Tag Archives: Going Public

Aunt of E. coli victim wants answers from county about lousy response

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The Columbian reported today that the aunt of 4-year-old Ronan Wilson (right), who died April 8 after contracting E. coli at his Hazel Dell in-home day care in Washington state, wants to know why the Clark County Department of Health did not let the public know about the outbreak until the day after Ronan died.

Savenia Falquist also questions why the day care children and their siblings continued attending school, possibly putting other children at risk, and why the health department did not at least alert health care providers about the outbreak.

When Ronan’s mother first took him to a doctor on March 29, the doctor did not think it was necessary to test for E. coli and diagnosed Ronan with the flu. Other parents of children at the day care have said they initially had difficulty getting doctors to approve a stool test, the only way to test for E. coli.

Falquist told Clark County commissioners at their monthly Board of Health meeting Wednesday that she’s trying to educate herself on the county’s policies for informing the public about communicable diseases, adding after the meeting,

“The intention is not to go after a county department that’s funded by the public. What I really want to do is rule out complacency.”

John Wiesman, the director of the health department, said the county typically only issues public health warnings when health officials can’t personally contact those potentially affected by a health threat. For example, a news release would be issued if a food services worker tested positive for hepatitis A and the county would have to warn people who ate at the worker’s restaurant.

A provider alert was not sent out about the E. coli outbreak at the day care because owners Larry and Dianne Fletch had contact information for all of the parents whose children attended the center, Wiesman said.

Wow. That’s terrible accountability. Alerts also raise awareness and provide lessons for others – oh, and may prevent people from getting sick. Maybe not directly, but it could enhance the conversations and culture surrounding food safety if others knew, oh, kids can get E. coli O157:H7 at day care.

A total of 14 people at the day care tested positive for E. coli O157:H7 bacteria. Three were hospitalized and 10 people had mild symptoms.

Children who tested positive were not allowed to go to a day care until they had two negative stool samples, 24 hours apart, Melnick said Wednesday. He said older children at the center or older siblings of children at the day care were still allowed to go to school because there aren’t the same concerns about transmitting the bacteria with older children. There aren’t diapers being changed, for example.

“The kids are older, and their hygiene is better,” Melnick said.

Any evidence to back up that statement?

Lost in Translation: Time to end don’t ask, don’t tell, in food safety outbreak reporting

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There are some new Fresh Express bagged salad commercials running on the television; they don’t mention anything about Salmonella or the many efforts Fresh Express takes to control dangerous pathogens like Salmonella and E. coli in its products.

Which is too bad.

There have been many reinterpretations of history regarding fresh produce and microbial food safety. We have argued the tipping point was 1996, involving both the Odwalla E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in unpasteurized juice, coupled with the cyclospora outbreak which was initially and erroneously linked to California strawberries (it was Guatemalan raspberries). This led to the first attempts at comprehensive on-farm food safety programs for fresh produce because, these bugs ain’t going to be washed off; they have to be prevented, as much as possible, from getting on or in fresh produce on the farm.

For the growers of leafy greens, things apparently didn’t tip until the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in bagged spinach from California that sickened 200 and killed four.

Ultimately, investigators showed that the E. coli O157:H7 was found on a transitional organic spinach field and was the same serotype as that found in a neighboring grass-fed cow-calf operation. These findings, coupled with the public outcry linked to the outbreak and the media coverage, sparked a myriad of changes and initiatives by the industry, government and others. What may never be answered is, why this outbreak at this time? A decade of evidence existed highlighting problems with fresh produce, warning letters were written, yet little was seemingly accomplished. The real challenge for food safety professionals, is to garner support for safe food practices in the absence of an outbreak, to create a culture that values microbiologically safe food, from farm-to-fork, at all times, and not just in the glare of the media spotlight.

