Our Journey to Food Safety Leadership | Our Journey to Food Safety Leadership

Sometimes product recalls in North America relate to contaminated ingredients, such as tomatoes, spinach and peanut butter, that have been used in the manufacture of food products.  While most recalls are precautionary and not necessarily linked to human illness, it is important that  appropriate action be taken to mitigate any possible risk of exposure.  To protect public health, it is our responsibility to investigate when we are made aware of these events to determine whether we source ingredients from the same supplier and take swift action if we do.  To date this year there have been over 75 product recalls and alerts in Canada.

Typically, we are notified of a product recall from several  publicly available sources.   In Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) sends out alerts and recall notices. Individuals can subscribe to receive email alerts directly from the CFIA’s website at http://www.inspection.gc.ca/.  In the U.S.,  recall announcements are posted by  the  USDA-FSIS for meat  products and the FDA for non-meat  products. 

In the case of the recent recall related to pistachio nuts contaminated with Salmonella, we received the notice from Foodtrack  an international notification system we subscribe to.

Upon obtaining an alert, our  Food Safety team follows established food safety protocols to verify whether any products we produce may be affected  by the ingredients in question.  The first step is to track any food products that may contain the ingredient and then identify the supplier  to confirm whether the source is related to the recall notice.  In  last week’s pistachio nut recall, we were able to quickly establish that Maple Leaf did not source ingredients from the same source and as a result, our products are not affected.

As  new and better testing methods are developed, and as companies and government regulators look more diligently for potential contaminants in the food supply, chances are there will be more food recalls.  Health Canada and the CFIA will continue to introduce new regulatory  programs, such as the recent updates to the Listeria policy in ready to eat meat products, which result in increased testing and  government oversight, which in turn could lead to more recalls .  With regard to greater government testing and oversight,  more recalls is an indication that an important element of Canada’s food safety system is working.   The recall process is an important element of the food safety system that serves to protect public health and  the industry and government must learn from them to build better food safety performance!