By: Sarah Schmidt, Vancouver Sun

OTTAWA — The Canadian Food Inspection Agency did not conduct required in-depth audits of the Maple Leaf plant in the year leading up to the deadly listeriosis outbreak last summer.

Quarterly audits were supposed to be done until December 2007 at the Toronto meat plant, but the agency confirmed Sunday that government inspectors only conducted one that year, in March, to make sure Maple Leaf was complying with all of the government’s food-safety regulations.

“It tells us they don’t have the horsepower to make the system work. It is solid if carried out the way they say it’s going to be done, but they don’t have the people or horsepower to do it,” said Bob Kingston, president of the union representing meat inspectors.

“And now, you have 21 people dead. You cannot say for sure that you would have found it and picked it up. But let’s face, if you don’t look, you’re definitely not going to pick it up.”

By the time the tainted meat products produced at the Toronto plant were recalled last August, some had already been distributed across the country, resulting in the death of 21 Canadians, most of them elderly people in long-term care facilities or hospitals.

Based on the testimony of officials during the ongoing parliamentary probe into the listeriosis, Malcolm Allen, food safety critic for the New Democratic Party, said he’s not surprised by the revelation that the CFIA didn’t carry out all its required inspection or auditing duties.

“What I find surprising is their insistence that they want to continue what they put on paper, even though they’re not able to accomplish it. When you know that you’re supposed to do something, and you don’t get it accomplished, figure out why before you take this any further,” said Allen.

“I think the CFIA has to take a page out of Michael McCain’s book and be forthright and honest,” added Allen, referring to the president of Maple Leaf, who many agree came across as being candid and direct, following the tragedy.

“If that means more money and more inspectors and more training, then they need to get that done. It’s the least they can do to safeguard our food supply.”

Maple Leaf staff at the mammoth meat processing plant, comprised of about 90,000 square feet (27,432 square metres) of production space that can span more than 10 production lines, also conducted regular tests searching for listeria in the plant environment, including food-contact surfaces. But the CFIA confirmed Sunday it wasn’t aware of the existence of these test results, which showed numerous positive test results for listeria.

At the time, companies such as Maple Leaf were not required to conduct environmental tests and CFIA inspectors were not required to review them; this regulatory requirement was cancelled in 2005.

Maple Leaf has always insisted the paperwork was available for the CFIA to review.

At the time of the outbreak, the CFIA inspector stationed at the Maple Leaf plant was also responsible for six other facilities, including two other meat-processing plants and four cold-storage facilities. All three meat-processing facilities required daily visits, as did one of the cold-storage facilities.

Earlier this month, the CFIA quietly pared down the inspector’s responsibilities by reassigning the six other establishments to other inspectors.

Subsequent to the outbreak, the CFIA_reviewed these test results, and found that the company’s environmental sampling plan had identified positive listeria tests “on a number of occasions” in the months leading up to the outbreak.

“Because this information was not required to be submitted to the CFIA by meat processing facilities prior to the April 1 (2009) implementation of the new listeria directives, there is no baseline trend analysis against which to measure the number of positives at (the Maple Leaf plant) during this time. Now that this information is required to be gathered and submitted to (the) CFIA, trend analysis will begin in order to identify early when food safety risks may be emerging,” the CFIA said in a statement.

© Vancouver Sun