As the story of the listeria outbreak has unfolded there have been a lot of comparisons to the tainted water scandal in Walkerton. Some of us who live in Ontario have been acutely aware all along that some of the major players in the Mike Harris Progressive Conservative government are now major players in the federal government. And it looks as though that comparison may be depressingly appropriate.
The Globe and Mail is reporting this morning that changes to Canada's food inspection system that were hinted at in a leaked cabinet document were already in place as of Mar. 31st and that those changes affected the Maple Leaf plant that is the source of the contaminated meat. As Greg notes, Harper may actually have been a bit too slow to get that election called.
Impolitical also has more, including the news that while Canadians are dying because of tainted meat, our Minister of Health is in Denver meeting with oil industry executives. I think there's a campaign ad in that one.
Last night I had a little fun at Stephen Harper's expense but the fact is his government isn't all that funny.
Update: See Alison at Creekside as well: SPP : Outsourcing food safety to industry Pt 2.
See also, uh, pogge on July 12.
Or type "food inspection" into our search box, and you'll see interesting stuff from as far back as 2004.
Yeah, that post talks about the Cons moving to the American model. What this morning's Globe article makes clear is that this group can't even do that properly when the American model is sitting in front of their faces as a guide. For all of their posturing, they really are the gang that can't shoot straight.
Well, maybe I'm confused about the timeline, but the G&M report makes this sound like a discovery of last week, whereas your opening link in that earlier post puts the leak -- at least of the doc prepared for Treasury Board ("Food Inspection Disaster Looms") -- earlier.
Or maybe this doesn't matter, but skdadl was sure she'd known this stuff for a time, so the G&M report seemed odd.
I think the reference to last week involves the parliamentary committee meeting that saw the opposition members attempting to question people about a document that the government still refused to show them, even though journalists already had it. It's the same document and the original leak was back around the time of my original post.
I was considering posting something about listeria since a couple of nights ago I got a robocall from Costco to let me know that some pastrami we purchased there had been added to the extended recall by Maple Leaf. The product in question came from the Toronto facility but was not from one of lines where listeria has been confirmed.
Of course the pastrami was eaten long ago but I figure a hat tip to Costco is in order. They could simply have put something on their web site but they actually went the extra mile and searched their database for purchasers of affected product and set up a system to contact them. That's the way customer service *should* work. So good on ya Costco.
I sense there will be some upcoming discussions (with or without our New Dysfunctional Government of Canada) on the safety of the Canadian food supply.
Thank you kindly for the link to Creekside.
I later posted a shorter variation at The Galloping Beaver and someone responding as a "Maple Leaf Foods insider" left a couple of comments there, which included this :
"The fact of the matter is CFIA knew about the out break in early June and only notified MFL on the 14th or 15th of Aug (they had trouble figuring out what the exact common element was)."