本文发表在 rolia.net 枫下论坛Rule changed before listeria crisis: Union
TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE
October 06, 2008 05:30
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Four months before the Maple Leaf outbreak started claiming lives, Canada’s food safety agency quietly dropped its rule requiring meat-processing compan­ies to alert the agency about listeria-tainted meat, a Toronto Star/CBC investigation has found.
Twenty people died as a result of the outbreak last summer and federal meat inspectors and their union say this rule change likely made the country’s listeria outbreak far worse than it had to be.
Before April 1, if a company preparing meat for sale to the public had a positive test showing listeria it “would have had to have been, not only brought to the (federal) inspector’s attention, but the inspector would have been involved in overseeing the cleanup,” says Bob Kingston, head of the union that represents Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) inspectors.
Kingston and four veteran inspectors interviewed for this story fear the rule change, part of the deregulation of Canada’s food safety net, continues to pose a serious threat to public health.
The CFIA confirmed there is currently no onus on companies to alert inspectors about positive bacterial results. The change came as part of a federal decision to allow companies to write their own food safety plans, with federal approval.
“If I walk in as an inspector, the plant doesn’t come up to me and say we had positive tests today,” said Tom Graham, the food safety agency’s national inspection manager. But he says the reporting rule will likely be reinstated as a result of the current federal investigation into the Maple Leaf outbreak.更多精彩文章及讨论，请光临枫下论坛 rolia.net