Update: Eight news articles are enclosed, including the news on Oct 18 that XL Foods, the large meat processing facility in Brooks, Alberta at the heart of the latest contaminated meat scandal, has been taken over by the Brazil meatpacking giant, JBS S.A, and a report in Jan. 2013 of the deluge of food safety warnings delivered by federal inspectors in 2012. A JB spokesperson had “no comment” on the latest report.
The film ‘Fast Food Nation’ based on the book of the same name is a must-see for any one who consumes ground beef or fast food containing ground beef in North America. You can watch it free online here: tinyurl.com/9ta3qea. And read, ‘Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight’ (Yale Agrarian Studies Series), by Tim Pachirat, published in Nov 2011–“What goes on in a slaughterhouse and the tremendous efforts made at evasion and concealment from inspectors.”
From the final article in this compilation, dated Oct 24, 2012: “The U.S. shut the border to beef from the plant on Sept. 13 (2012), two weeks before the Canadian Food Inspection Agency suspended the plant’s licence to produce meat for the Canadian market. The border remains closed for now.”
1. Beef recall could be PM’S Walkerton
Canada’s tainted meat scandal is growing. For beef eaters across the country, this is a serious health worry. For Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, it is a defining moment.
By Thomas Walkom, Columnist, Toronto Star, Oct 4, 2012
The bad meat affair began last month as a local Alberta story. It has now sparked the biggest food recall in Canadian history — one that involves all 10 provinces and 40 U.S. states.
So far, no deaths have been linked to the discovery of deadly E. coli bacteria in meat that was processed by the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alta. But politically this affair has the potential to do to Stephen Harper what the Walkerton water scandal — and the same virulent E. coli strain — did to Ontario’s Mike Harris 12 years ago.
Like the XL affair, Walkerton had its roots in deregulation. Harris’s Conservative government came to power in Ontario promising to cut what it called red tape. A judicial inquiry later concluded that his casual approach to regulation set the table for actions that eventually resulted in seven people dying after drinking tap water contaminated with cow dung.
Neither Harris nor Harper invented deregulation. In Ontario, Bob Rae’s New Democratic Party government cut back drinking water inspections well before Harris became premier. In Ottawa, Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien’s 1997 decision to hand over meat inspection to his industry-friendly agriculture ministry set the stage for deregulation there.
But like Harris, Harper accelerated the trend. Indeed, federal efforts to eliminate so-called red tape not only mirror those of Harris but are championed by former Harrisites such as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.
For food safety, the results have been disastrous. In 2008, an outbreak of listeriosis at a Toronto meat packing plant killed 23 people. Two years later, tainted meat from another Toronto plant hospitalized three more.
As the Canadian Medical Association Journal noted, the 2008 deaths came after Ottawa took the primary inspection function away from federal regulators and handed it over to the meat packing companies themselves. The journal called this decision “risky.”
But to Harper — like Harris — deregulation only made sense. Harris assumed that small Ontario towns like Walkerton would have the good sense to keep their drinking water clean. Harper assumed that profitmaking companies would make sure that their consumers received safe products. In both cases, they were wrong.
In Walkerton’s case, as the judicial inquiry later found, those in charge of the town’s water supply exhibited a bonehead determination to break the rules. Because there was no provincial oversight, no one noticed that a particularly virulent strain of E. coli called O157:H7 had entered the town’s tap water.
In the XL case, the same deadly strain has infected an unknown quantity of beef. We don’t yet know how. What we do know is that XL’s Lakeside plant in Brooks is a poster boy for Harper’s vision of the economic future. It is big — one of the biggest in the country. It is Western. It is resource-based. And it employs plenty of those temporary foreign workers that the current government has encouraged to come to Canada.
There are federal meat inspectors assigned to Lakeside. But it is not clear what they do — or if there are enough to handle the volume of meat processed.
Up to now, the Harper government had sailed through its deregulation disasters unscathed. For his first five years in power, so did Mike Harris. But in the end, Walkerton became the symbol of everything that was wrong with Harris’ regime. And the government he had so painstakingly built was wiped out.
