Minister defends delay in disclosure

Agriculture minister insists feds acted ‘responsibly’ as even more products pulled

OTTAWA— The Conservative government is defending its decision to keep the public in the dark while investigating an E. coli scare at an Alberta slaughterhouse before rolling out the biggest recall of meat in Canadian history.

“We acted as quickly and as responsibly as we possibly could as information became available,” Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said Thursday when asked why it took so long for Canadians to be told there was E. coli on beef products originating from the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alta.

As the number of items the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is urging consumers to throw out or return to retailers keeps growing, the opposition continues to ramp up its rhetoric over Ritz.

“He withheld what he knew from Canadians and he is refusing to be accountable. He is the one who put the self-regulating system in place. He is responsible,” New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair said during question period in the Commons on Thursday.

“Why is this minister of agriculture and agri-food still in his position? He must resign,” Mulcair said.

The federal food safety watchdog has said that XL Foods was “not doing the proper trend analysis” that would have meant taking a closer look at higher-than-normal levels of the bacteria E. coli O157:H7.

The Public Health Agency of Canada said there are four confirmed cases of people getting sick from E. coli after eating meat from the XL Foods plant.

George Da Pont, president of the food inspection agency, also suggested XL Foods delayed the investigation by being too slow to hand over key information that kept inspectors from understanding the scope of the problem earlier.

But a timeline of events the CFIA posted on its website says the agency did not formally request that information until Sept. 7 — three days after both the agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture discovered the harmful bacteria on beef products originating from the Brooks facility — and told XL Foods to deliver the information “as soon as possible but no later than Sept. 10.”

The timeline says XL Foods provided the information “in a series of submissions” on Sept. 10 and 11, meaning the CFIA had all the requested information a day after its own deadline.

The food inspection agency also stopped allowing XL Foods to export its beef to the U.S. on Sept. 13, but did not inform Canadians about the health hazard or the voluntary recalls until after it had completed an in-depth investigation at the plant on Sept. 16.

On Thursday, XL Foods issued its first statement since the CFIA suspended its operating licence a week earlier.

“We believed XL Foods was a leader in the beef processing industry with our food safety protocols, but we have now learned it was not enough. We take full responsibility for our plant operations and the food it produces, which is consumed by Canadians from coast to coast. We are doing everything we can to take the lead in an enhanced comprehensive food safety program for our plant,” said the statement.

The company has not returned multiple voicemail messages and emails requesting comment.

It is a sharp contrast to the way Maple Leaf Foods handled the contamination of deli meats with Listeria monocytogenes at a Toronto plant in 2008, which killed 23 Canadians and sickened hundreds more.

At that time, Maple Leaf chief executive Michael McCain personally appeared at news conferences to take responsibility for the deadly outbreak, give updates and answer questions. With files from John Spears