Yesterday Dr. Randy Huffman (our Chief Food Safety Officer) and I appeared before the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Food Safety to answer their questions about the Listeria contamination at our Bartor Road plant last August that resulted in the death of 21 Canadians, and made many more sick.  My introductory remarks can be found here.

They have a challenging and important job to do – to understand complex microbiology of food borne pathogens like Listeria, to identify gaps in the food safety system, and recommend changes that will support safe food for all Canadians.  We were asked some excellent questions and as the company responsible for one of the worst listeriosis outbreaks in Canadian history, promised to share information and lessons learned to make sure this never happens again.

There were some things we discussed at the meeting yesterday and I want to highlight them here, because they have big implications for understanding what went wrong and improving the Canadian food safety system.

The direct cause of the contamination was Listeria bacteria harboured deep within one of the meat slicers at the plant. What’s more important is why our testing didn’t spot the problem. We conducted over 3,000 environmental tests at this plant annually and monthly product tests. All product tests were negative. We did get environmental positives – the goal of a good food safety program is to find Listeria so it can be eradicated. Our response to each positive was to sanitize the area and then retest – and every time the retest showed the Listeria was gone.  But clearly our program was not good enough.

What we didn’t do – and what we do today – was to back up and look at the big picture, examining the whole pattern of positives over time in search of root causes that might account for them all. We weren’t alone – no Canadian company or the CFIA applied this level of scientific analysis to test results last August. If we had done then what we do now, we probably would have found the hidden contaminated corner of a slicing machine and we might have saved the lives of 21 Canadians. This is a very important lesson learned for other food companies and the government regulators.

There has been some discussion in the past day about whether Maple Leaf should have been more aggressive about urging the CFIA to examine the data.  The answer is that all the test data was available. Monthly product test results were emailed directly to the CFIA from the lab, and environmental results were kept in the lab at the plant where they were continuously available to the CFIA inspectors. We believed at the time that our program was working. Environmental sampling for Listeria was a requirement imposed by Maple Leaf and not the CFIA. As they had no regulation requiring environmental sampling their inspectors were not required to review this data. This has changed under the new Listeria policy that came into effect on April 1, 2009.  

I am not justifying the past – the loss of these 21 lives reflects a big problem in our food safety system and we take primary responsibility. We all need to learn from this.  There is a lesson here to improve food safety in Canada. 

A second or related issue has to do with our view on the role of inspectors.  Some have reported our position to be against inspectors in our plants.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  It won’t make me popular with everybody in the food industry, but Maple Leaf is strongly advocating a higher standard of regulation, with a strong role for government to ensure compliance with those regulations. This means ensuring they have enough resource, including inspectors, to consistently enforce the policy in all facilities in Canada and at the border, and very tough penalties for companies that don’t comply with the rules.  We did, based on our experience and on the advice of experts such as Dr. Huffman, make the suggestion to Parliament that most resources should be directed to environmental testing and monitoring and analysing those test results.  It is scientifically proven to be the most effective at detecting bacteria that cannot be seen, and the best practice used globally.  During the period when our food was causing the deaths of 21 Canadians, we never got one positive test on a product.  And if we had doubled or tripled the amount of product testing we did, we still would likely not have found any Listeria.  It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack in product.  The key is to find where the Listeria it originates in the food plant, and destroy it.

Lastly, in all of the talk yesterday about the need for more and tougher government regulation, I don’t want to have left the impression that we waited for new government regulations to act.  Here is one section from my opening remarks:

Maple Leaf’s established food safety practices, as strong as they were relative to best industry practices and regulatory standards, failed. As a result, we enhanced every element of our program:

1)      We have implemented enhanced sanitization procedures; including complete disassembly and deep sanitization of all slicing equipment, well beyond recommended guidelines.

2)      We have doubled the amount of testing in our facilities, including more rigorous testing on food contact surfaces, which is the best early warning system we can have.

3)      We analyze every single positive sample event, looking for patterns – we look at the bigger picture every time we get a positive sample so that we can investigate root cause of that individual positive sample. These may be patterns on entire lines, or patterns of repeat occurrence, but our technical people study each one.

4)      Our executive staff, technical and operating people review our food safety test results on a conference call daily. Every positive finding is chased down. Dr. Huffman and I both personally participate in these calls, each and every day, with few exceptions.

5)      We now have quarantine procedures in place to hold product for additional testing if we have concerns.

6)      And lastly, we have delivered comprehensive training to our employees across our packaged meat plants on our enhanced food safety protocols and standard operating procedures. Continuous training and awareness building is critical to the effectiveness of our program.

I’m sure Parliamentarians will be hearing many voices on this subject.  We were grateful they gave us the time to express our thoughts about what we have learned and how we think food safety can be improved in Canada.  We owe it to our consumers, and we owe it to those 21 Canadians who died and their families.

Today I will be appearing at the Sub-Committee on Food Safety of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.

I am looking forward to sharing my insights into last year’s tragedy and what we have learned since the listeria outbreak. In preparation for my testimony we have prepared a detailed backgrounder on the events of last August.  

I will also be advocating in support of a stronger role for regulators in raising the standards on food safety for all food processors. We believe it is critical that there be one set of tough Federal standards premised on science-based policy that provides for consistent application and enforcement through inspection both nationally and at our borders. Further information on our position can be found here.

The Food Safety hearings will be broadcast on CPAC (http://www.cpac.ca) and I invite you to tune in and continue the conversation on the blog.

Last night the Standing Committee on Agriculture & Agri-Food Parliamentary Sub-committee on Food Safety, which has been assembled to study the food safety system in Canada and the August 2008 recall, set its initial work schedule.  This is good news. Improving our system of food safety protection is important work for Canadian legislators.

I’m going to be asking to appear early in the hearing process with Randy Huffman, our Chief Food Safety Officer.  All of us at Maple Leaf learned a lot through the tragedy of last year’s Listeria outbreak.  We owe it to the families of those who died and the thousands who were affected to share those lessons in the interests of a higher level of food safety in Canada.

When we appear before the committee, we are going to lay out, chapter and verse, what happened last August.  We also have a number of suggestions we intend to raise about how the industry overall needs to raise its game going forward as well as about the important role government policy and regulation should play.

Along with the Weatherill Investigation, this Parliamentary process offers an opportunity for Canada to jump to the forefront of food safety and I’m extremely supportive of that.