One of the responses out of California was to create the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement – after 29 outbreaks, at the time, linked to leafy greens and after years of warning from FDA. The most noticeable achievement since the Agreement has been the containment cone of silence that has descended upon outbreaks involving leafy greens, and an apparent shift in FDA policy that sets epidemiology aside and requires positive samples in unopened product – a ridiculous standard since no one routinely tests for other Shiga-toxin producing E. coli like O145. That was referring to the Freshway Foods E. coli O145 in romaine lettuce outbreak earlier this year that sickened some 50 people near colleges in Michigan, Ohio and New York.

These are all confirmed outbreaks. Every day, I receive a couple of messages about people sick here and there, and the public health types have dozens of potential foodborne outbreaks under scrutiny at any one time.

When to provide public information is a contentious issue: the public has a right to know about outbreaks of foodborne illness and rapid provision of information may prevent additional illnesses, but going too early and too often can be like crying wolf – especially if health types get it wrong and businesses are unduly harmed.

There is a lot of public and private frustration about the lack of guidelines for going public with information about outbreaks. Recent events won’t help.

An e-mail was circulated on May 12, 2010, asking food safety and public health types about a possible salmonella in lettuce outbreak in the Midwest U.S. with links to California.

On Thurs. May 20, lawyer Bill Marler speculated about a lettuce-related Salmonella outbreak in the "upper-Midwest, that appears linked to industry leader, Fresh Express. It is interesting that the Health Department and FDA remain silent on this one too.”

I didn’t publish anything because it was speculation – which I deal with everyday. We have guidelines for what we choose to publish or not. They are available at http://bites.ksu.edu/about-bites.

On May 24, 2010, Fresh Express publicly announced a recall of certain romaine-based ready-to-eat salads with the expired Use-by Dates of May 13th through May 16th and an "S" in the Product Code because they have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella.

The recall notification is being issued out of an abundance of caution based on an isolated instance in which a single package of Fresh Express Hearts of Romaine Salad with a use by date of May 15 was confirmed positive for Salmonella in a random sample test conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

I immediately took to barfblog.com, having been sitting on all this lettuce-related poop for awhile, and asked, when was the sample test conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration because there have been rumors of a positive circulating on the Intertubes? When was the positive confirmed? What strain of Salmonella is involved? Why go public now instead of earlier? How incompetent does the Fresh Express PR person have to be to ignore these questions in the press release? Sounds like the Sponge Bob leafy greens cone of silence.

Shortly thereafter, I got a phone call from Dr. Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota expert on infectious diseases and public health and a paid consultant to Fresh Express since 1999.

He didn’t like the post, and didn’t like the picture, which we use for every leafy green outbreak or incident (thank you Christian, former student who created it in my Guelph kitchen).

Osterholm and I bantered back and forth about going public and I stressed, if Fresh Express has a great food safety story to tell, they should tell it.

About 30 minutes later, Osterholm called me back and said, OK, Fresh Express says I can tell you whatever you want to know.

We talked at 6 a.m. central time the next day.

Osterholm repeatedly stressed how committed Fresh Express was to food safety and how that attracted him to consult for the firm. He talked about how the company had ‘boots on the ground’ rather than relying on outsiders for food safety audits, and that the safety culture trumped the legal culture that dominated other firms.

Good for them.

Osterholm stressed that Fresh Express tested irrigation water and product, but did not know if those results would be made public (although they were shared with regulators).

Osterholm told me he was informed a couple of weeks earlier – thereabouts to May 12, 2010 – there were eight people sick Salmonella typhirmirium linked to Fresh Express salad, but they had all consumed it several weeks earlier so there was no public health purpose in going public. The May 24, 2010 Salmonella recall was a completely separate incident. According to Osterholm, FDA types showed up at the Fresh Express office, didn’t know the Salmonella species, and yet Fresh Express executed a traceback and recall within hours and that showed how awesome the company was.

“Clearly having a salmonella positive in one of your bags is something you don’t want; here was a company that walked the talk, they had a traceback system and within hours could tell everyone about those fields.”

It didn’t say that in the Fresh Express press release, and it’s not up to me to tell their story.

