Tag Archives: Canada

Canada issues new listeria policy; not sure what changes

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My fingerprints arrived in Ottawa (that’s in Canada) about a month ago for a travel-related security check. I know this because they signed when they received the package by courier.

I checked on the status of the paperwork a week ago and was told, in doublespeak, by writing,

“Given the information sent, the application has not reached our system at this time. Due to our quality control process, this does not mean that they are not in the building.”

Maybe all Canadian government-types go to the same communication classes, because a couple of days ago, Health Canada issued a press release about updates to its listeria control policy.

Health Canada has completed its update of the 2004 policy on Listeria monocytogenes in Ready-to-Eat (RTE) foods, in view of enhancing the control of Listeria in high-risk foods. The purpose of this policy is to provide guidance to stakeholders regarding verification and control, as well as regulatory oversight and compliance activities of RTE foods with respect to their potential to support the growth of Listeria monocytogenes.

The Canadian "Policy on Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat foods" (hereafter referred to as the Listeria policy) is based on Good Manufacturing Practices1 (GMPs) and the principles of HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point). This policy was developed using a health risk assessment (HRA) approach and uses as its foundation a combination of inspection, environmental sampling and end-product testing to verify control of Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat (RTE) foods. Focus is given to environmental verification and control, especially in post-lethality areas, as applicable. This policy applies to RTE food sold in Canada, produced both domestically and imported. The present policy revises and replaces the Policy on Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat foods dated October 4, 2004.

How this will mean fewer sick and dead people, like the 23 who died in the 2008 Maple Leaf listeria mess, is not addressed. However the Health Canada types did say, “There is an increased focus on outreach with the federal/provincial/territorial community to increase awareness of the risks of foodborne listeriosis and to provide guidance on how to reduce the risks of acquiring listeriosis to personnel in institutions where high-risk people may be exposed.”

How this outreach will be conducted and evaluated is not discussed. No mention of labels or public availability of testing data. But read it yourself and decide.

But when I tried to read the original I had to submit a request, and received the following:

“Thank you for contacting Health Canada. Your message has been received. We will get back to you as soon as possible.”

The document eventually arrived.
 

Local is worst: Canadians export food that’s tested, keep the rest for home and blame consumers if they get sick

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A B.C. meat processing plant that covered up lab results revealing a sample of its product was contaminated with a deadly E. coli strain will not have to test for the bacteria now that it’s provincially regulated.

Pitt Meadows Meats Ltd. said it made a business decision to abandon its federal licence because it incurs higher costs than are necessary because the company doesn’t export.

Regulations require federally licensed plants to report positive findings of E. coli O157 strain to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

But testing for E. coli O157 isn’t mandatory in a provincially regulated plant.

Joseph Beres, inspection manager for the Canada Food Inspection Agency, said federal and provincial plants are committed to the same health and sanitation standards and use the same inspectors. But he said the presence of the deadly bacteria might only be discovered if people become sick.

Ritinder Harry, a spokesman for the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, told CBC News, apparently with a straight face and acting like he’d never heard of the U.S. zero tolerance policy for E. coli O157:H7 that has been in place since 1994, and the whole Mike-Taylor-it-doesn’t-get-us-anywhere-to-blame-consumers-for-O157-bit, also back in 1994, that provincial meat processing facilities are not required to regularly test for pathogens because "the likelihood of finding a contaminated sample is very low,” and that the best way to eliminate risk of being infected is to follow basic food safety rules, including using a thermometer to ensure the meat is properly cooked, avoiding cross contamination with raw meat or raw meat juices in the kitchen, and promptly refrigerating meat regardless of whether it is cooked or uncooked.

This isn’t some Greasy Jungle, Metropolis Noir, with funeral home sandwiches and coffee. People get sick.


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Nosestretcher alert: food safety is not simple, even if a $5 billion corporation says it is

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Memo to Michael McCain, CEO, Maple Leaf Foods Inc.:

You or your company, or both, really suck at this communication about food safety risk thing.

In the two years since your killer deli meats actually killed 23 Canadians with listeria and sickened another 50 or so, the best you can do is remind Canadians they should do more?

