Tag Archives: Maple Leaf

Maple Leaf CEO tells Canadian consumers to do more after cold-cuts kill 22

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After the Jack in the Box E. coli O157:H7 outbreak of 1993, the one that placed microbial food safety on American TV dinner plates, the company hired Dave Theno and developed an industry leading food safety program.

A year after Maple Leaf cold-cuts killed 22 and sickened 53 in Canada, the company announced it has launched a new web site and that consumers need to do more.

I’m not making this up.

On Friday, Maple Leaf CEO Michael McCain (right, exactly as shown), on his Journey-tribute band path to food safety leadership, said,

“There’s lots we can and are doing to become a global food safety leader and it’s our job to make food as safe as possible, but there’s also lots that consumers can do to further protect themselves and their families and practice good food safety.

“This week we launched a new Maple Leaf website which is a huge leap forward in reaching consumers. Its taken us over two years in the making and it’s a great site with neat gadgets like meal planning tools, recipes, cooking and shopping tips, and most importantly food safety insights through clicking on ‘food safety at home’ at the top right of the home page. 

“I think this website is one of the coolest food sites out there, it’s interactive, informative and highlights where Maple Leaf is going as a company. We hope you will visit and welcome your feedback!!”

People that write with not one, but two, exclamation marks, are doubly desperate to get attention. It’s like double dick fingers. Dude, since you think it’s such a cool food site, and since you devoted two years of resources to this complete waste of Internet surfing, if I was a shareholder wondering where this company was going, I’d be yelling SELL, SELL, SELL!!!

(note the all CAPS and triple exclamation marks)

Companies like Jack in the Box recovered because they did the right thing – and didn’t blame consumers. Provide meaningful information to consumers, especially those at risk, like pregnant women and older folks. Make your test results public. And try not to write total bullshit like, our new website “is a huge leap forward in reaching consumers,” when you have no evidence to prove such assertions other than wine-soaked dreams at the cottage.
 

Marketing food safety: Maple Lodge Farms deli-meat edition

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Maple Lodge Farms is often confused with Maple Leaf Foods, the latter of the listeria mess in Canada a year ago that killed 22 people.

In an effort to protect their brand, Maple Lodge has taken to marketing food safety. And I’m all for it.

These full-page advertisements are from a couple of Canadian magazines, the Sept. 2009 issue of Today’s Parent (right), and the Oct. 2009 issue of Canadian Living (below, left).

There’s far too many sick people, and far too much bureau-dancing around foodborne illness: The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent — whether it’s live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website — to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.

Those companies that promote food safety culture can market their activities, and then consumers have a way to choose at the check-out aisle, providing feedback to those companies that make food safety a public priority.

Maple Lodge isn’t so much promoting a food safety culture as a technological fix. But at least they’re out there. A case could be made that the tomatoes, lettuce and sprouts pictured in these sandwiches also pose a significant food safety risk. That’s why buyers have to source food from safe sources.
 

$75 million Canadian tax dollars to keep cold-cuts safe

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Canadian Minister of Agriculture and wannabe listeria comedian Gerry-isn’t-my-moustache-awesome Ritz announced today the government will spend $75 million Canadian taxpayer dollars to make sure Maple Leaf Foods products don’t make people barf or kill them.

"The Government of Canada’s highest priority is the safety of Canadians. We are making significant investments to hire more inspectors; update technologies and protocols; and, improve communication so that Canadians have the information they need to protect their families."

The government will:

• hire 166 new food safety staff with 70 focusing on ready-to-eat-meat facilities;

more inspectors with listeria-vision goggles won’t make a difference

• provide 24/7 availability of health risk assessment teams to improve support to food safety investigations;

the half-dozen people in my lab used to do that

• improve coordination among federal and provincial departments and agencies;

more meetings

• improve communications to vulnerable populations before and during a foodborne illness outbreak;

could do that now, have produced nothing

• improve tracking of potential foodborne illness outbreaks through a national surveillance system;

yawn, been saying that for years

• improve detection methods for Listeria monocytogenes and other hazards in food to reduce testing time and enable more rapid response during food safety investigations, as well as expanding the Government’s ability to do additional Listeria testing; and

a few researchers get money for their testing protocols

• initiate a third-party audit to make sure Canada’s food inspection system has the right resources dedicated to the right priorities.