2. Plant failed to follow its own E. coli protocols
By Gloria Galloway, Globe and Mail, Oct 6, 2012
An Alberta meat processing plant that continued to churn out its product for more than three weeks after the discovery of a dangerous strain of bacteria early last month did not follow its own protocols for handling the outbreak.
Harpreet Kochhar, the executive director of western operations for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, told a news media teleconference on Friday that “our findings show that, although the company had an approved plan to deal with E. coli, that plan was not fully followed and was not being updated.”
A day earlier, XL Foods said it took full responsibility for its tainted products. Its operations remain closed and Dr. Kochhar said they will not reopen until the agency is certain the bacteria are no longer an issue.
The incident has prompted the largest recall of beef in Canadian history and left at least six people ill. Five of those cases were in Alberta, and officials in Newfoundland confirmed on Friday that one person in that province had been infected with the specific strain linked to the XL plant.
Dr. Kochhar did not rule out the possibility that more products may be added to the list of 1,800 products that have been recalled.
But questions remain about why meat continued to be processed so long after E. coli was discovered.
Dr. Kochhar said a letter was sent to XL on Sept. 6 and again on Sept. 7 giving the company until Sept. 8 to produce distribution and testing results. It was not until Sept. 10 and 11 that the company complied and, even then, he said, “it was not usable in a form that we could easily work on it.”
The head of the CFIA told reporters earlier this week that the agency does not have the power to compel the speedy delivery of information from processing plants. Both CFIA officials and government representatives have said they are counting on a piece of legislation that is now before the Senate – a bill similar to one that died in 2008 when Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament – to make it easier to force companies to comply with such requests.
But Bob Kingston, president of the Agriculture Union, which represents Canadian meat inspectors, said his members have always been told that, when documentation is not handed over, they can pull the company’s licence. In this case, Mr. Kingston said, the decision would have been left to senior management because of the high-profile nature of the incident.
CFIA officials said they did not move to shut down the plant on the first day that the information was not forthcoming because they did not realize the scope of the problem.
“We didn’t have that evidence to suggest that we had a problem in the plant,” Karen McIntyre, the executive director of agrifood, meat and seafood safety at the CFIA, told the news conference. “That was the information that we were looking for in the documentation that we were requesting.”
But the United States raised the alarm about a shipment of tainted meat stopped at the border on Sept. 3.
Gerry Ritz, the federal Minister of Agriculture, who oversees CFIA, appeared unable to answer opposition questions on Friday about why it took 14 days after the United States blocked imports from XL Foods on Sept. 13 for the company’s licence to be suspended.
When asked about the delay in the House of Commons on Friday, Mr. Ritz replied: “The CFIA began acting on Sept. 4 [the day a first positive E. coli sample was discovered] and has continued to act based on science and information as it becomes available.”
The government has come under fire for cutting tens of millions of dollars from CFIA’s budget despite a listeriosis outbreak at a meat processing plant in Toronto in 2008 that killed 22 people. Mr. Ritz told the Commons that the number of inspectors at the XL plant has increased 20 per cent in the past few years. But production has also gone up sharply.
3. Federal government to spend less this year than last on food safety, budget officer says
By Jason Fekete & Jordan Press, Postmedia News, October 4, 2012
OTTAWA — The Conservative government, under fire for its response to a massive beef recall and E. coli scare, is planning to spend tens of millions of dollars less this year on food safety programs at the Agriculture Department and Canadian Food Inspection Agency than last year, indicate new numbers from Parliament’s budget watchdog.
An analysis of expected federal spending released Wednesday by the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer says approved budgetary expenditures on “food safety and biosecurity risk management systems” at the Agriculture Department are 27-per-cent lower in 2012-13 compared with the previous fiscal year, while planned “food safety program” funding is about five-per-cent less at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).
The approved expenditures include cash allocated from the main and supplementary spending estimates earlier this year. There is a possibility government could direct more funding to the programs later in the 2012-13 budget year.
The new PBO examination of budgetary expenditures by strategic outcome and program activity says planned spending for “food safety and biosecurity risk management systems” at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is projected to be reduced by almost $32 million, to approximately $85 million in 2012-13 from more than $116 million in 2011-12.