I understand you probably had some PR-type tell you that Maple Leaf needed third-party experts to validate and endorse your food safety messages, what with killing all those people. Except that third-party validation has been invalidated since the mid-1990s. As a company, you’re better to make public everything you’re doing.

And I understand the web site being promoted by the Canadian Public Health Association was underwritten by the company, and the messages probably came unfiltered from CPHA.

But it’s your name, and your company’s reputation on the web site.

And it doesn’t look good.

After the listeria mess of 2008 in Canada, your company has taken a bunch of baby steps to apparently engage the Canadian public, like targeting bloggers, showing up at food safety meetings and talking about culture.

But if you really want to regain the trust of Canadians, like my parents, who were in Kansas the other day, and my father who said he’d never buy Maple Leaf again, here’s what you can actually do:

* make listeria test results in Maple Leaf plants public;
• add warning labels on deli meats for at-risk populations, like pregnant women and all those old people that unnecessarily died; and,
• market Maple Leaf’s food safety efforts at retail so consumers can actually choose.

Instead, you and your company decide to put your resources into a web site – who doesn’t need another web site – that says,

“Although Canada has one of the best food safety systems in the world, there are still 11 to 13 million cases of foodborne illness across the country each year. That means your ability to stay healthy—whether or not you’re pregnant—depends on what food you eat, how well you store your food at home, and how carefully you prepare it before you eat. …

“As the consumer, once you buy a food product, you are the next link in the chain that keeps your food safe and healthy. This website will give you the information you need to guide you in choosing the right foods, and preparing and storing them safely”

“Eat Safe! is brought to you by the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) in partnership with Maple Leaf Foods.

“The contents are for informational purposes only and should never replace the advice and care of a health care professional. Neither CPHA nor Maple Leaf Foods guarantees that the information is accurate, complete, or timely. Neither CPHA nor Maple Leaf Foods will be liable for any direct or indirect loss, damage, or injury caused by the use of this information. CPHA does not endorse and shall not in any way be seen as endorsing any products or services that may be referred in this website. Food Safety For Higher Risk Canadaians is brought to you by the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) supported through an unrestricted educational grant from Maple Leaf Foods Inc.”

Wow. Instead of saying, treat deli meats like raw chicken poop, or toxic waste, cause a lot of people can die in a listeria outbreak, CPHA offers up Maple Leaf-funded platitudes that consumers should do more.

I look forward to the evaluation of such nonsense being published in a peer-reviewed journal so the rest of us mortals can better understand the methodology and thinking behind such nonsensical statements.

I do like the multiple language components of the website, but the rest is derogatory, paternalistic, and corporate. It’s like listening to a Journey song and having someone insist it’s real rock and roll.
 

US to Canada: your meat inspection sorta sucks, only send us the good stuff

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The dean of Canadian food and farm reporting, Jim Romahn, has written a powerful piece about the continuing failures in Canadian meat inspection – failures that had to be pointed out by Americans.

More than a year after 21 people died after eating Maple Leaf Foods Inc. products contaminated with Listeria monocytoges, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was failing to enforce its own standards and there was sloppy follow-up when hazardous conditions were identified.

Those worrisome facts are contained in a report prepared by two U.S. inspectors who visited in the fall of 2009 to check Canada’s compliance with its own standards. They visited headquarters in Ottawa, 23 meat-processing plants and two labs.

They found that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency generally has good manuals and intentions, but falls short at the plant level, including failures to identify lax sanitation and to enforce its standards.

Thirty years ago, when Canadian reporters began to obtain U.S. inspection reports on our packing plants, all of the deficiencies identified applied to specific problems and individual plants. This audit has identified similar deficiencies at the plant level, but far more serious, it found deficiencies in the overall system.

Had the U.S. inspectors not checked it’s likely that the deficiencies would have persisted, putting Canadian consumers at risk and the meat industry under threat of losing export markets.

The report also indicates some of the systemic deficiencies were identified during previous annual audits, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency promised to fix them, but they persisted. This is after the Maple Leaf crisis and frequent promises by Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and Prime Minister Stephen Harper that corrective action would be taken as swiftly as possible.

They have never talked about the U.S. audit reports that highlighted things that needed attention.

