Canadian Press (CP) issued a story yesterday about corrective action reports issued by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) 14 months ago, after an inspection at our Bartor Road plant.  

The average reader must be wondering how this plant could have so many issues only a month after re-opening from causing one of the worst food safety crises in Canada.

In the wake of the listeriosis crisis this plant was one of the most scrutinized plants in North America. Before it re-opened it required the approval of both Health Canada and the CFIA, which it received in September. After re-opening it was inspected daily by a team of inspectors from CFIA as well as from Maple Leaf.  As part of these ongoing and rigorous inspections, issues were identified, acknowledged and documented.  It is the documentation from a few of these inspections in October and December that became the subject matter of today’s CP story.

The CFIA and Maple Leaf determined at the time that there was no food safety concern.  What this very detailed inspection process provided was an early indicator of potential issues in the plant that need to be corrected. And we corrected them.  Immediately.

Over the past 12 -14 months- since these inspections were conducted – we have invested over $5 million in upgrades at the Bartor Road plant. This includes repair of floors and wall surfaces, air handling systems, caulking, better separation of raw and cooked areas of the plant, new pallets and new slicing and packaging equipment. We have implemented over 200 new operating procedures.

Most importantly, we have instituted an intensive program to train our staff and instill in them the belief that food safety must be the number one priority.  We continually train every one of our plant employees on our new procedures, which are based on the best food safety practices in North America.

Government inspections and the corrective action plans that result are an essential part of our food safety system. CFIA generates these reports and so does Maple Leaf, through our own inspections across all our plants. We welcome this government scrutiny.  Canadians hold us to a higher standard, as they should.  Our responsibility is to do our absolute best and to respond immediately where inspections reveal areas where we can improve.

It may be over a year since the listeriosis outbreak that resulted in the death of 22 Canadians, but it is still very much fresh in our minds. We made one big commitment and that was our goal to become a global food safety leader. We’ve put that into action over the past year and made many improvements.  We’ve gone well beyond regulatory requirements in our testing to find and control listeria. We’re also implementing  newer rapid-testing  methods and protocols at our Hamilton Ontario plant on a pilot basis. Once th ese  methods are approved by the  Canadian government it will reduce the amount of time it takes to get test results from  about 6 – 8 days down to two days . This will be a big improvement  over the current situation and will enable faster response times for Maple Leaf, and any other food processors who choose to adopt the protocols.

It is widely accepted scientific fact that Listeria is commonly found in food processing environments.  What we have learned over this year is that by aggressively implementing control procedures and new technologies in our plants we can prevent the tragedy of 2008 from ever happening again.

At our Investor Day, which was held last Monday, I laid out  a comprehensive food safety strategy that will take us from where we are today to where we plan to be – a global leader – and what it will take to get there.  We expect that we will invest up to $50 million over the next three years to implement this plan. Have a look a the presentation on our website and let us know if you have any questions or comments.

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.

This tragedy was a turning point in our history. It’s very important that we always remember the impact of what happened on the people affected and their families and friends, and what that meant for us as the company responsible.

We make food to feed thousands of people every day and that places an enormous trust upon us. We thought we had very good food safety practices before this tragedy. We thought we were doing the right thing by going way beyond government requirements of us. Clearly we were not doing enough, and our failure had terrible consequences.  

We have gone to great lengths over the past year to address gaps in our food safety system and progress well down the path of true leadership in this area. We have step changed our food safety program, from testing to sanitation to incorporating new technologies like Ultra High Pressure and antimicrobial ingredients. We have a level of food safety vigilance that is demonstrating excellent results, even in the face of imperfection. It involves people at all levels in the organization each and every day. And we have detailed the further actions required to move from best in Canada to global leadership.

Today we are a significantly stronger company. We have a deeply rooted commitment to excellence in food safety – it is what we must do to honour the lives lost and people affected by the tragedy of last year. It is never easy being a leader…the two subsequent recalls we have had this year in our packaged meats business have proven that. No matter what we do, we will never be perfect; nor is anyone else. But 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.

We are not going to deviate from this commitment to excellence. My greatest hope is that we will be known as the company that remembered history and learned from it, and as a result sets the gold standard in food safety.