At the CFIA, planned federal spending on the “food safety program” is projected to shrink almost $16 million, to $315 million in 2012-13 from $331 million in 2011-12, according to the PBO analysis, which was released Wednesday with a report on the government’s first-quarter spending trends.
While total planned spending for the fiscal year is projected to decline, in both examples the actual first-quarter spending (April to June) on food safety and related measures increased over the previous year, up approximately $3 million (31 per cent) in the Agriculture Department and approximately $2 million (three per cent) at the CFIA, according to the budget officer.
The Harper government promised in the March federal budget an additional $51 million over two years to enhance food safety. Since it came to power in 2006, the Conservative government says it has provided funding for the CFIA to hire more than 700 new inspection staff, including 170 dedicated to meat inspection.
Officials with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada couldn’t immediately respond to the planned spending reductions, or their potential impacts on food safety programs.
4. From kill floor to cutting table: How bacteria evaded detection
By Josh Wingrove and Dawn Walton, Globe and Mail, Oct. 02 2012
At each stage, the E. coli sneaked through. It came in with the feces caked on the hide of at least one cow, a so-called “super-shedder” of bacteria, and persevered. The E. coli wasn’t caught on the kill floor, survived cleaning and clung on during dehiding, in which a cow’s skin is peeled away.
It reached the cutting table – a bacteria watershed, where the cow is cut into different types of beef, including “trim,” the odds and ends that become hamburger. The E. coli went undetected in the 325 grams of beef trim tested from this particular 2,000-pound batch, so it moved through. When alarms sounded, it was in stores.
As Ottawa eyes changes to food safety programs, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is seeking the cause of an E. coli outbreak at XL Foods in Brooks, Alta. There wasn’t one massive failure, but tiny ones that added up. Officials say the system worked, more or less, but couldn’t stop it.
“That super-shedder that we had way upstream got through all those hoops and hurdles, and looked clean, [but] had just enough E. coli to basically get there [undetected],” CFIA meat programs director Richard Arsenault says.
The CFIA says the company failed in “trend analysis,” or connecting the dots of tests that showed E. coli in discarded batches, but questions remain. Testing may need improvement. Cross contamination, particularly at an Edmonton Costco store, made things worse. The union that represents workers at the facility has said the production line moves too fast and the hot water for washing surfaces once failed. Messages left for company executives and spokesmen were not returned on Monday.
Whatever caused it, the recall is one of the largest in Canadian history, at more than 1.5-million pounds of beef from every province and territory. Nine people have fallen ill, four of them tied by genetic testing to tainted meat. It all raises questions about the system itself – if everything worked, more or less, how can super-shedders be caught in the future? (Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, whose file includes the CFIA, has declined interviews.)
The XL Foods plant is one of the three largest slaughterhouses in Canada; many smaller producers buy killed, skinned and cleaned carcasses from there. It was at another plant – the CFIA won’t say which – that testing on beef trim came back positive for E. coli on Sept. 4. The plant had got the carcass from XL Foods. A day earlier, U.S. officials found E. coli in an XL shipment at the border. CFIA officials swarmed the Brooks plant trying to figure out what went wrong. But they still let it operate, thinking it was a one-off. People were already getting sick. The recall began Sept. 16, and the shutdown was announced Sept. 27.
Workers say the plant had been speeding up. The morning “A-shift” is being asked to handle as many as 2,400 of the day’s 4,000 cows, said Jean Mulimbi, a union steward with the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada local 401, representing plant workers. The afternoon “B shift” then handles fewer cows and works fewer hours, he said. It leaves less time to clean equipment.
“All this is coming from the line speed,” Mr. Mulimbi said. “…We tried to fix it, but nobody paid attention.”
The production line’s speed has been a bargaining issue at the plant. “One of the most glaring examples of [the company’s] lack of concern is shown by the company forcing high line speeds on workers, even though most of the production areas are operating short-handed,” the union said in a spring update on plant conditions.