On May 27, 2010, California’s organicgirl produce announced a precautionary recall of 10 oz organicgirl baby spinach with use-by date of May 22.

“organicgirl produce immediately conducted a traceability analysis and an appraisal of its food safety documentation, which were all in compliance. Additionally, organicgirl raw product testing records for the relevant time period did not show the presence of any pathogens.”

Not sure why Fresh Express couldn’t say the same. Maybe they need better PR people.

After talking with Osterholm, I sent an e-mail to the media relations folks at FDA regarding the May 24/10 Fresh Express Salmonella recall, and, after a few days, they responded:

Q. When was the sample collected i.e. when was the bag pulled?
A. May 5, 2010

Q. When was Fresh Express notified of the Salmonella positive?
A. May 21, 2010

Q. What kind of Salmonella was it?
A. S. Anatum

Q. Does FDA review and approve press releases such as the May 24/10 one from Fresh Express?
A. Recall press releases are reviewed at the District primarily.

I then sent a follow-up question, asking why so long between when the sample was pulled – May 5/10 – and the company informed of a positive – May 21/10.

No answer.

FDA, Fresh Express and the leafy greens folks all sorta suck at this communications thing.

FDA is responsive to – who knows, and has no policy for when or how to go public. Oh, they have some things they tell journalists, like this story in the Packer, but it’s full of fudge-factors. I understand there are uncertainties, but, like any good risk assessment, you go public and admit uncertainties rather than trying to act all-knowing.

FDA types also made a big splash in May when their transparency plan was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The task force also said the FDA should regularly share basic information about facility inspections it conducts and the result of each inspection. Routinely sharing the information could give the public a clearer understanding of the FDA’s role in protecting public health and would make firms accountable not just to the FDA, but to the larger public.

The information would also give other firms more information about the companies they choose to do business with, the group said. "Market pressures may create incentives for firms to correct violations quickly or prevent violations from occurring in the future."

OMG, FDA is talking about marketing food safety.

But Fresh Express, you’re an industry leader and this year’s winner of the International Association for Food Protection’s Black Pearl award for food safety leadership. Forget government, lead by example. Make your test results public, market food safety at retail so consumers can choose, and if people get sick from your product, you better be the first to tell the public.

A table of leafy green foodborne illness outbreaks is available at:

http://bites.ksu.edu/Outbreaks%20related%20to%20leafy%20greens%201993-2010











Lost in translation; going public with food safety information – France edition

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Albert Amgar, blogmaster of France’s coolest food safety blog, wrote me after I posted about the 88 people sick with Salmonella from dry sausage in France.

What I had missed was that although the outbreak had been on-going for at least 10 weeks, the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance did not publicly report the outbreak until May 28, 2010, and used a Salmonella naming system that would mean nothing to most people (Salmonella 4,12 :i :-).

No company was named, no statement was released by anybody telling consumers to beware certain foodstuffs.

It was the Belgians who did that, through a press release entitled, La société Salaisons du Lignon adopte le principe de precaution et lance un plan de rappel sur un produit: Saucisse sèche droite La Pause Auvergnate, that identified the Lou Mountagnard brand of dried sausages.

The pdf press release file is linkable through Albert’s blog at http://amgar.blog.processalimentaire.com/?p=8937, where he asks, in my broken English summation, why do French citizens, 88 who are confirmed ill, have to learn details about contaminated product from a city in Belgium? (The image, below left,  is from Albert’s blog.

E. coli in lettuce: Spongebob containment dome silencing public communications

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New developments in the Freshway Foods romaine lettuce E. coli O145 outbreak:

1. Why the corporate finance dude shouldn’t be the public spokesthingy.

Freshway Foods recalled romaine lettuce products sold for food service outlets, wholesale, and in-store retail salad bars and delis last week after links with over 50 sick people in Ohio, Michigan and New York were established.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that multiple lines of evidence implicated shredded romaine lettuce from one processing facility as a source of infections in a multistate outbreak to which this recall may be related.