During the inspections of 23 plants – Canadian officials went along with the two U.S. officials – they identified problems so serious that three plants were banned from marketing their products in the U.S. and three more were issued warnings that they would be banned if they failed to immediately correct deficiencies.
Four of these six plants were processing ready-to-eat meat products, meaning they would go directly to consumers without any further steps to eliminate hazardous bacteria.

They also found by checking records that some of the plants were running overtime hours without any government inspectors checking conditions.

At another plant, they said the documents that indicated compliance “did not consistently reflect the conditions encountered at the time of the audit.” Later in the report, they write “the actual conditions of the establishment visits were often not entirely consistent with the corresponding documentation.”

Supervisors are supposed to periodically check the performance of front-line government inspectors, but the auditors found “system weaknesses . . . in the manner in which supervisory reviews were conducted.”

They also said there was “an inconsistent identification of potential non-compliances or potential inadequate performance by the inspection personnel.

“The deficiency concerning the lack of supervisory documentation is a repeat finding from the 2008 audit,” this report says.

The two U.S. auditors say the Canadian Food Inspection Agency needs to improve its communications its employee training and awareness and its feedback systems.

They found inspectors were failing to do their duties, as outlined in agency manuals, because they noticed:

– “Lack/loss of consistent identification of contaminated product and product-contact surfaces and other insanitary (sic) conditions.
– “Inconsistent verification of adequate corrective actions . . . with regards to repetitive non-compliances.
– “Inconsistent and loss of documentation of non-compliances in a manner that reflects actual establishment conditions, and
– “Lack/loss of increased inspection activities when non-compliance is observed . . .”

They add that “many of these findings are closely related to those identified during the previous audit.”

They also “identified system weaknesses regarding implementation and verification of HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) systems within the CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency).”

More specifically, they identified “inaccurate analyzing of hazards” for HACCP protocols, “Inadequate implementation of basic elements of the HACCP plan, including monitoring and ongoing verification procedures” and “inappropriate verification of corrective actions taken in response to deviations from the critical limit (for harmful bacteria)”

In addition, they identified lapses in recording instances of non-compliance, such as failures to enter problems in the record book, failures to identify the level of bacterial contamination ad failure to record the “actual times when the entries were made.” They also noted that border inspectors conducting spot checks of Canadian hamburger heading to customers in the U.S. found “several occurrences of zero-tolerance failures in addition to two positive results for E. coli O157:H7.”

Between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31, the U.S. border inspectors turned back 61 million pounds of Canadian meat, calling for repeat inspection by Canadians, and rejected 7,277 pounds that “involved food-safety concerns.” Labeling could be the problem with some of the shipments that were sent back.

In response to this audit, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it would increase inspections at 126 of the 190 plants certified to export to the U.S. There is no mention of what will happen at plants selling only to Canadians.

They say “supervisors are now required to accompany inspectors on a quarterly basis. . .”

“The sanitation task was re-structured to focus more on a global assessment of plant sanitation including more emphasis on Ready-to-Eat areas and equipment.”

The CFIA is also stepping up its training programs, its identification of critical control points for its HACCP protocols, its “Listeria related inspection tasks associated with operational/pre-operational sanitation, ventilation (e.g. condensation), building construction and maintenance of equipment.”

The CFIA also says “an electronic application is being developed to allow inspection staff access to historical data at the field level which will provide for more timely compliance decisions.”

When he was asked about the audit, Agriculture Minister Ritz said he has committed an additional $75 million to meat inspection since that audit was completed.

The results of the 2010 audit are not yet available from U.S. officials.
 

Up to 73 with Druxy’s diarrhea; don’t let sick employees serve food

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The Hamilton Spectator (that’s in Ontario, Canada) reports this morning that public health types received 40 calls Friday from people who were sick after eating food from the downtown Druxy’s Famous Deli Sandwiches earlier this week.

All of them ate food from the deli on Tuesday or Wednesday and showed a similar range of symptoms to the 33 people who became sick with gastrointestinal illness or stomach flu at a corporate event catered by Druxy’s Tuesday, said Dr. Chris Mackie, one of the city’s associate medical officers of health.

The symptoms include nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, he said.

Public health temporarily closed the deli at Jackson Square Thursday afternoon after they suspected two ill employees serving at a corporate Christmas party contaminated the food. The department found Druxy’s did not have hot water for workers to wash their hands properly.