At the plant, cows are first examined by XL Foods and CFIA staff – some cows have 30 pounds of mud and feces on their hides from feed lots, trucks and holding pens – but an E. coli-carrying super-shedder looks the same. They’re then stunned and taken to the kill floor, where they’re eviscerated and de-hided. This is the messy part. The carcasses are then chilled, and held for a day or more before being cut up. That’s why animals slaughtered on one day (Aug. 23 in this case) take up several production days (five).
Canada ranks poorly on ability to track contaminated food, says Sylvain Charlebois, one of the authors of a 2010 food security study by the University of Regina and University of Saskatchewan. In it, Canada ranked fourth overall, but 14th in traceability. The CFIA has faced questions about its response – 12 days passed from the first positive test to a public notice and recall. But Dr. Charlebois (a CFIA adviser) says it functioned well. “I would argue two to three weeks would actually be an adequate time to respond,” he said, noting two months passed between the first illness and first recall during Maple Leaf’s listeria outbreak several years ago.
The plant could reopen as soon as this week, Dr. Arsenault said, calling the recall an extreme case in an otherwise improving system. “It’s like a combination of a bunch of things that all line up,” he said. “And you get this multiple hurdle thing, where the hurdle isn’t as high as it’s perhaps designed to be all the time, but it was pretty darn close. Just enough got through.”
5. Life on the kill floor is fraught with peril
Speed and scale of modern operations are also why a problem can so quickly become a crisis
By Josh Wingrove, Globe and Mail, Oct 6, 2012
I see absolutely no evidence of any food-safety culture at XL–Doug Powell, Canadian-born Kansas State University professor of food safety
You have 35 seconds: Gut the cow without damaging its organs, and be sure not to drop the stomach on the floor. Do not cut yourself with the swift-moving blade; do not touch the scalding sanitary surfaces. Then, walk in hot water to clean your white rubber boots. Swap your knife out and start over again. Again and again.
This is life on the production line at the Lakeside slaughterhouse in Brooks, Alta., one of the three largest such facilities in Canada that, together, dominate the market. Owned by XL Foods, Lakeside slaughters 4,000 cows on a full day, cutting them into about two million pounds of beef. That’s the equivalent of 3,000 steaks a minute. Plants like this are the reality of modern mass food production, and federal inspectors set up shop right on the production line. It’s safer, some say, than mom-and-pop abattoirs scattered across the country.
But the speed and scale are also why a problem can so quickly become a crisis. It’s why an E. coli outbreak on Aug. 23 at Lakeside triggered Canada’s largest beef recall, one stretching to each province and territory. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency believes XL Foods didn’t follow its own procedures, which the company has acknowledged were “not enough” anyhow, taking “full responsibility” for the fallout. It has declined all interviews and announced a series of changes. But some say the problem isn’t just with the plant. It’s with the industry.
“I don’t want to be too hard on Lakeside,” says Tom Hesse, a spokesman for the union representing the plant’s workers. “This is characteristic, I would say, of a lot of food-processing plants in an era of mass food production.”
And as the high dollar eats away the Canadian beef sector’s advantage in U.S. markets, automation at these megaplants has become a necessity, one that governments are supporting. Records show the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency, a provincial entity, has given $2.238-million in grants to XL Foods for seven projects since 2009. The biggest, at up to $897,449, was to “improve productivity, increase product quality, increase volumes and provide for a safer work environment.”
It means things are speeding up at Lakeside, which was sold in 2008 for $107-million. The union says the previous owner aimed for 3,400 cows a day and that workers have complained about the increased pace.
Abdallah Djar started at the Lakeside plant in 2004 and remembers it processing about 2,500 cows a day. Mr. Djar quit in 2006 after opening a local African supermarket and his customers nearly all work at the plant. They’ve been telling him how things have changed. “Yes, a long time [they’ve been] complaining,” he says. “It’s too fast.”
Experts are split on the situation. Big plants are easier to monitor and the onus is on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to keep them in line. “With perishable foods, high throughput in processing is important for food quality and for food preservation. It’s less likely to have meat hanging around in a high volume plant,” McMaster University biologist Herb Schellhorn says. “The downside, of course, is that when incidents like this happen they affect a lot of people.”