“The evidence includes preliminary results of product traceback investigations that indicate:
• the shredded romaine lettuce consumed by ill persons in three states originated from one processing facility;
• preliminary results of a case-control study in one state that found a statistically significant association between E. coli O145 infection;
• ingestion of lettuce from the same processing facility; and,
• recovery of E. coli O145 from an unopened package of shredded romaine lettuce from the same processing facility that was obtained from a food service entity associated with the outbreak.”

To which Freshway Foods vp of finance Devon Beer told The Packer,

“It’s really a precautionary step.”

No. It’s an outbreak and a public health step. At what point did FDA abandon epidemiology and require positive test results in an unopened package? How long were people eating potentially contaminated romaine lettuce at salad bars while regulators assembled sufficient evidence? What is the FDA policy on going public? (It doesn’t exist, at least not in any public form.) The six confirmed and suspected cases amongst students in New York’s Wappinger Central School District who came down with E. coli in April may want to know. And the lettuce they were served in the school cafeteria tested positive.

2. The suspect lettuce was grown in Yuma, Arizona

It was announced Friday that federal investigators were looking at a farm in Yuma, Ariz., as a possible source of the suspect romaine lettuce.

3. Look for pathogens and they will be found

In the wake of the E. coli O145 outbreak in romaine lettuce, a laboratory in Ohio started testing bags of romaine and found another E. coli which lead to a very private recall on Friday.

Misti Crane of the Columbus Dispatch reported this morning that the E. coli positive (strain not identified – dp) led a California company to recall about 1,000 cartons of produce that went to two customers who then processed the lettuce before sending it on to food-service establishments.

Amy Philpott, spokeswoman for Andrew Smith Co. in Spreckels, Calif., said none of the lettuce was sold in grocery stores and that only two food processors bought the cartons.

She said she didn’t know the names of those customers and did not know whether Freshway Foods in Sidney, Ohio, was one of them.

Ohio Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Kaleigh Frazier said the test was on an unopened bag of Freshway romaine shredded lettuce with a sell-by date of May 10, and her department is sending the sample on to federal officials for further testing.

Andrew Smith issued the recall privately on May 7 for lettuce that was shipped in mid-April, she said.

4. Our stuff is safe

As with the spinach outbreak of 2006, other regions are quick to proclaim the safety of their products, even in the absence of any data.

New Jersey State Agriculture Secretary Douglas Fisher said Friday that fresh romaine lettuce from New Jersey is safe.

"It certainly is an unfortunate coincidence of timing that this recall is occurring just as our farmers’ fresh romaine is coming into the market, but there is no connection between the two."

OK, but why not use the opportunity to explain the food safety steps taken by NJ lettuce growers to ensure microbiologically safe food, rather than saying we have a task force.

5. Blame consumers

Bob LaMendola of the Florida Sun Sentinel writes the E. coli is deadly but preventable by keeping raw meat separate from other foods, cooking meat to 165F, washing produce and hands vigorously.

This has nothing to do with romaine lettuce at salad bars.

After the 2006 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to California spinach, the 29th outbreak linked to leafy greens and after years of warning from FDA, California growers formed the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, which is supposed to have food safety performance standards. Yet the most noticeable achievement since the Agreement has been the containment cone of silence that has descended upon outbreaks involving leafy greens, and an apparent shift in FDA policy that sets epidemiology aside and requires positive samples in unopened product – a ridiculous standard since no one routinely tests for other Shiga-toxin producing E. coli like O145.

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The face of E. coli: Vancouver petting zoo edition

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Although the Vancouver Coastal Health authority had identified a cluster of E. coli infections as early as last Thursday, no public health warning was issued, said spokeswoman Anna Marie D’Angelo.

All 13 cases that have presented so far are thought to be related to exposure to the the PNE petting zoo.

The Vancouver Sun reports that B.C.’s Medical Health Officer Dr. John Carsley, said,

“We were suspicious on Thursday when two cases were reported, then there were more on Friday. … “We wrestle very seriously with this issue of whether to do a public alert or not. It depends very much on the outbreak, and if there is a continued risk out there.”