Maybe they could hire the American Institute of Baking, from Manhattan (Kansas) the same third-party auditor geniuses who said Peanut Corporation of America was doing a bang-up job, that is until over 4,000 products were recalled.
 

Maple Leaf listeria vp apologizes for bad comedy routine

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The Toronto Star reports this morning that a Maple Leaf Foods executive has apologized after joking about last year’s listeria outbreak in Canada that killed 22 people.

There are any number of elements that make this story particularly gross and uniquely Canadian.

It all began one-year ago yesterday – or at least that’s what Maple Leaf CEO and spokesthingy Michael McCain would have Canadians believe. McCain and Maple Leaf ran full-page advertisements in newspapers across Canada yesterday, saying oops, sorry about that listeria thing that killed 22 people last fall.

McCain wrote on the company blog,

“It was a year ago on August 23, 2008 that some of our products were linked to the death of 22 Canadians and made many others very ill.”

That’s fantasy. Maple Leaf products were epidemiologically linked to illness and death in Canadians in July. Both the company and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have steadfastly refused to give a full accounting of who knew what when. But that’s not me talking – that’s from the chief medical officer of Ontario.

And then, I guess while Maple Leaf types were being credited for another PR sensitivity win, a video of a Maple Leaf vp surfaces showing him joking about the listeria illnesses and deaths. 

I blogged it yesterday, and within an hour, former B.C. Deputy Minister of Agriculture and current Maple Leaf vp Rory McAlpine (left, exactly as shown) wrote on barfblog.com:

“I want to sincerely apologize on your blog for the joke with which I began my comments at the Conference earlier in August.  These were my personal remarks, and I appreciate in hindsight they were not appropriate given the Listeriosis outbreak and the death and illness it caused.  I didn’t in any way mean to make light of this tragedy and I feel terrible that my early remarks conveyed a callousness that I don’t feel. You have every right to call me on it and I am deeply sorry.   

“I hope my full remarks that day, the questions from the audience and my participation in the panel discussion reflect better on how acutely accountable I and everyone at Maple Leaf feels for what happened and all the actions we are taking to achieve our commitment to food safety leadership.”

That’s some well-sized kahunas. I’ve also said dumb things and had to apologize. But McCain said yesterday, “holding ourselves to a higher standard means we will act more quickly and more assertively when there is a potential food safety concern – even a small one.”

So, once again, before anyone at Maple Leaf gives lectures on how to handle a crisis – which Rory has done, it’s all online – make your listeria data public and put warning labels on your product so pregnant woman, the elderly and others don’t barf from your food.

As I told the Toronto Star,

"It’s nice that he apologized, but it would be better if he’d put warnings labels on products for old people and pregnant women and make (listeria test result) data public."

It’s also sorta gross that no one from the best and brightest conference at Couchiching where Rory laid down his comedian wares said anything about this until yesterday. They all seemed to have a ball (right). How Canadian.

Rory may not remember me but when he was deputy minister of agriculture, I was invited in Dec. 2003 to give a talk at a meeting of all the deputy ministers of agriculture, and I talked about how food safety reality should match rhetoric. Maybe Rory stepped out.

And I note Rory is on the International Advisory Council for the Ontario Agricultural College – or at least he was. When I was at the University of Guelph, the Dean du jour of OAC would annually speak to us lowly faculty about the need to be visionary and how we could use the advice of visionary dudes to be better professors.

So the Dean would spend college money on some sort of international advisory committee which was usually staffed with colleagues and cronies near and dear to the dean.

It’s true: the best and brightest do rise to the top. Kudos to Rory.

Maple Leaf listeria vp sucks as comedian

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The best Canadian comedians move to the U.S. The worst apparently stay and become Minister of Agriculture or a vp at some $5.5 billion a year corporation that discovers food safety after killing 22 people.

First it was Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry-isn’t-my-moustache-awesome Ritz joking that he was dying by a thousand cold cuts.

Now, a Maple Leaf Foods vp is shown on YouTube, yucking it up for Canadian policy wonks in Ontario cottage country on August 8, 2009.