The downtown deli has catered three other events since Monday. Some of the new 40 patients had attended one of these functions, Mackie said.

Public health has collected some samples and should know what pathogen is involved likely by Monday, he said.

‘Food safety in Canada is an accident;’ imports, retailers face scrutiny

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“Food safety in Canada, believe it or not, is an accident. It really is,” says Rick Holley, a University of Manitoba food-safety expert and an adviser to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

That’s how Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper kicks off a week-long series on the global marketplace for food, and how Canada has yet to come to terms with the regulatory, economic and technological challenges of global food, by reporter Steven Chase.

Last year, Canada imported more than 33 million litres of apple juice from China; 11.8 million kilograms of pickles and relish from India and 4.9 million kilograms of cashews from Vietnam, all part of a two-decade-long surge that has made imported food – often from developing countries – a significant component of the Canadian diet. All of it is grown or processed far beyond the reach of Canada’s food inspection system, which – contrary to what consumers might expect – is still struggling to catch up to the reality of a global food market.

Critics say Canada’s ability to safeguard its citizens from the risks of both domestic and imported food is falling behind – charges levelled even as efforts are under way at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to update practices for the 21st-century global marketplace.

Today, foreign food makes up 15 to 20 per cent of this country’s diet.

Importers are not currently required by Ottawa to provide documentation that traces a primary food product to its origin. Some food retailers and importers may, however, already collect this information for their own commercial purposes.

Chief Food Safety Officer Brian Evans says CFIA intends to propose that importers be required to document the origin of all “ single entity products” – as opposed to multi-ingredient goods – they bring into Canada. These would include fish, eggs, leafy greens, salads, fresh fruits and vegetables. We would like to have country of origin traceability requirements as part of the first set of regulations going forward. We would like to see that in 18 to 24 months.”

However, he said, the timing and final details of such a plan is up to the government.

Roughly about 1 to 2 per cent of foreign food imports that enter Canada are inspected. The agency heavily inspects some products such as meat and also pays closer attention to goods that have a history of carrying food-borne illness – such as fish or leafy greens or eggs.

The CFIA argues that the absence of big problems shows the system works. In any given day, Dr. Evans says, about 100-million meals are eaten in Canada – which works out to about 36.5 billion meals at year. And what’s going wrong? There are about 250 to 300 recalls of food each year following inspections or consumer complaints. Canadians also suffer an estimated 11- million cases of acute gastroenteritis each year – a relatively minor amount – and one that federal authorities suggest is largely due to food preparation mistakes or bad hygiene rather than substandard imports.

However, the University of Manitoba’s Dr. Holley says a push for traceability is not a priority when there are other problems with food safety, including a lack of comprehensive information on what is making Canadians sick. “It’s like putting a sunroof on a car that has bald tires.”

While regulators waffle over how to improve food safety, some of the world’s largest grocery sellers have been using their market muscle to force suppliers to clean up or risk being punted from retail’s most sought-after shelves.

Leading the run are the same corporate giants critics blame for jeopardizing food safety amidst their globe-spanning pursuit of abundant cheap food. But no one is arguing about the impact grocery heavyweights are having on safety in the global supply chain, where their border-transcending clout eclipses the reach of public regulators.

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest grocer, cut through a highly political debate over tainted hamburger meat in the U.S. this year by forcing suppliers to conduct specialized tests for E. coli and salmonella.

In Canada, Loblaws became the first national retailer to insist private-label suppliers comply with safety standards under the Global Food Safety Initiative, an alliance started by eight of the world’s largest food retailers.

Jorgen Schlundt, the recently departed director of food safety at the World Health Organization, worries big retailers view food safety as a marketing tool. “There is a huge difference between what consumers … think is important and what is really important,” Dr. Schlundt said. “It is extremely important that the science that standards are built upon and the standards themselves are not made by industry – not made by the people who are supposed to be monitored by government,” he said.

I’d rather those standards were publicly available and marketed at retail so consumers – who probably know a lot more about food safety than Dr. Schlundt thinks they do – could support those producers and processors that consistently provide microbiologically safe food – and can prove it.

