XL Foods silent on E. coli scare Don Braid
Canada’s Agriculture Minister, Gerry Ritz, came to town Wednesday to say — basically, nothing.
After touring the shut XL Foods plant in Brooks, Ritz repeated what the government has said all along — that our beef is safe, that Canada has more food inspectors than ever, etc.
Ritz was folksier about it Tuesday, in his BattlefordsLloyd minster riding in Saskatchewan. After eating beef for lunch, the Battlefords News-Optimist reports, Ritz told a Rotary Club group: “Is there an epidemic of E. coli outbreaks? Turns out there’s not.
“We’re actually 40 per cent lower than we were three years ago, which is great news, because we’re doing more testing, better testing and industry has stepped up and is doing a much better job.”
As for his luncheon beef, he said, “I don’t know where it came from. I don’t care. I know it’s safe. You have to handle it and
The truth is that whenever the politicians express confidence, more products are soon recalled.
cook it properly.”
Ritz went on to discuss “anomalies” at the XL plant, and said we’ll “work our way out of this.”
Meanwhile, in the real world …
The House of Commons held an emergency debate on the E. coli outbreak on Wednesday night.
In Brooks, hundreds of workers were momentarily buoyed by rumours they might return to work.
Across Alberta, hundreds more beef ranchers fretted too, as they faced more days of constricted markets and plunging reputation for their beef.
Now, you can’t expect the federal agriculture minister to throw those people overboard by exaggerating a problem. But realism is important too, or people just stop believing you.
And the reality is that 1,500 separate products have been recalled. The truth is that whenever the politicians express confidence, more products are soon recalled, and confidence is further damaged.
There’s little doubt that E. coli is less common than it was. In 10 years, the experts assure us, the infection rate has fallen from three cases per 100,000 people to 1.18 cases.
So what happened in Brooks? If the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is so diligent, if the science is more sophisticated, if E. coli is less prevalent, how could all that potentially contaminated beef get out the door?
We’re told it’s complicated, by both Ritz and George Da Pont, the CFIA president who was abruptly thrown to the media horde after the minister quickly left the news conference.
One problem is that the inspectors have “limited authority” to compel information from the company. Actually, that sounds more like a disaster. Right in the middle of this, some information didn’t get to CFIA for several days.
XL Foods, meanwhile, is almost completely silent, although its workers vastly outnumber the inspectors, and they handle the beef.
The owners and officials haven’t given interviews. Media are barred from the plant. Apart from issuing a statement expressing concern for people afflicted with E. coli, as well as outlining corrective measures, there has been very little communication from the company.
Silence is supposed to be a bad strategy in cases like this. You’re supposed to let the light shine in. But the crazy thing is, distance seems to be working for XL Foods.
Without company comments or interviews, or video of the plant, the focus has become the regulators and politicians, not the company.
Maple Leaf Foods in Toronto, faced with dreadful listeriosis outbreak that killed 21 people in 2008, took a very different approach.
President Michael McCain apologized emotionally, both personally and in a TV ad. He recalled all products from the affected Toronto plant, not just those linked to listeriosis. The media were invited into the plant.
For that, he was named Business Newsmaker of the Year. His company recovered quickly.
That’s one way of doing it. In Alberta, it seems, there’s another.