WHEN one meat-processing plant supplies 40 per cent of all the beef consumed in Canada, any warning relative to the food safety of its products should receive immediate and serious attention.
But it would appear that it is not just the safety procedures themselves at Alberta's XL Foods that need refining, but also the protocol that determines when to shut down beef processing as opposed to continuing to ship it while red-flag data is analyzed.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, who have 40 inspectors and six veterinarians assigned to XL on a full-time basis, continue to assert that appropriate meat testing takes place at the plant, but agreed Monday that a better process is required "to connect the dots" when looking at the big picture of data collected.
We assume that this will happen, given that Agricultural Minister Gerry Ritz has said XL will not reopen until consumers can feel safe about eating beef. But we'd like some reassurance from the minister that future safety alerts will be handled more expeditiously than happened with the current crisis.
A U.S. border inspection found E. coli in XL meat trimmings Sept. 3. CFIA confirmed traces of E. coli the next day, but it was the company that voluntarily closed the plant - 14 days later.
Eating food contaminated by E. coli can be fatal and those that don't die are sometimes weakened for life. It would seem elementary that if testing outside of any meat processing plant finds contaminated product has been shipped, that plant should be shut down immediately until the source and extent of the outbreak are dealt with.