Audit finds sanitation problems at some Canadian meat, poultry plants

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There’s nothing new here, but once again, the Americans say the Canadians sorta suck at food safety, and the Canadians say, politely, thanks, we’ve fixed that.

The Toronto Star reports tonight that an American audit concluded Canadian Food Inspection Agency documents often painted an inaccurate picture of the conditions at some of Canada’s meat and poultry plants where sanitation problems persisted.

The audit, which looked at 23 of the 455 establishments certified to export to the U.S. between Aug. 25 and Oct. 1, 2009, identified weaknesses particularly in the areas of sanitation, oversight and record keeping.

A review of manuals and procedures at the food inspection agency’s administrative offices found acceptable controls for sanitation, but auditors found a different story at some plants.

“The actual conditions of the establishment visits were often not entirely consistent with the corresponding documentation,” the report says.

Among the sanitation issues identified in the report were: not consistently identifying contaminated product and inconsistently verifying plants were taking adequate corrective actions to problems.

Agriculture Minister Gerry-listeria-is funny- Ritz, responded with a statement emailed to The Canadian Press on Monday, stating,

“This audit is from a year ago and in that time our government has invested an additional $75 million to improve food safety and are hiring 170 new inspectors.”

Uh-huh.

Glacial government: CFIA still implementing recommendations from 2008 listeria outbreak

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On Aug. 17, 2008, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Maple Leaf Foods, Inc. finally got around to telling Canadians they should avoid serving or consuming certain brands of deli meat as the products could be contaminated with L. monocytogenes. In the end, 23 deaths and 57 cases of listeriosis were linked to contaminated cold-cuts made by Maple Leaf.

In July 2009, investigator Sheila Weatherill who was appointed directly by the Canadian Prime Minister, issued a 181-page final report about the listeria crapfest, with 57 recommendations grouped into four broad categories:

– more focus on food safety among senior officials in both the public and private sectors;

– better preparedness for dealing with a serious foodborne illness with more advance planning for an emergency response;

– a greater sense of urgency if another foodborne emergency occurs; and,

– clearer communications with the Canadian public about listeriosis and
other foodborne illnesses, especially at risk populations and health professionals.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

On Oct. 21, 2010, CFIA issued a couple of public reports, responding to the Weatherill report, all this over two-years after people starting barfing and dying from Maple Leaf meats. Buried within the bureaucratese are a few nuggets that show Canadian food safety types are trying to say the right thing – but really don’t get it.

Most of the media coverage focused on meat inspection protocols and complaints by the union of too few inspectors. There’s this big debate about who needs to do what and whether the federally-mandated Compliance Verification System (CVS), which sets out the procedures to be used by inspectors to verify the design and implementation of a plant’s food safety plan, is any good.

However, within the Oct. 2010 food safety progress report, the feds are apparently trying to come up with guidance on when to go public about food safety risks.

“Health Canada is developing a federal guidance document on the weight of evidence needed to take action to protect consumers during foodborne illness outbreak investigations. The weight of evidence takes into consideration the microbiological information gathered through food sample testing and human illness reports, as well as the information collected from the follow-up investigation at food processing plants. Federal, provincial and territorial partners have been consulted on the draft guidance document. Health Canada also shared the document with selected international counterparts in June 2010. Once finalized, the document will be used by Health Canada, CFIA and PHAC during outbreak investigations.”

I look forward to the public availability of such a document, 14 years after the feds were criticized for the erroneous implication of California strawberries rather than Guatemalan raspberries as the source of a 1996 North America-wide cyclospora outbreak.

The Weatherill Report makes a number of recommendations to improve communication between government and the public on food safety and foodborne illness. The Government has taken steps to improve how and when it communicates with Canadians in general and with at-risk populations and key stakeholders, specifically. These steps take into consideration how it communicates food safety information in periods when there is no outbreak as well as during a national foodborne illness event.

In February 2010, the Government of Canada launched an online Food Safety Portal that offers a one-stop source for information about food safety and foodborne illness (www.foodsafety.gc.ca). The food safety and foodborne illness information initiatives developed by CFIA, PHAC and Health Canada and described in this report can now be found on the Portal.

