Maple Leaf Listeria developments

The coverage of this outbreak isn’t really going away as more details came out yesterday.

Earlier in the day, Maple Leaf spokesperson Linda Smith was cited as saying that inspectors failed to detect listeria in this case, but they are constantly swabbing for the bacterium. "Did we find it? Absolutely not. We did not find that listeria," she said. "Did we let people down? Yes. But we were doing the right things."

On CBC’s National tonight (clip below), Smith was quoted as saying "We would occasionally find a listeria positive swab, at which case we sanitize that complete area and swab again."

So which is it?

In legal news, and the lead story on Canada AM this morning, is that class action lawsuits in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan have been launched according to Tony Merchant, of the Merchant Law Group LLP, who says residents in each of the provinces have contacted his firm about representation.

As I wrote this post, I saw Michael McCain’s Maple Leaf apology on TV three times.

This entry was posted in Listeria and tagged , , , by Ben Chapman. Bookmark the permalink.

About Ben Chapman

Dr. Ben Chapman is a professor and food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University. As a teenager, a Saturday afternoon viewing of the classic cable movie, Outbreak, sparked his interest in pathogens and public health. With the goal of less foodborne illness, his group designs, implements, and evaluates food safety strategies, messages, and media from farm-to-fork. Through reality-based research, Chapman investigates behaviors and creates interventions aimed at amateur and professional food handlers, managers, and organizational decision-makers; the gate keepers of safe food. Ben co-hosts a biweekly podcast called Food Safety Talk and tries to further engage folks online through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, maybe not surprisingly, Pinterest. Follow on Twitter @benjaminchapman.