Doug Powell, however, says it’s XL that should be in the spotlight, not the CFIA. The Canadian-born Kansas State University professor of food safety co-authored a study this year titled “Audits And Inspections Are Never Enough,” and says food safety is up to plants. “It’s not a function whether it’s big or small, whether it’s local or global. It’s that you know about microorganisms and take steps to reduce them, or you don’t.”
One of the changes XL has announced is better training, but that’s not simple. Many of the staff are recent immigrants or temporary foreign workers – whoever is willing to take the job, particularly in booming Alberta. Think life on the kill floor sounds tough? Try it without being able to speak English well, or at all, and with your bid for Canadian residency hanging in the balance. The workers have no whistle-blower protection. They won’t rock the boat if there’s a problem.
“If you don’t have a job [because] you shoot your mouth off, you don’t get your residency,” says Mr. Hesse, the union spokesman, of the temporary foreign workers. “In a place like this, you need a culture that shows an incredible amount of deference to food safety,” he says. XL insists the “safety and well being of our consumers is our No. 1 priority,” but Prof. Powell’s view is different: “I see absolutely no evidence of any food-safety culture at XL.”
Meanwhile, questioning the beef sector is tantamout to treason in Alberta. Premier Alison Redford has unequivocally backed the sector, saying last weekend that beef was “safe” despite some “regulatory challenges.” Alberta NDP Leader Brian Mason called it the “most foolish and irresponsible comment on food safety since ‘shoot, shovel and shut up,’” referring to former premier Ralph Klein’s infamous message to farmers during the mad-cow crisis.
“It’s time that the government stopped playing PR for the beef industry,” Mr. Mason says.
As XL continues to work toward reopening, its staff are caught in the middle and stretched thin. “The worst-case scenario would be to shut down for two weeks, three weeks. People just couldn’t pay their bills,” says Carl Hillier, 65, a former Newfoundland fisherman who has worked there since 2001. But Prof. Powell worries the plant will reopen, and production will continue to increase, with the same attitude authorities have taken for a century – trust us, it’s safe – and no data to back it up.
“I’ve been doing this stuff for 20 years, and I’m getting sort of bored about reading the same thing over and over. They don’t learn,” he says. “They all say the same thing about how food safety is the No. 1 priority. But, against economics, it doesn’t stand a chance.”
6. XL Foods to cede troubled plant
Brazil-owned giant agrees to take over operation of meat-packing facility at centre of E. coli outbreak
By RENATA D’ALIESIO JOSH WINGROVE ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY, The Globe and Mail, Oct 18, 2012
A Brazilian-controlled company is taking over operations of the Alberta meat-packing plant at the centre of an E. coli outbreak and the largest beef recall in Canada. JBS USA, a subsidiary of Brazil-based JBS S.A., announced in a news release Wednesday night that it has reached an agreement with Edmonton-based XL Foods to take over management of the Canadian company’s Lakeside slaughterhouse in Brooks, Alta. JBS also has been given the exclusive option to buy the plant.
The plant’s licence to operate was suspended Sept. 27 after tainted beef products were exported to more than 20 countries, including the U.S., a major consumer of Canadian beef. At least 15 Canadians in four provinces fell ill with E. coli O157:H7 after eating meat processed by the XL plant.
XL Foods, a privately held company, is the second-biggest meat packer in Canada. Last week, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency gave the company the go-ahead to resume limited operations. The agency has assured the public that no meat would leave the slaughterhouse until it was proven safe for consumption.
In a statement, XL co-CEO Brian Nilsson said the management agreement with JBS is “another positive step to relicensing” the Lakeside plant. “We welcome the assistance of JBS and their resources,” he added.
The management agreement also gives JBS the option to purchase the Lakeside plant as well as XL’s beef-packing operations in Calgary and the U.S. A feedlot and farming operation near Brooks are also on the table. If the purchase agreement goes ahead, JBS would pay $50-million U.S. in cash and $50-million in JBS S.A. shares.
