Canada listeria report lays bare food safety flaws

Critics about Maple Leaf´s procedures, whose deli-meats were responsible for the contamination, thought the Listeria problems detected at its Toronto´s plant in 2007 and 2008

The long-awaited review by health executive Sheila Weatherill detailed a catalogue of errors and gaps in the country’s food safety network that all contributed to the deaths of 22 people. She concluded that while Listeria is difficult to detect, “more could have been done to prevent it happening in the first place and…more must be done to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“In all likelihood, none of the individual elements that contributed to the outbreak was sufficient to have caused it alone, so each part of the food safety system must work together as perfectly as possible,” she said quoting one expert adviser. “And what we found is that our food safety system did not work as perfectly as it need to.”
The report, six months in the making, identified a slew of problems with Maple Leaf’s procedures, federal regulations and a slow and disjointed response from the fragmented, understaffed and disorganised food safety bodies.

Recommendations
Weatherill made 57 recommendations to the federal government. Among them were:
* Improved training for food inspectors
* Giving Canada's public health agency the lead role in responding to national food-borne emergencies
* Ordering an external audit to look at whether more inspectors are needed
* Boosting monitoring of some production plants and products based on higher risk.

A copy of the full report can be found via the following link: http://www.listeriosis-listeriose.investigation-enquete.gc.ca/lirs_rpt_e.pdf

Fuente: Food Production Daily
http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Quality-Safety/Canada-listeria-report-lays-bare-food-safety-flaws.
Aporte Leidy Beltrán