A federal investigation has found flaws in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s efforts to detect and prevent food-poisoning outbreaks, and specifically related to widespread Listeria illnesses among consumers of Silk company drinks made for Danone dairy company.
Inspector-General Scott Rattray said the agency has failed to meet its inspection targets and missed food-safety issues at 40 per cent of the 54 food-processing facilities his team checked.
Three of the sites investigated, or five per cent, “were found to have critical food safety issues that required an immediate response by CFIA inspection staff to protect public health,” Rattray’s report said.
The CFIA then suspended those licences, but did not post the suspensions on its website as it has done with other suspensions resulting from its own inspections. The Globe and Mail said the identities of those companies remains a CFIA secret.
Rattray found fault with the algorithm formula the CFIA uses to determine which facilities will be tested and how often. Significantly missing is consumer complaints about flawed products.
When Mark Holland was federal health minister last year he called for Rattray’s probe after three deaths and dozens of illnesses were linked to Listeria in Silk milk-sustitute products made for Danone at a contracted facility in Pickering.
Rattray’s team found that 26 of the 54 facilities it checked had never been visited by the CFIA, even though “the agency’s program direction requires that all domestic establishments be subject to an annual inspection.”
Nothing about CFIA incompetence surprises me.