“As the world’s largest producer of animal protein, we know full well the commitment it takes to manage world-class operations that produce safe and nutritious products for consumers around the world to enjoy,” Bill Rupp, president of JBS USA Beef, said in a statement. “We believe our experienced team will prove an invaluable asset in the management of XL Lakeside and we look forward to exploring our options to purchase XL assets in the near future.”
The union representing XL’s 2,200 workers welcomed the news, saying Nilsson Bros. Inc., which owns XL, wasn’t in a position to, by themselves, get the plant back on its feet. The CFIA’s review of the Lakeside plant had ground to a halt over the weekend after the company temporary laid off its workers. The workers were recalled only to be laid off again on Wednesday.
“Normally I’d be opposed to foreign management … but you know I think this goes a long way for the survival of the plant. I’m not sure under the Nilsson Bros. it would have survived,” said Doug O’Halloran, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401.
Wednesday evening, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz welcomed the “private business decision,” saying it won’t affect food inspection at the plant. “Canadian consumers can be assured that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will enforce the same rigorous food safety standards at Lakeside facility regardless of the management,” Mr. Ritz said in a written statement released by his office. “I look forward to receiving their report which will outline the next steps for this facility,” he added.
The management change caught everyone off guard, including the Alberta government. A spokeswoman for Agriculture Minister Verlyn Olson said the province views it as a good deal. “From Alberta’s standpoint, this is positive news in the efforts to have the plant re-certified, reopened, the employees back at work, animals moving through the plant and pro duct moving to consumers,” Cathy Housdorff said in an e-mail. The CFIA said the deal between XL and JBS won’t affect its ongoing inspections or the timeline for the plant’s reopening.
“The CFIA’s decisions have been and continue to be based on scientific evidence and a precautionary approach to protect consumers,” the inspection agency said in statement. “… Any change in management or ownership at XL will not affect our assessment.”
JBS S.A. has production processing companies in Brazil, the U.S., Argentina, Italy, Australia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, China and Russia. Its subsidiaries include Pilgrim’s, a large chicken processor based in Colorado.
According to its website, the Brazil-based company began in 1953 as a “small family-owned beef company” by José Batista Sobrinho. Today he and his six children share a $2.6-billion stake in JBS and his son Wesley Batista is chairman of the multinational’s board. As of 2011, JBS owned more than 10 per cent of global beef processing business.
But its wave of purchases had also saddled the company with $6.9-billion in debt as of 2011; its stock dropped about 30 per cent in the space of a year. Brazil’s national development bank, BNDES, injected cash into the debt-laden company and almost doubled its ownership stake, from 17 per cent to 31 per cent. The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association said JBS’s management takeover of Lakeside “establishes credible intentions for resumed operations at the plant.”
“JBS has a global reputation as a leader in the beef business,” the association’s president Martin Unrau said in a statement. “Their sophisticated knowledge of modern beef harvesting management as well as extensive world-wide beef marketing network will be a valuable asset for the entire Canadian beef sector.”
7. XL Foods plant gets clearance to reopen
New managers operate under tough standards
By Sarah Schmidt, Postmedia News, Oct 24, 2012
The plant at the centre of Canada’s largest beef recall is back in business. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced Tuesday it has reinstated the operating licence of XL Foods Inc.’s plant in Brooks, Alta., nearly a full month after the federal agency suspended it over the plant’s failure to manage E. coli risks. Sixteen people in four provinces became sick in the outbreak.
“The agency undertook a thorough assessment of food-safety controls at XL Foods Inc. That assessment is now complete,” Paul Mayers, an agency vice-president, told reporters. “Based on a full range of observation and testing, we are confident that all issues have been fully addressed.”
The facility, under new management after Edmonton-based Nilsson Brothers Inc. made a deal last week with a subsidiary of Brazil-based JBS S.A., is now ramping up to normal operations, under tougher oversight. The 430,000-sq.-ft. plant is set up to slaughter between 3,800 and 4,000 cattle daily, and 40 inspectors and six veterinarians are usually stationed there, split between two shifts.