The family of 14-month-old Jacklyn Simpson (above, right, photo from Vancouver Sun), who was stricken with the illness after visiting the petting zoo, believes that had they known about the outbreak, they might have been able to get help earlier.

That’s one of the reasons to issue public alerts – so additional illnesses can be prevented. E. coli O157 also spreads easily from person-to-person so public warnings may help reduce additional transmissions.

And it would be helpful if public health types would clearly articulate why they go public about foodborne illness outbreaks and when. Saying, "we wrestle with it,” does not enhance public confidence. Or prevent additional illnesses.

Health dept: We balance public’s need to know with needs of business; 20 sick with Hepatitis A in Illinois

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KWQC is reporting that two workers at the Milan, Illinois, McDonald’s tested positive for Hepatitis A but TV6 has learned one of those tests came back a month ago.

Even though the first case was confirmed back in mid-June, the Rock Island County Health Department didn’t close the McDonald’s until this past Wednesday. By then, another case had been confirmed.

The health department now says it didn’t respond back then because it didn’t know back then. The health department says it didn’t find out about the case on June 9th until July 10th, a month later.

By law, the health department should have been notified within 24 hours. At a press conference Saturday afternoon, health department staff said the system broke down.

Wendy Trute with the Health Department said,

"There’s a network of providers and there’s a whole list of people responsible for reporting infectious diseases or communicable diseases."

The Health Department also says in addition to the two confirmed cases at the Milan McDonalds, there are also confirmed hepatitis A cases involving other local businesses.

We then asked which businesses, Trute said,

"You know what? It’s not our policy to name them, nor is it the policy of the state health department. However, I can assure you we have worked with them and they have taken all the necessary pre-cautions required of them."

As far as communicating details to the public, the Health Department says it tries to balance the public’s need to know with the needs of any business that may be involved.

There are 20 confirmed Hepatitis A case in Rock Island and surrounding areas, with 11 people being hospitalized.
 

North Bay E. coli outbreak – see it all on youtube

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The use of video is changing public perceptions of foodborne illness outbreaks. At least that’s what we hypothesized after the 2006 E. coli in spinach outbreak. But check it out for yourself. Next time, get the head of CFIA or FDA on camera, explaining the basis for going public.

As of Monday, Oct. 20, 2008, there were a total of 141 cases, of which 28 are lab confirmed for E. coli O157:H7, which includes cases being investigated by six other health units in Ontario. The case numbers are down because further information has shown that 18 people are not part of this outbreak.

Does that mean there were 18 people who were sick that were part of another outbreak?

At this time, all of the 141 cases are linked to one location – the Harvey’s Restaurant in North Bay.
 

Despite E. coli cases, Oklahoma restaurant kept serving customers; not so in North Bay

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A Harvey’s restaurant in North Bay, Ontario, Canada,  remains closed as the number of confirmed and suspected sick with E. coli O157:H7 climbed to 159 today.

The public health folks in North Bay must be going nuts, but they, along with the operators of Harvey’s, have put public health first and closed the restaurant until more is known.

Locust Grove, Oklahoma, was also hammered by an E. coli outbreak, E. coli O111, linked to dining at the Country Cottage restaurant in August.. One person died, 72 were hospitalized and 241 others got sick before the outbreak was contained.

Today it was revealed that State Health Department officials allowed the Country Cottage to stay open temporarily — even after confirming six of eight initial food poisoning victims had eaten its food, internal documents show. That decision may have resulted in additional people getting sick.

Health Department officials admitted last week there is no set threshold in such cases for closing a restaurant suspected of being the source of an outbreak.

There are no guidelines. Epidemiological investigations are full of uncertainty. So is most of what is known about foodborne illness. But after the Salmonella-in-tomatoes-jalapenos outbreak this summer, public health officials are seemingly reluctant to go public. Industry has attempted to take matters into their own hands – which they should have been doing anyway – and is increasingly challenging public health investigations with its own test results, and unfortunately overstating the value of their own tests.