Every year, the witty and urbane of Canada put on their best Berkenstocks and retreat to the Couchiching conference. A barfblog.com fan e-mailed me at the time, and said via a redirected twitter post, Rory McAlpine of Maple Leaf Foods “suggests an approach to food safety that takes in the accountability of the consumer.”

At the time I thought, what an asshole. Are consumers supposed to be deep-frying their deli meats? But I had no further information, no verification, so didn’t bother blogging the story.

The video has surfaced.

I first heard this joke about the Toronto Maple Leafs, listeria and the Leafs inability to win hockey’s coveted Stanley Cup, a futility streak going back to 1967, last year.

I thought it was tasteless and said so at the time.

Guess Rory stayed in Canada, where he still may be considered funny.

So here’s Rory McAlpine, vice-president, Government and Industry Relations, Maple Leaf Foods, and former British Columbia deputy minister of Agriculture, with his rendition of, hey, my own kid got listeria from my products, what’s the big deal?
 

Did Maple Leaf’s listeria hot dogs sicken a dog?

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It’s one thing to sicken and kill humans with food like Maple Leaf cold cuts – just don’t mess with people’s pets.

Carrie Pich of Windsor, Ontario, (right, photo from Windsor Star) is convinced her beloved Tigger — a two-year-old yellow Labrador retriever —  fell ill over the weekend because he ate Maple Leaf hotdogs that might be tainted with bacteria.

"This could have been a human. I mean, (Tigger) is human to us. But it could’ve happened to you. My husband could’ve ate two. He loves hotdogs."

Pich said she bought three packages of hotdogs last week: two packs of Maple Leaf Original Wieners and one pack of Shopsy’s Deli-Fresh.

Both products are among those listed in the recall.

But Pich didn’t know that on the evening of July 31, when she cut up three Maple Leaf Original Wieners to put in Tigger’s supper, and gave him one more as a late-night treat.

On Saturday morning, Pich woke to find Tigger vomiting blood.

Dr. Ameer Ebrahim, the owner and veterinarian at Cabana @ Howard Pet Hospital said he can’t confirm that Tigger suffered from listeriosis, but the dog’s symptoms were "very consistent" with bacterial infection, and he wouldn’t rule out a connection with the recalled wieners eaten by Tigger.

"That’s a very strong coincidence.”
 

Food safety culture more fashion than fact for posers

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On Aug. 23, 2008, Maple Leaf CEO Michael McCain took to the Intertubes to apologize for an expanding outbreak of listeriosis that would eventually kill 22 people. As part of his speech, McCain said that Maple Leaf has “a strong culture of food safety.”

On Aug. 27, 2008, McCain told a press conference,

“As I’ve said before, Maple Leaf Foods is 23,000 people who live in a culture of food safety. We have an unwavering commitment to keep our food safe, and we have excellent systems and processes in place.”

As laid bare in the Weatherill report on the 2008 listeria shit-fest, McCain’s invocation of food safety culture was as credible as the politicians and bureaucrats who lauded the workings of Canada’s food safety surveillance system, when it didn’t actually work at all.

Andre Picard, the long-time health reporter for Toronto’s Globe and Mail, picked up on this theme today when he wrote,

“the root of the listeriosis outbreak in Canada in 2008 was not two dirty meat slicers but rather a culture – in government and private enterprise alike – in which food safety was not a priority but an afterthought.”

Picard says Ms. Weatherill’s most important recommendation – one that has been largely glossed over in media coverage of the report – is for a culture of safety or, as is stated bluntly in the report: “Actions, not words.”

Really, Canada, this is nothing new. There is a long history in developed countries of negligence, followed by remorse, promises to do better and … minimal changes. Didn’t Canada go through all this after E. coli O157:H7 entered the municipal water supply in Walkerton, Ontario in 2000, killing 7 and sickening 2,500 in a town of 5,000?

In 1985, 19 of 55 affected people at a London, Ontario, nursing home died after eating sandwiches infected with E. coli O157:H7.  On Oct. 12, 1985, in response to an inquest, the Ontario government announced a training program for food-handlers in health-care institutions, “stressing cleaning and sanitizing procedures and hygienic practices in food preparation.” That training apparently didn’t include the food safety basic – don’t give unheated cold cuts to vulnerable populations, like old people, ‘cause they may die from listeria.

