CFIA - XL Meats -E Coli - Is your meat safe-

[Goober]

Food agency defends delayed beef recall after E. coli alert - Calgary - CBC News

Le me see - You find contamination in a shipment- you have not identified the source - and the plants keeps on producing

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is defending its decision not to issue an immediate recall on beef products coming out of the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alta.

Officials say they were alerted on Sept. 4 to a positive E. coli test in beef shipped to the United States taken the day before, but recalls in Canada didn’t start until Sept. 16.

Canadian inspectors also had a positive E. coli test in a shipment that went to a small plant in Calgary on Sept. 4, which was part of the same shipment out of the XL Foods plant in Brooks.

The CFIA’s Dr. Brian Evans said at a press conference Friday morning that because the shipment was contained and didn't make it to the retail level, officials didn’t feel a need to issue an immediate recall, instead they went to the plant in Brooks to conduct a in-depth review.


Clearly oversight and reccomendations are not working.

"The company took initial steps to ensure the safety of food being produced and at the time committed to additional steps to deal with all issues and prevent recurrence," the agency said.

"However, based on information provided by XL Foods Inc. on Sept. 26, as well as through CFIA inspector oversight, the CFIA has determined that these deficiencies have not been completely corrected. To date, the company has not adequately implemented agreed upon corrective actions and has not presented acceptable plans to address longer-term issues."

 

[Tonington]

The regulations aren't strong enough, and the agency tasked with warning consumers about failures in food safety doesn't have adequate resources.

 

[relic]

And why is that eh? Who gutted the cfia,lets see who believes the latest round of tory bull****

 

[Kakato]

Something rotten for sure here besides the meat.

 

[Goober]

Something rotten for sure here besides the meat.

The Cons have spearheaded a drive for Companies to perform the inspections that relate to the publics safety- Their ability to close a plant is lax- They provide plants with extension after extension for poor conditions.
XL was closed due to consistent contaminations.

Plants should after these events pay for extensive - long term monitoring by CFIA. That and massive fines for repeats.
6 figures min.

 

[Kakato]

The USA caught it at the border,why did it take allmost 2 weeks for the public to be told?
You live in Calgary,you should start listening to 660am radio to see whats going on in your part of the world.

Rutherford would be a start.

 

[Goober]

The USA caught it at the border,why did it take allmost 2 weeks for the public to be told?
You live in Calgary,you should start listening to 660am radio to see whats going on in your part of the world.

Rutherford would be a start.

I do when working- Problem is he is one sided. So I generally avoid him when it is politics.

 

[tay]

Food inspectors union calls government claim of 700 hires 'totally misleading'


Bob Kingston, president of the Agriculture Union, said the guild has been asking the CFIA since 2008 for a breakdown of the 700 new hires. "We have yet to get it."

By the union's calculation, 200 of the 700 were hired to control the import of invasive species, plants and diseases — an initiative that started before the Conservatives came to power.

Another 170 inspectors were hired to do compliance verification, mostly involving processed meat plants, following the deadly 2008 listeria outbreak, as recommended in a government report by Sheila Weatherill.

The remaining 330-plus inspectors, the union suggests, includes "basically ... anybody hired at CFIA in the technical category" — jobs as diverse as seed ****ysis and lumber certification.

"What I can tell you is that the number of those 700 that went into meat slaughter plants is zero,"


"That plant was grossly — to the point of illegally — understaffed," Kingston claimed.

"All they've done is fill vacant positions. That's not quite the same as actually increasing the complement."

As for the overall 700 new inspectors everyone from the prime minister down has been citing in defence of the government's handling of the E. coli outbreak, Kingston says the number is meaningless.

"It's totally misleading to the Canadian public," he said. "It's not even worth discussing those numbers because they're simply not relevant to what's happened at XL beef."

"None of those 700 people went into slaughter plants — period."



more


http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/food-inspectors-union-calls-government-claim-of-700-hires-totally-misleading-172554111.html

 

[damngrumpy]

The fact of the matter is the regulations were changed, however the system didn't work
in the first place. We have miss beliefs about how the CFIA works in any case. Our food
has never been what one would call safe and that has been the case even before the
Conservatives came to power.
In the conventional industry the standards are there but they are not enforced to the degree
required to make a difference. In the organic industry the standards are there but they are
not enforced to the letter of the law.
Organics is an honour based system, in that the paper work is inspected and not the actual
day to day functions of the farm. There is a book called is it organic and it tells quite a tale
if you can get past the first hundred pages of so. It was written by a former inspector.
In the conventional system it should be remember standards for Canadian producers are
more stringent than those of imports. All kinds of things happen we never hear about.
Did you know they monitor for invasive pests and strive for prevention, if however there is a
particular pest that gets into the country past their inspection they no longer deal with it.
That's right it up to the farm industry to solve the problem.
No accountability is the biggest problem. The CFIA couldn't demand the data they needed to
prevent the spread of contaminated product. It took two weeks longer for Canadian protection.
I ask this question. If there were 46 inspectors and six Vets on location how the dickens did this
happen? Wouldn't they notice the irregularities if they were inspecting the facilities.
The government has made the inspection system worse no doubt about it. But the government
can't be totally to blame here. If the inspectors were on the ground they should have caught the
problem a long time before. This company must be held fully accountable for this lack of effort
and this plant should be shut down until every infraction is corrected and dealt with. Yes the
Government is to blame, but the disingenuous actions of the company and the incompetence of
the Inspection Agency is heavily to blame here.

 

[tay]

Well CFIA can only do what it is allowed to do either by regulation or funding, but I say a big look at what going on with CFIA is indeed required.............

U.S. inspectors at the border in Montana first detected E. coli in beef trimmings used to make hamburger during random tests on Sept. 3. The CFIA found traces of E. coli the next day, but it wasn’t until 13 days later that a recall was issued — by the company, voluntarily.​

And while Gerry Ritz continues to flail around the Commons pointing his fingers here, there and everywhere,


“The Conservatives don’t seem to have the slightest concept of ministerial responsibility. The minister responsible for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is the official responsible for food safety. Period. You can’t pass the buck to civil servants,” Mulcair said.

“You can’t keep their feet to the fire. What you can do is take responsibility and be accountable. That’s the base of our parliamentary system … if the agriculture minister won’t be held responsible for the tainted meat scandal, then what’s the point of having a minister.”