The Canadian Food Inspection Agency identified serious concerns about sanitation and the safety of chicken produced by a Newfoundland processing operation before temporarily suspending the company’s licence last fall.

CBC News used access to information to obtain documents that shed light on problems found by federal inspectors at the Country Ribbon facility in St. John’s.

The 600 pages of records show that, before the suspension, inspectors with the CFIA — the federal agency that regulates food safety — found feces on chicken parts, and mold and dried blood on equipment.

Country Ribbon operates a large-scale processing operation near Quidi Vidi Lake in St. John’s. The facility employs more than 300 people and processes more than 10 million chickens annually.

The operation ground to a halt over the October Thanksgiving weekend in 2014. 

At the time, top Country Ribbon officials said the company’s licence was suspended because it wasn’t making improvements required by CFIA quickly enough.

As trouble mounted, a CFIA inspector stopped the plant’s slaughter operations.

Country Ribbon began processing chickens again after the company promised to fix the problems. But in the days and weeks that followed, inspectors continued to find other issues, such as mold on fixtures and equipment, and unacceptably high levels of salmonella.

One day, a random inspection found fecal contamination on a chicken thigh.

“The inspector had all parts condemned from the contaminated pan,” the inspection report noted.

Weeks later another inspection said fecal matter was found on a chicken wing.