These days, food safety culture is the buzz. The same recommendation – to embrace and enhance food safety culture —  was embraced by the U.K. Food Standards Agency last week following an inquiry into the death of 5-year-old Mason Jones and the illness of 160 other schoolchildren who consumed E. coli O157:H7 contaminated cold cuts in Wales in 2005.

Sixteen years after E. coli O157:H7 killed four and sickened hundreds who ate hamburgers at the Jack-in-the-Box chain, the challenge remains: how to get people to take food safety seriously? ??????Lots of companies do take food safety seriously and the bulk of Western meals are microbiologically safe. But recent food safety failures have been so extravagant, so insidious and so continual that consumers must feel betrayed.??????

Culture encompasses the shared values, mores, customary practices, inherited traditions, and prevailing habits of communities. The culture of today’s food system (including its farms, food processing facilities, domestic and international distribution channels, retail outlets, restaurants, and domestic kitchens) is saturated with information but short on behavioral-change insights. Creating a culture of food safety requires application of the best science with the best management and communication systems, including compelling, rapid, relevant, reliable and repeated, multi-linguistic and culturally-sensitive messages.

Frank Yiannas, the vice-president of food safety at Wal-Mart writes in his 2008 book, Food Safety Culture: Creating a Behavior-based Food Safety Management System, that an organization’s food safety systems need to be an integral part of its culture.

The other guru of food safety culture, Chris Griffith of the University of Wales, features prominently in the report by Professor Hugh Pennington into the 2005 E.coli outbreak in Wales.

I’ve maintained for 16 years that, despite high-profile outbreaks and unacceptable loss of life, food safety in Canada is, as Weatherill stated, an afterthought.

Forget government. Michael McCain, you want to be a leader, lead, don’t just talk about it by throwing around words like food safety culture because they are suddenly fashionable.

The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants will go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent — whether it’s live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website — to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.

And the best cold-cut companies may stop dancing around and tell pregnant women, old people and other immunocompromised folks, don’t eat this food unless it’s heated.

Weatherill says, action not words.

Canadian listeriosis report released: tough questions unresolved

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Beginning in Aug. 2008, an outbreak of listeriosis linked to Maple Leaf deli meats was identified in Canada; 22 people would eventually die and at least 53 sickened.

In addition to the already available myriad of reports and testimonials comes the 181-page final report of Sheila Weatherill (right, exactly as shown) who was appointed directly by the Canadian Prime Minister.

The Investigation identified four broad categories where improvements need to be made. There must be:

–  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

After in-depth analysis and advice from food safety and public health experts, the Weatherill made 57 recommendations for improvements to Canada’s food safety system. The recommendations address:

–  the safety culture of food processing companies;
–  the design of food processing equipment;
–  government rules and requirements for food safety;
–  the need for food service providers to adopt food safety practices aimed at vulnerable populations; and
–  government’s capacity to manage national foodborne illness emergencies.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Weatherill had a five-person advisory committee of food safety types including Bruce Tompkin, Mansel Griffiths and Michael Doyle. The full report is included below, but is painfully slow to scroll through, so these comments are based on a cursory reading; more details to follow. I did however find that Weatherill recommended precautionary labeling – warning labels – for vulnerable populations like pregnant women and old people. That’s a start.

Who knew what when?
The report presents a timeline of the listeria outbreak, but offers little in the way of analysis. In the past the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has placed import holds on fresh produce based on epidemiological and test results conducted in the U.S. But in the listeria outbreak of 2008 (if that’s what it’s going to be called) somehow, epidemiology and positive test results from an opened package of Maple Leaf deli meat weren’t sufficient to trigger a public health warning; CFIA argued the dead-or-dying person could have contaminated the unopened package of deli-meat, so they waited until the same DNA fingerprint was found in an unopened package, another three days of inaction. So why the different standards of proof for foreign and domestic foods? What exactly is CFIA’s policy on going public? CFIA could just publish something, rather than risk a full public inquiry to get answers; CFIA bureaucrats could just be accountable to the folks that pay their salaries.