To raise awareness of the Food Safety Portal, CFIA sent out a social media news release that encourages individuals to share information about the Portal online by using social media book-marking and tagging options, thus ensuring the broadest possible outreach.

CFIA has also been using social media tools, such as Twitter, to reach a wider audience on food safety issues and recalls. The Agency has gained over 400 followers on Twitter, including representatives from the media, health organizations, consumer groups and cooking/food allergy bloggers. In addition, CFIA has developed a recall widget to automate further distribution of notices. Food safety stakeholders have been invited to embed the CFIA widget on their websites, blogs, or social media pages to display live content from CFIA on food recalls.

The Consumer Centre section of the CFIA website has also been redesigned to clearly explain the roles that consumers, government and industry play in food safety, and to provide more information on important food safety issues. In addition, CFIA is participating in six food-related events between May 2010 and March 2011 to promote the Food Safety Portal and raise awareness of safe food handling practices and recall procedures.

And it goes on and on.

Creating a new web site doesn’t mean anyone reads it. And using social media is of no use if the messages still suck. People dying from deli meat is not a food handling concern.

PHAC has developed a risk communications strategy that will guide how the Agency communicates to Canadians during a national foodborne illness outbreak. PHAC has begun to implement various components of the strategy so that it can communicate to the public, key stakeholders, and targeted at-risk populations (older adults, pregnant women and those with weakened immune systems) more effectively. The strategy uses a variety of traditional and innovative formats, such as media events, web- and audio-casts, the Food Safety Portal, and stakeholder briefings. PHAC also collaborates with Health Canada to ensure that PHAC’s information for Canadians during a national outbreak is consistent with the food safety information that Health Canada provides.

There’s more but it’s tortuous. No evaluation of effectiveness, no indication that fewer people are barfing, no evidence that dieticians at care facilities won’t keep giving out cold deli meats to at-risk populations, no evidence that medical types at place like the Toronto Hospital for Sick Kids won’t keep dispensening stupid advice about listeria risks to pregnant women.

And for all the bureaucratese, no mention was made by anybody about Weatherill’s recommendation for precautionary labeling – warning labels – for listeria-vulnerable populations like pregnant women and old folks.

There must have been hundreds of fully salaried government types at all the meetings and in the report prep and website building and travel.
Maple Leaf or any other processor, government can continue to dither, you’re the ones losing customers and profits.

Make listeria testing results publicly available, and put warning labels or some sort of information available on the package. And stop saying deli meat is a consumer handling problem.

Waiting for government is like waiting for Godot.

Norovirus in B.C oysters making people sick; government won’t say how many

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There are three separate clusters of norovirus associated with raw oysters making people barf in the Vancouver area (that’s in Canada) but, as usual, no details were provided by health types on actual numbers of people sick.

CBC News reports the B.C. Centre for Disease Control has confirmed that an outbreak of illness related to eating uncooked Pacific Coast oysters is being caused by a norovirus.

The affected oysters have been traced to a section of Effingham Inlet on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The oysters were harvested between Sept. 7 and Sept. 21.

Canada lacks oversight of imported foods

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An internal Canadian Food Inspection Agency audit, dated July and quietly posted on the agency’s website this week, found that the safety of imported foods in Canada is at risk because of multiple "deficiencies" with the agency’s oversight system.

Sarah Schmidt of Postmedia News reports the audit also found that the agency never full implemented its 2002 Import Control Policy and that it leaves it up to foreign countries to inspect exports bound for Canada, even though there are no foreign country equivalence controls in place for food commodity programs, other than meat, fish and eggs.

These foods include maple (it’s a staple of the Canadian diet), honey, fresh fruits and vegetables, processed products and non-federally registered products. Non-registered products include beverages, infant formula, confectionary, cereals, spices and seasonings and baked products.

Opposition parties jumped on the findings, accusing the Tory government during question period of failing to protect the health of Canadians while the volume of imported foods has risen to more than $21.8 billion annually.

"Today we learned that the government has no strategy to ensure that health hazards are not entering Canada,” said NDP health critic Megan Leslie.

Canada has no strategy to ensure health hazards are controlled in homegrown foods.

Agriculture Minister Gerry listeria-is-funny Ritz was not in the House of Commons to respond to the attacks.