weatherill's comments on the eve of the public release of her report
come after months of political attacks about the process she was
leading. Critics, even in advance of the report's release, were critical
of the process established by the Tory government to get to the bottom
of what happened during last year's listeriosis outbreak.

Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter said the report from "a
hand-picked investigator, with a limited mandate conducted in private,
is not sufficient."

Malcolm Allen, food security critic for the New Democrats, questioned
Weatherill's decision to give the report to Ritz a day before releasing
it to the public, giving the minister and the Prime Minister's Office
"an entire day to craft their response."

"To really push the fact that she's an independent investigator and that
there's been no interference from anywhere, from any party whatsoever,
and then the first thing she says, 'I'm giving it to the minister and
the PMO, and I'm not going to give it to the public right away,' that
takes the whole aspect of independence and throws it out the window."

In addition to investigating specifics about how one of Canada's most
respected food companies, Maple Leaf Foods, released tainted meat into
the marketplace while working under the eye of meat inspectors from the
Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Weatherill was to assess how well
federal organizations and public health officials across the country
responded to the crisis.

"Ensuring the safety of our food supply is one of the government's most
important responsibilities and, as the independent investigator, I felt
a strong obligation to find out the circumstances and factors
contributing to this preventable incident," Weatherill said in her
statement.

As part of her investigation, Weatherill interviewed more than 100
people, including staff from the Prime Minister's Office, federal
ministers and their staff, and senior officials at the food inspection
agency, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada.

Weatherill, who reviewed more than five million pages of documentation,
also interviewed provincial medical health officers, operators of
long-term care facilities and representatives from the food industry and
consumer groups, as well as family members of victims.

Amir Attaran, a Canada research chair in law and population health at
the University of Ottawa, said he remained skeptical about the process
because it wasn't carried out in public, but said he didn't want to
"prejudge" the report before reading it.

"I think the important things to see are an evaluation of whether the
reduction that took place in meat inspections was the right thing to do
and whether it had any contributory part in the disaster that happened,"
said Attaran, who has written about the incident and the state of food
safety in Canada as a member of the editorial board at the Canadian
Medical Association Journal.

Attaran said he's also anxious to see where Weatherill comes down on the
question of whether the public health agency in Canada "fulfilled its
expected role during this crisis."

In a statement, Ritz on Monday called Weatherill's recommendations
"insightful," but declined further comment until the report was publicly
released Tuesday.

Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University
of Georgia and one of five scientists who formed Weatherill's expert
advisory group, said Monday the draft he reviewed was "balanced" and got
the science right. "I was very pleased," Doyle said in an interview.

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