The report also talks about the need to educate Canadians about listeria and food safety. I prefer inform to the indoctrination of education, but don’t let government types do it. David Butler-Jones (below, left), Canada’s chief medical officer of health, told Canadians at the height of the listeria outbreak,

“There are the usual things we should always be doing, like washing hands, storing and cooking food properly, washing fruits and vegetables well, and avoiding unpasteurized milk and milk products…”

No idea what this has to do with listeria and ready-to-eat foods.

Also, why long-term care facilities were feeding cold-cuts to a vulnerable population is baffling – unless food safety really isn’t taken seriously by all kinds of groups (gasp).

Finally, contrary to the complete bullshit statements of various politicians and bureaucrats in the early days of the outbreak, the system did not work.

Robert Clarke, the assistant deputy minister of the Public Health Agency of Canada, said Aug. 22, 2008, that the government’s actions in this case were quite rapid and an illustration of success.??????

“I’m glad we got hold of it early and now we’ll take serious steps working with the feds to put it behind us."??????

It was a disaster I’m sure you’d want to put in the past.

The issues raised are not going anywhere. And Maple Leaf, why wait for more government reports? Put warning labels on your products, make listeria test results public, and market your food safety efforts directly to consumers.

listeria.cdn.final.report.jul.09.pdf

Another foodsafetyathome website – as bad as Journey

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If you ran a $5.5-billion-a-year corporation that made a variety of ready-to-eat deli meats, and those products killed 22 people and sickened another 53, causing the company to lose millions and trust in the food safety system to be further undermined, how would you go about rebuilding that trust, that brand?

Maybe make public all the listeria test results the corporation undertakes in the form of a live, continuously updated website; maybe have live video cameras that people could check out on the Internet to see how these delicious deli-meats are made; maybe market these food safety initiatives at retail.

Or blame consumers.

Maple Leaf Foods announced yesterday as part of their continuing Journey to Food Safety Leadership – I wish they were already there, but Don’t Stop Believin’ – they were launching a food safety at home website.

“In keeping with our mandate of becoming a leader in food safety education, we have launched a new website to help consumers understand the important role of food safety at Maple Leaf and in your homes.”

(I have this stupid Journey video on in the background that I’m about to paste below and I can’t tell whether it’s the music or that statement that just made me barf a bit in my mouth.)

If Maple Leaf believes they can be leaders in food safety education, why is there no mention that pregnant women shouldn’t eat Maple Leaf or any other deli meats or other refrigerated ready-to-eat foods?

More data; less Believin’.

And Journey still sucks.
 

Canadian bureaucrats won’t talk, so politicians demand full inquiry into Listeria outbreak; rendition of remorse was a little late

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The Canadian politicians investigating last year’s listeria outbreak that killed 22 were so frustrated by the lack of information from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Public Health Agency of Canada they have demanded a full public inquiry.

The Globe and Mail reports this morning that a report to be released Thursday will conclude that the two-month parliamentary study was unable to gather enough evidence to get to the bottom of the outbreak. The call for a public inquiry represents a rebuke to the government’s own investigation into the issue led by Sheila Weatherill, who will release a report this summer.

The committee report will also call for an overhaul of the Public Health Agency of Canada so that it becomes more of an independent health watchdog. The committee further recommends that inspection reports at food processing plants be released to the public.

And since CFIA and others are stonewalling, what with their “we went public when we had hard scientific proof” and epidemiology-is –for-wusses line, we’ve put together a timeline that should help the investigators in their, uh, investigation.

Chronology of testing events prior to the August 17, 2008 public alert of possible contamination of Maple Leaf Foods’ deli meats by L. monocytogenes

Date Event
May 2008 Initial detection of Listeria spp. in environmental tests by Maple Leaf Foods
June 2008 Initial detection of small increases of reported cases of listeriosis in Ontario by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
July 21, 2008 Acquisition of food samples acquired from Toronto long-term care home for testing
August 4, 2008 Detection of L. monocytogenes in opened packages of deli meat from the home
August 13, 2008 Confirmation of genetic similarities between the L. monocytogenes bacteria found in the deli meats and in ill individuals through DNA fingerprinting
August 16, 2008 Detection of Listeria spp. in an unopened packed of Maple Leaf Foods deli meat

And it took the Public Health Agency of Canada until Aug. 23, 2008, before they made a definitive link and then Michael McCain of Maple Leaf Foods went on his award-winning rendition of remorse.