Maple Leaf Foods Listeria Outbreak

In Aug 2012, a Toronto Maple Leaf Foods (“the Company”) plant was confirmed as being involved in the outbreak of the food-borne illness, caused by the bacterium Listeria. A day later, Maple Leaf upgraded a precautionary recall of 23 of its products in previous week to all 220 packaged meats from the plant at the Bartor’s Road, which has been shut down. The company has estimated the recall will directly cost it at least $20 million, with further costs expected due to lost sales and reputation damage. Since the outbreak of Listeria bacterium, 22 people died and there were 57 total confirmed cases of illness caused by Listeria 1. Although the Listeria outbreak was described by the Company’s CEO as “the

Thanks for the informative post. Your mention of cluster investigations made me think about the recent E Coli outbreak experienced in several states related to food served at the Chipotle Mexican Grill. According to the CDC (2015), there were two outbreaks, infecting a total of 66 people with a strain of E Coli across 14 states. The CDC, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, and state and local public health officials in several states began investigations by interviewing ill people to obtain information about foods they might have eaten and other exposures in the week before their illness started. The Oregon and Washington Departments of Health conducted epidemiologic studies in the initial outbreak that compared foods eaten by ill and well people at Chipotle Mexican Grill. After testing of multiple food items collected

Health and the CDC linked bacteria from Topps' frozen ground beef patties to an outbreak of the

SOUTH YORKSHIRE, May 12, 2016 – The Underwood Meat Corporation is voluntarily recalling 10,500 pounds of pork products that may be contaminated with E. coli bacteria. Underwood Meat Corp. stated that the recall is out of an abundance of caution. There have been no reports of consumer falling sick nor were there sings of the products being contaminated. The problem occurred on May 10, 2016, when the FSA’s surveillance program traced a positive result for E. Coli back to Underwood Meat corporation. The regarding products were send to the following stores: Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Lidl. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) announced today.

foodborne illness and large recalls of contaminated meat. For example in 2002, ConAgra was forced to recall 19 million pounds of beef that had been produced at its Colorado processing facility after their meat had become contaminated with E. coli. The result was “35 individuals were sickened and one individual died.” By the time the meat had been recalled about 80% of it had already been consumed.

The bacterium is largely spread in nature and be present in soil, water and contaminated foods. Animals and fresh produce are prone to contamination in foul environment. How this affected Enterprise Food, is the factory workers were in the presence of the bacterium while they were producing the perishable, and from the above research listeriosis shows that it has the ability to affect the working environment through oxygen ‘inhaling’, and through quality checks when the quality in spectator test the product as for quality protocol by tasting the perishable meat. Infection of the bacterium can cause in mild to severe febrile gastroenteritis and in pregnant women, the bacterium can cause pregnancy loss. (National institute for communicable

Listeria monocytogenes is a dangerous bacterium capable of contaminating food products if not successfully controlled. The foodborne illness listeriosis is often the result of consuming foods tainted with this pathogen. As a result, Canada has developed a Policy on Listeria monocytogenes in Ready-to-Eat foods to help protect Canadians from this bacterium and its detrimental effects. This paper will thoroughly examine the origin of this federal policy, the influences on its creation and its amendments. The stakeholders influencing the construction as well as the impacts this policy has had in Canada will also be considered, leaving a well-rounded understanding on this fundamental policy.

This review of literature provides information about the Canadian food industry provides safe farming practices, harvest handling, and the duration of product transportation to eradicate any foodborne illness. The Canadian Federal Inspection Agency (CFIA) provides a strong code of regulations from the in which all farming practices and importers and exporters must follow. However, there is always a risk of infectious pathogenic bacteria if the consumer is unaware of high quality handling methods to use. Most importantly, the risk of foodborne illness is less with locally produced food than imported foods.

There have been several food recalls related to Listeria monocytogenes in the United States this year. As CNN explains, Listeria is a bacterium that can be found in raw meats, produce, and unpasteurized dairy products. It is resistant to moderate heat and cold, so it can survive in a refrigerator. The symptoms of listeriosis are similar to those of influenza, but the illness can be dangerous to infants, the elderly, pregnant women, and anyone with a compromised immune system.

According to Aamer Madhani a writer for USA TODAY (2015), the crisis began in August of 2015, when 64 customers in Minnesota got salmonella poisoning, a potentially life threatening form of food poisoning. Also in August, Madhani reported that a Chipotle restaurant in California was temporarily closed after 80 customers and 18 employees had symptoms of Norovirus. The sickening continued in October and November of 2015, Madhani reported that customers in over ten states have become ill from E. coli, another extreme and life threatening form of food poisoning. Overall, according to Susan Berfield, a writer for the Bloomberg Report (2015), a total of 500 people all over the country became sick from eating at Chipotle. It was also reported by Berfield (2015) that there were three pathogens, salmonella, norovirus, and E. coli, that caused the five separate outbreaks around the country. Of the 500 customers, over 70 of them received the same strain of E. coli; however, of those 70 people, 22 required medical attention and hospitalization. In the Bloomberg Report (2015), Doug Powell, a food-safety professor made a statement that said, “they were paying attention to all that stuff (healthy, organic ingredients), but they weren’t paying attention to microbial safety.” Unfortunately, this is what many believe led to the three strings of outbreaks, because Chipotle focused more on the quality and neglected food safety

The Fraser Health Authority conducted 3 inspections of your Good Foods Restaurant facility, at intervals of March 19, July 23, and October 16. During the inspection of October 16, 2016 our investigator continued to found significant violations of British Columbia’s Public Health regulation for food premises, under Division 3 and Division 6. You can find the Act and the referenced regulation division through links in British Columbia’s law website at www.bclaws.ca. These violations will be the cause of illnesses and the spread of illness causing microorganisms.

In 1981, 8 outbreaks were reported which primarily involved rice and shellfish. Other outbreaks go unreported or are misdiagnosed because of symptomatic similarities to Staphylococcus aureus intoxication (B. cereus vomiting-type) or C. perfringens food poisoning (B. cereus diarrheal

Food processors, retailers and food service operators must also show that they source from vendors who meet the approved definitions of Ontario food products

Recent arguments have described the use of genetically modified feed for the animals they buy and unnatural ingredients in their beverages. The restaurant chain had a disease outbreak last year. As of January 27, 2016, the CDC reports a total of 55 people infected with the outbreak strain of STEC (Shiga toxin producing E. coli) O26 from a total of 11 states. This could concern a customer whether the company is focusing on the most important

Americans have gone from eating roughly 234lbs of meat per capita in 980 to 273lbs in 2007 (qtd. Pluhar 2). In the past meat was a side on a dinner plate but as years have gone on, meat has become the main event. The increased demand for meat, as stated above, has caused issues with both the environment and animal welfare. But the demand has also caused issues with the welfare of humans. One of the issues humans face are the pathogens that are released from stressed, immune-compromised, containment-filled food animals (qtd. Pluhar 2). Because of the increased exposure, humans are more susceptible to diseases (qtd. Pluhar 2). Food borne illnesses are a big issue and since the commercialization of farming, the number of cases of food borne illnesses has grown. 76 million people are hit by fouled food annually in the United States. 5,000 of those people die (qtd. Pluhar 2). This is due to the slack regulations in the industry. Studies have been done in low CAFOs regions versus regions with a high concentration of CAFOs. One study showed that people were more likely to develop eczema in the regions with a high concentration of CAFOs. It could be argued that the increase in illnesses and the increase in factory farms could be completely unrelated. But research should be done to provide conclusive evidence showing the relationship between the two. People should be able to eat their food without worrying about