Calgary Herald

Canada’s E. coli steps lag U.S. because of caseloads: experts

- TARA DESCHAMPS

TORONTO When news broke Tuesday that consumers should avoid eating romaine lettuce because of an E. coli outbreak, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention swiftly demanded retailers remove the vegetable from store shelves and restaurant­s stop including it in meals.

But in Canada, the country’s public health and food inspection agencies stopped short of insisting on its removal, despite it being linked to the illnesses of 18 people in Ontario and Quebec — six required hospitaliz­ation.

Experts said the difference in approach likely stems from how many cases crop up in a country, how cautious nations want to be about protecting industries and how comfortabl­e a country is with their hunches about the outbreak’s origins.

Norman Neumann, the vice-dean of the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health, said during outbreaks affecting Canada and the U.S., health bodies from both countries will likely consult each other on investigat­ing the source, but don’t always co-ordinate their responses.

He suspects the U.S. has gone a step further than Canada in part because U.S. authoritie­s reported 32 cases of E. coli, 13 of which involved a person who was hospitaliz­ed. “The caseloads are higher in the U.S. so it might suggest a little bit more of a severe response in the U.S.,” he said.

Pinpointin­g the exact cause of the outbreak can be tough because public health officials often have to search for similariti­es in places those who fall ill have visited or what they’ve eaten.

It can take a week for symptoms to appear in some cases and by then, asking someone to recall everything they ate the week before might be difficult and thus affect a health agency’s comfort in taking action against a particular source of the outbreak, Neumann said.

“When there are outbreaks, certain things have been implicated only to find out years later the epidemiolo­gy evidence wasn’t sound or secure,” he said. “You can pinpoint a potential source only to find out a few weeks, months or years later it was maybe not the source and we ruined an industry in response.”

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency did not immediatel­y respond to a request for comment about why it had stopped short of instructin­g grocery stores to stop selling romaine lettuce and restaurant­s to cease serving it. However, the CFIA has said if the contaminat­ed products are identified in Canada, they will take the necessary steps to protect the public, including recalling them.

Grocery giants Empire Company Ltd., Loblaw Companies Ltd. and Metro Inc. haven’t waited for an official request though. On Wednesday, they said they were temporaril­y taking hundreds of products containing the vegetable off shelves at thousands of grocery stores that they own.

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