In the short term, CFIA has assigned two additional inspectors to the facility to keep a closer eye on the company’s E. coli checks, plant sanitation and general food hygiene. In addition, CFIA will conduct more tests for E. coli beyond the company’s testing system, and hold products until all E. coli test results have been assessed.
Problems for XL Foods began on Sept. 4 when beef trimmings from the plant tested positive for E. coli during routine CFIA testing, triggering an in-depth review of plant practices. On the same day, U.S. authorities informed CFIA of a positive E. coli test on beef trimmings from the plant at the Montana border.
The U.S. shut the border to beef from the plant on Sept. 13, two weeks before the CFIA suspended the plant’s licence to produce meat for the Canadian market. The border remains closed for now.
Slaughterhouse scolded six times
XL facility reprimanded repeatedly before E. coli recall, reports reveal
By Joanna Smith, Toronto Star, Jan. 8, 2013
OTTAWA— The federal food safety watchdog reprimanded an XL Foods Inc. slaughterhouse on six separate occasions last year before discovering the E. coli contamination that prompted the biggest recall of meat in Canadian history.
The Star obtained six “Corrective Action Requests”— the reports federal food inspectors file when they notice something amiss — the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) issued to the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alta., last year. The six reports — including listing outstanding issues from the previous year — detail a number of contraventions of the Meat Inspection Regulations observed at the plant before the U.S. agriculture department and CFIA both found E. coli O157:H7 on beef trimmings originating from the XL Foods plant in early September. The Public Health Agency of Canada confirmed 18 cases of people getting sick from the same strain of harmful bacteria.
An in-depth investigation into the E. coli contamination led to six more corrective action requests in September — and the subsequent temporary shutdown of the plant — and none of the earlier ones the Star obtained through Access to Information legislation are related directly to the recall. The corrective action requests describe a number of issues the inspectors had trouble with, including the carcasses of cows and bulls dragging on the floor, workers not properly segregating inedible parts from edible parts or the tubs they are carried in, not sanitizing equipment such as knives or hooks between carcasses, and washing with unidentified liquid or sanitizer that is not meant for food products.
Inspectors had to halt the production line five times between February and August last year, including once during a follow-up inspection when there was “plastic overflowing with unsanitary water and condensation dripping from rails/ structures in stimulator hallway onto carcasses.” The food inspection agency held back 765 carcasses as a result. The corrective action requests also describe a building in need of some repairs, with paint peeling and flaking posts and beams, cracks and seams in the floor in need of caulking, exposed insulation, rust, broken doors and uneven flooring leading to the pooling of water. All of the corrective action requests were closed within three months of being issued.
Rick Holley, a professor of food safety at the University of Manitoba, said the things spotted at the XL Foods plant could have been symptomatic of a greater problem. “There just seemed to be lax control over items that would normally, as part of a program of good manufacturing practice, be more or less instilled in the employees as issues that needed to be self-corrected. It shouldn’t have to be identified by the CFIA, but it should tell the CFIA, or should have at the time . . . raised red flags that there was something going on behind the scenes in terms of the company program that really needed to be tweaked, and tweaked considerably,” Holley said in an interview. Still, he noted, things are easier to see now. “Hindsight is always great,” Holley said.
Dr. Harpreet Kochhar, an executive director at the food inspection agency, said the corrective action requests were nothing out of the ordinary — either in number or content — for a plant of that volume, age and number of employees. “Obviously, you will probably see certain issues off and on and our role as an inspection agency is to make sure that even a small amount of non-compliance, if ever seen, has to be documented and brought to their attention so that people do not develop those habits that (would lead them to) continue to do certain things which will compromise food safety,” Kochhar said.
Kochhar noted the reason the review team went into the plant after the discovery of E. coli was that inspectors had not found anything abnormal in terms of “deviation from food safety principles.” That led to six more corrective action requests and then a suspended operating licence, but the primary cause of the E. coli contamination remains unknown. “They turned up little bits and pieces, but not a single specific cause,” Kochhar said of the review team.
XL Foods did not respond to requests for comment. Cameron Bruett, a spokesman for JBS SA, the company that took over management of the XL Foods plant in Brooks last fall, said he could not comment on anything that happened at the plant prior to the takeover.