Listeria in Maple Leaf deli meats, Salmonella in produce, E. coli in Ontario and Oklahoma. There are no guidelines on when to go public. Federal agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency must come clean with the public and industry and articulate the basis for public notification, or even restaurant closures, during outbreaks of foodborne illness. Until then local health units are left cleaning up the mess.
 

More of the same from Maple Leaf, CFIA

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Maple Leaf Foods president and CEO Michael McCain said last night that “consistent with normal findings and practices” listeria continues to be found at the same facility that produced cold-cuts linked to at least 20 deaths and 50 illnesses in Canada.

“Listeriosis is an exceptionally rare illness,” he said, “but we are taking every precaution possible.”

I’m sure the illness didn’t feel exceptionally rare to the sick and the dead.

Mr. McCain also reiterated that,

“Listeria exists in all food plants, all supermarkets and presumably in all kitchens,”

which is exactly why my pregnant wife and Ben’s pregnant wife didn’t go near Maple Leaf or any other cold cuts during their pregnancies. So I’m sure Mr. McCain will put as much energy and resources into advising vulnerable populations to stay away from Maple Leaf cold-cuts and other refrigerated ready-to-eat foods as he is into re-opening the Toronto plant.

And if Maple Leaf is now “behaving in the most conservative way possible,” what were they doing before the listeria outbreak became public knowledge on Aug. 20, 2008?

Confidential data obtained by the Toronto Star and  CBC and reported last night revealed that two-thirds of Maple Leaf meat samples collected from Toronto hospitals and nursing homes tested positive for a virulent strain of listeria just before the country’s largest food recall.

The test results show a dramatically high percentage of bacteria-laced ham, corned beef, turkey, and roast beef was being served to hundreds of vulnerable hospital patients and seniors. Experts say it’s more contamination than they have seen and further evidence of a health risk that should have reached the public’s attention sooner.

“There shouldn’t be any positives,” says Rick Holley, a food safety expert at the University of Manitoba. “The reality is if you did a survey in the market, you might find one or two at most out of this sample that are positive … And it is a particularly virulent strain of listeria. It’s one of the bad ones.” …

“I’d never seen anything like this,” said Dr. Vinita Dubey, Toronto’s associate medical officer of health. “The fact that so many came back positive shows how contaminated the source was.”

So given the high level of contamination, what did the Canadian Food Inspection Agency do? Insist on more testing, because epidemiology is not enough to protect the health of Canadians.

In a conference call with members of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Aug. 14, Toronto officials told the agency they had enough evidence to make a connection and pressed the CFIA to warn the public about Maple Leaf products.

CFIA officials, however, said they needed to wait for one more set of test results from unopened meat packages.

While the CFIA had identified listeria bacteria at the Maple Leaf Foods meat processing plant in Toronto and even begun an investigation of the company by that time, the federal agency said it wanted definitive test results to see whether it was the same strain as the one responsible for the outbreak.

The CFIA declined a request for an interview with CBC News. The agency maintained that it requires hard scientific proof before it can recall food or issue warnings to the public.

Toronto Public Health said it had gathered plenty of evidence during July and August that linked Maple Leaf meat products to the outbreak, including:
    * two deaths linked to listeriosis
    * more cases being reported
    * meat samples from sandwiches tested positive
    * samples from opened meat packages were taken

During a 2005 outbreak of salmonella found in bean sprouts in Kingston, Ont., regional health officials didn’t wait for definitive proof to issue their own recall.

"I think it’s a less desirable approach, from the point of view of the people we serve, to say, ‘We’ll have to wait and have confirmation before we can intervene,’" said Dr. Ian Gemmill, the medical officer of health for the Kingston Area Health Unit.

The locals sound increasingly frustrated with CFIA. Until there is a clear policy on when to go public, expect more failures and frustration in the future.

