Grimm roast beef recall

FG Deli Group Ltd. is recalling Grimm's Fine Foods brand Home Style Roast Beef because the 

Canadian Food Inspection Agency has detected food-poisoning Listeria monocytogenes in the product.

It has been distributed across the West, from the Yukon and British Columbia to Ontario. The CFIA says distribution might be national.

It is continuing to investigate and says more products might be added to the recall.

Consumers may not know the origin of the beef because some has been sold from deli counters. The CFIA says consumers who are not sure ought to contact the place where they bought roast beef.

The CFIA says no illnesses have been reported.

Potash Corp. aims to maintain cartel

It seems that the $10.9-billion bid that Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan has made for K+S AG of Germany is aimed at maintaining its cartel hold on Saskatchewan's treasure trove of potash.

K+S says the bid is too low and points to more than $2 billion it has already spent to open its Legacy Project potash mine in Saskatchewan next year.

K+S might not participate in the export cartel with Potash Corp, Mosaic and Agrium, but even if it does, it would take a slice of the revenues and profits.

The Canadian cartel has been trying to restrain exports so prices will recover after Russia's Uralkali pulled out of a similar cartel with Belarusian Potash Co. 

Bangladeshi wins World Food Prize

Fazie Hasan Abed of Bangladesh is the winner of this year’s World Food Prize.

He created the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee in 1970, a nonprofit organization credited with helping more than 150 million people out of poverty.

He started it as a temporary relief organization to help the country recover from the 1970 typhoon that killed about 500,000 people and the subsequent war fought in 1971 to win independence from Pakistan.

Egg criminals get leniency

Now that Jack and son Peter DeCoster have been let off with only three-month prison terms for running a disgustingly-contaminated monster egg operation in Iowa, a judge has let an employee off without any prison time.

Tony Wasmund was sentenced this week to four years of probation, but without any restitution or fine for his part in bribing government officials.

Thousands of people were sickened before the government ordered a recall of 550 million eggs. 

Wasmund pleaded guilty in 2012 and provided evidence that helped lead to the convictions of t he DeCosters.

Here in Canada the two largest egg-producing and egg-grading businesses - L.H. Gr ay and Son Ltd. and Burnbrae Farms Ltd. - continue to market sub-standard eggs without being fined by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Too many of the eggs they label as Grade A are, in fact, cracked, dirty and the wrong size. It's all documented in the results of random-sample checking by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

And the Bureau of Competition Policy continues to sit on its hands, even though it has the transcript of a court decision that outlines a price-fixing deal engineered by Burnbrae and even though it knows there are e-mails between Burnbrae and Gray outlining how they will co-operate on pricing and sharing customers.

Burnbrae and Gray deny any wrongdoing and delay and deflect the pursuit of justice by Svante Lind and his Best Choice Eggs business. Lind's lawsuits are now going into the fifth year.

Lind has also accused the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board and its general manager, Harry Pelissero, of conspiring to drive him out of business.

Pelissero fined Lind for underpaying levies based on the volume of Grade A eggs; he said Best Choice had a lower percentage of Grade A eggs than Burnbrae and Gray, but new evidence recently released under an Access-to-Information request, indicates the two actually have the same percentage of Grade A eggs as Lind's business did.

Lawyers for Gray and Burnbrae went to court to try to block release of the CFIA information on the percentage of eggs they bought from farmers qualified for Grade A status.

Sofina recalls chicken

On Monday I reported that the Public Health Agency of Canada announced that 44 Canadians have been sickened by frozen raw chicken products.

I found it curious at the time that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency had not said anything about a recall, even though it was obviously a federally-inspected plant that was involved because there were sick people from the Maritimes to the Prairies, and half were in Ontario.

So finally the CFIA has announced that Sofina Inc. of Toronto is recalling frozen breaded chicken from two supermarket chains that sold it under their brand names.

Some of the unlucky consumers have ended up in hospital. Luckily nobody has died - yet.

Some of the illnesses go back to mid-February.

The recall is chicken burgers sold under Loblaws’ No Name brand and chicken strips and nuggets sold under Sobeys’ Compliments brand.

The two chains are the largest in Canada.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says it is continuing its investigation and that might lead to more recalls.

It says on its website that “food contaminated with Salmonella may not look or smell spoiled but can still make you sick.

“Young children, pregnant women, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems may contract serious and sometimes deadly infections.

“Healthy people may experience short-term symptoms such as fever, headache, vomiting, nausea, abdominal cramps and diarrhea.

“Long-term complications may include severe arthritis.”

Sofina has expanded rapidly in the last 10 years, buying Lilydale Inc., Janes Family Foods, Santa Maria Foods and at one time was joint owner with Sun Capital Partners of Fearmans Pork Inc. of Burlington, which is the biggest hog-packing plant in Ontario and was formerly owned by Canada Packers and Maple Leaf Foods Inc.

Oh, yes, and may I mention that the federal government continues to boast that we have one of the best food inspection systems in the world. They've said it ever since I was the first reporter to use the U.S. Freedom of Information system to expose the sad state of affairs at Canadian meat-packing plants, including the crumbling - literally - old Burns Foods Ltd. plant in Kitchener in the mid-1970s.

JBS buys Cargill pork

JBS, already the largest meat packer in the Americas, has just gotten bigger.

JBS USA is buying Cargill’s pork business for $1.45 billion, they both said in a news release on Canada Day.

The deal includes two Midwest meat processing plants, one in Ottumwa, Iowa, and the other at Beardstown, Ill.

Both plants were acquired by Cargill in 1987, and in 2014 they processed a total of 9.3 million hogs.

Canada's total hog population is about 12 million.

JBS also gets five feed mills, two of them in Missouri, and one each in Arkansas, Iowa and Texas, and four hog farms , two of them in Arkansas and one each in Oklahoma and Texas. 

“This transaction will strengthen our position as a producer and supplier of all major animal proteins around the world, and provide increased opportunities for our producer partners and key customers,” said JBS chief operating officer Martin Dooley.

JBS first entered the U.S. pork market with the acquisition of Swift & Company in 2007 and has steadily improved performance ever since. The company has more than 6,000 team members and the total daily capacity to process more than 50,000 hogs at processing facilities in Marshalltown, Iowa; Worthington, Minn.; and Louisville, Ky.

It is the biggest beef packer in the U.S. and bought the XL Foods Inc. plant in Alberta after it was in trouble after it was involved in the biggest beef recall in Canadian history.

JBS is a Brazilian company.