XL cited five times before E. coli outbreak
CFIA uncovered contamination risks on the production line, in the cooler and in the storage area
By RENATA D’ALIESIO, The Globe and Mail , Jan 8, 2013
The Alberta slaughterhouse at the centre of a widespread E. coli outbreak last year was flagged for serious sanitation, maintenance and training problems in the months leading up to the largest ever meat recall in Canada, newly released inspection reports reveal.
On five occasions between January and September, 2012, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) ordered the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alta., to clean up its act after uncovering contamination risks or regulatory breaches on the production line, in the cooler and in the storage area, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail through access-to-information legislation.
Among the problems cited were condensation dripping from pipes and rails onto dead cattle in the cooler; employees failing to sanitize knives and hooks in the carcass-cutting and de-hiding areas of production; animal fat and blood buildup on stairs between two zones of a kill floor; potentially contaminated bull necks dragging on a conveyor belt; and improper labelling procedures for shipments containing meat handled on different production dates.
It’s unclear whether these problems were a harbinger of the more serious food-safety threat that followed, in which at least 18 people in Canada fell ill after eating meat processed by XL Foods. But the CFIA’s five corrective action requests issued to the Edmonton-based company before potentially deadly E. coli O157:H7 was detected in XL beef trimmings on Sept. 4 expose some of the safety issues government inspectors grappled with at the country’s second-largest meat packer.
At times, food inspectors halted work at production stations to address contamination threats or to require XL workers to be retrained for failing to follow sanitary practices. Production, however, was usually restarted within minutes (as little as two minutes in one case) – nothing close to the nearly month-long shutdown that followed the XL meat recall that spanned more than 20 countries.
Unsanitary conditions appear to have been an ongoing problem at XL Foods in 2012. Three of the five corrective orders issued before the recall were for failing to meet regulatory requirements related to sanitary practices, operational sanitation or pre-operational sanitation. Unsanitary practices were also raised during the CFIA’s investigation of the E. coli contamination, University of Manitoba food-safety expert Rick Holley noted.
“In properly operated meat processing facilities, you just wouldn’t see dirty rooms and dirty equipment being put into production,” Dr. Holley said.
After a lengthy review of XL’s food-safety practices, the CFIA gave the company the go-ahead to resume production in late October. Ultimately, the agency’s investigation determined that no single factor led to the widespread meat contamination; rather, a combination of several deficiencies probably played a role, such as the fact the company was not always following its control measures for positive E. coli tests.
The CFIA did not have a spokesperson available for an interview on Monday to discuss the problems inspectors flagged before the E. coli outbreak. In an e-mail, media relations manager Guy Gravelle noted that XL addressed all the problems raised in the corrective orders issued before the Sept. 4 contamination finding.
Federal inspectors use corrective orders to deal with both minor and serious concerns that require action from the company, Mr. Gravelle added. If a company fails to resolve the problems identified in the orders, the CFIA can halt production, suspend the plant’s operating licence or prosecute the company for food-safety violations.
It’s not unusual for a plant of XL’s size to receive several corrective action requests within a year, Dr. Holley said. The slaughterhouse, which is still owned by XL but being managed by JBS USA, is an older facility and poses greater maintenance challenges, he added. But those maintenance issues, such as the rusty saw blade and rusty trim station kick plate noted in an Aug. 20, 2012, corrective action request report, should be part of a company’s hazard-analysis plan.
“Enhanced vigilance … can compensate for the age of a plant,” Dr. Holley said.
JBS USA did not respond to a request for comment Monday. When the company took over management of the slaughterhouse, it had pledged to enhance training and improve food-safety practices. The plant employs about 2,200 workers and is a major economic engine for the small city of Brooks.
JBS USA, a subsidiary of Brazilian food giant JBS S.A., has been given the exclusive option to purchase the XL slaughterhouse and other properties for $50-million (U.S.) in cash and $50-million in JBS S.A. shares. The deal has not been finalized, but last month the Alberta government waived its foreign-ownership land rules for JBS, paving the way for the international company to buy the properties and gain a significant foothold in Canada.