Asked for the listeria test results leading up to the outbreak, the Maple Leaf spokesthingy said last week that, in the spirit of open and transparent co-operation and a genuine desire to improve the safety of refrigerated, ready-to-eat foods, the company would not release them publicly.
 

More listeria revelations: CFIA waited (at least) 5 days to issue advisory, policy on going public seems to suck

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Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper reported Saturday that health officials in Ontario ordered hospitals and nursing homes to stop serving Maple Leaf meats five days before the public was told about a deadly source of food poisoning that has so far claimed 19 lives and left another 60 people seriously ill across Canada.

The CFIA launched its investigation on Aug. 6, after officials at the Ontario Ministry of Health informed it that there was an outbreak of listeriosis in the province. Many local health officials were already grappling with a spike in listeriosis cases, but they did not become aware that the outbreak spanned several provinces until July 30, when they received a directive from the ministry, telling them to urgently report any new cases.

On Aug. 14, health officials in Ontario learned during a telephone conference call with the CFIA that the agency had some test results revealing that Maple Leaf deli meats contained the foodborne bacteria known as Listeria monocytogenes.

The CFIA waited until it had the DNA fingerprint evidence establishing a definitive link before it went public – on Aug. 19, 2008.

CFIA spokesman Garfield Balsom said,

“We had lab results indicating that there was positive listeria in a product and we would issue our normal recall based on that.”

So epidemiology doesn’t count? If CFIA really does not issue public advisories unless it has a positive result, that would explain the low number outbreaks linked to fresh fruits in vegetables in Canada. Who knows how many sick people there are, and how many illnesses and deaths could have been prevented in the current listeriosis outbreak.

A positive listeria sample would have triggered an immediate recall in the U.S. So what is the CFIA policy on going public – on issuing advisories that specific foods may pose an imminent danger to the health of Canadians. CFIA won’t say what their policy is, at least not publicly, but a policy that maligns epidemiology and relies excessively on positive test results – especially when those samples appear to be delivered by stagecoach – is restrictive and reckless.

As past of that accountability, I told the Toronto Star on Thursday that Canada does not need an inquiry and does not need more inspectors, rather,

"People need to do their jobs. The CFIA is accountable to Parliament through the minister of agriculture, so either the minister, or the Prime Minister’s Office, should call the head of CFIA on the carpet and say, `You’ve had this internal report since 2005. Issue some clear guidelines on how to communicate during an outbreak of food-borne illness. Give clear instructions to inspectors and the industry on what is expected to ensure a safe food supply … If you can’t do that, I will find someone else who can – and not some political appointment, someone with a food safety background who will do what is necessary to protect the safety of the Canadian food supply and bolster the Canadian brand in international circles.’"

Such straight talk, especially when it comes to informing the public about health risks, is largely missing in Canada, experts agree.

So while the politicians and unionists pontificate, a columnist at the University of Calgary student paper got the most rightest:

"Canadians have entrusted one single agency, the CFIA, to protect the entire Canadian food supply– we have placed all food security in one basket.

"If the CFIA did not exist, perhaps Canadians would be better off. … The current food inspection system has failed Canadians. Maybe it is time for a change."

As an aside, a columnist with the Ottawa Citizen who fancies himself as some sort of risk guru wrote Saturday that,

“Another clue lies in the number of listeriosis deaths in past years. According to Statistics Canada, there were five in 2000. In 2001, four. In 2002, seven. In 2003, three. In 2004, one. (Data for subsequent years were unavailable.) …

“The Globe also noted the Canadian regulatory standard is weaker than that of the United States, which allows no listeria content at all in ready-to-eat foods. But the Globe did not report that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, roughly 2,500 Americans become seriously ill with listeriosis each year and 500 die.

“Thus the listeriosis fatality rate is far smaller in Canada than the U.S. That, too, does not suggest a crisis.”

The columnist is comparing actual listeria cases in Canada with estimated cases in the U.S. And why no alarm that the most recent numbers in Canada are from 2004?