CANADA: Listeriosis probe points to leadership 'vacuum'

21.jul.09
Canwest News Service
Sarah Schmidt, Meagan Fitzpatrick

OTTAWA - 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."
Despite the litany of problems flagged in the report, Agriculture
Minister Gerry Ritz was quick on Tuesday to rule out any government
compensation for the families of the 22 victims who died after consuming
tainted meat. Maple Leaf has already apologized and agreed to pay up to
$27 million to settle class-action lawsuits.
"The investigation has made clear that much more could have been done to
prevent this from happening in the first place and more to that point,
much more must be done to make sure it doesn't happen again," added
Weatherill.
While conceding listeria is a "virulent bug that is very difficult to
pinpoint and even harder to keep in check," the report identifies
decisions that "were not thoroughly thought through or executed" at
every level, which contributed to the outbreak.
Weatherill also found senior executives at both Maple Leaf and the
government agencies were not fully engaged in food safety issues,
cementing a lack of urgency in the way they initially addressed the
brewing crisis.
At the plant level, the report concludes company staff took action to
destroy the bug whenever it was found, but they missed the "big picture"
- which was the "repeated pattern of presence of listeria on the same
production lines several weeks after the problem was presumed to have
been fixed."