OTTAWA – The Conservative government is standing behind their food safety record even as another five illnesses are linked to the E. coli outbreak at an Alberta meat processing plant that sparked the largest beef recall in Canadian history.
“We take this seriously and we’ve made sure that CFIA has the additional resources they need to do their job, for example by hiring 700 new inspectors since 2006 and by increasing their budgets by about $150 million dollars,” Parliamentary Secretary for the Agriculture Minister Pierre Lemieux said in an interview that aired Sunday on the Global News program The West Block with Tom Clark.
The number of inspectors on the job at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has been a constant defence for the Conservative government as they face questions over Canada’s food safety system in the wake of the outbreak.
More than 1,800 products processed at XL Foods in Brooks. Alta have been recalled across Canada and the United States since E. coli was first detected in the plant on Sept. 4. Recalls started 12 days after E. coli was found.
Watching over those products were 46 highly-trained food inspectors at the processing facility – a 20 per cent increase over three years ago, according to Lemieux.
“They were doing their job and testing for E. coli is not a zero-risk activity,” he said. “There’s a lot of product moving through the plant and on top of the CFIA inspectors of course, the plant has its full inspection staff as well working with the CFIA.”
SOUNDOFF: After hearing the government’s response to the E. coli scare, do you feel any safer buying beef now than you did at the beginning of the week?
Despite the number of inspectors, contaminated meat processed at XL Foods made it to store shelves and is being blamed for at least 10 illnesses.
On Saturday, the Public Health Agency of Canada confirmed five new cases of E. coli – three in Alberta and two in Quebec – linked to beef products from the plant.
Bob Kingston, the head of the union representing the food inspectors, provides some insight into how contaminated meat made it onto the dinner tables of Canadian families.
Kingston said the number of inspectors at the plant quoted by Lemieux actually represents two shifts, with just 23 inspectors on the job at any given time. He added the 20 per cent increase in staff simply filled vacant positions and did not create new jobs.
“The numbers that are there now meet the minimum requirements of the program. It is not a best practice scenario,” said Kingston, the president of the agriculture union at the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
Earlier this week, government officials revealed there were problems at XL Foods long before the E. coli outbreak. Their ongoing investigation found deficiencies like sanitizer dripping onto meat, clogged cleaning hoses and employees not wearing proper equipment. The company was also ignoring its own protocols for dealing with E. coli.
Now shutdown, the massive plant processed 4,000 head of cattle each day and millions of pounds of beef per week.
The number of inspectors has failed to increase with the speed and volume of meat moving through the plant, according to Kingston.
“It becomes a much more risky operation, so you should have heightened surveillance, and in my view they shouldn’t be trying to do it with the same resources as before the speed limit,” he said.
There is a spot of good news in the story for Thanksgiving: the XL plant does not process turkeys.
© Global News. A division of Shaw Media Inc., 2012