Upon joining Maple Leaf as Chief Food Safety Officer earlier this year, one of my first priorities was to bring together a team of independent experts to increase our knowledge in the areas of food safety, microbiology and public health.  The Maple Leaf Food Safety Advisory Council is comprised of some impressive food safety experts whose primary mandate is to challenge Maple Leaf’s status quo on our food safety program and keep us abreast of any new research, testing methods and other emerging trends from around the world. 

The following individuals have been appointed to the Food Safety Advisory Council:

 o  Dr. Harvey Anderson, Director, Program in Food Safety, Nutrition and Regulatory Affairs and Professor, Nutritional Science and Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto;

o   Professor Colin Dennis, Chairman, Industry Advisory Group, International Agri-Technology Centre Ltd, and retired Managing Director of the Campden, BRI food research centre in the U.K.;

o   Dr. Mansel Griffiths Director of the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety and Chair of the Masters Program in Food Safety at the University of Guelph;

o   Dr. R. Bruce Tompkin, a microbiologist with more than 45 years in the food processing industry and one of the fathers of HACCP;

o    Mr. John Weisgerber, former Director of Quality for a major North American meat processor with nearly 40 years experience in quality and food safety management.

 We recently established the Council’s key priorities for the first year.  These include performing an ongoing critical review of our food safety strategy that will include recommendations on additions or modifications to advance Maple Leaf’s programs, provide insight on any global emerging food safety risks and guidance on Maple Leaf’s employee training and education programs

With our first meeting behind us, I know this accomplished team will bring a wealth of knowledge and breadth of expertise to Maple Leaf that will support our commitment to becoming a global leader in food safety.

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.

Recently, we made a number of enhancements to our already rigorous food safety standards.  We’ve produced this video report because we feel it’s important for you to see what we’re doing to continuously improve food safety across our plants so you can have confidence in our products.

I look forward to your feedback.