Recently obtained documents from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)
show that one of Canada’s largest poultry producers failed repeatedly to meet industry standards on safety and regulation.
Documents obtained from the CFIA through an Access to Information request show that the Maple Lodge Farms plant in Brampton violated numerous industry standards last July.
Among the violations were issues of sanitation, pests, animal cruelty and non-compliance.
Maple Lodge Farms is Canada’s largest independent poultry company. It also offers sandwich meat, chicken bacon, hot dogs and halal meats.
Documents show the CFIA inspector found sanitation issues within the IQF room of the plant on July 22. He noted heavy condensation on exhaust pipes passing over products, a dirty scale, fat build up on machines, and a big piece of meat and woodchips on the floor.
Inspection reports also reveal that problems regarding sanitation kept occurring and did not meet Maple Lodge’s Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP).
These sanitation issues also followed several serious violations of regulatory requirements related to pest control. Inspection reports obtained cite CFIA inspectors who found cockroaches in the slaughter and deboning sections of the plant.
The CFIA is a government organization responsible for safeguarding food, animals and plants in order to ensure the health and well-being of Canadians. They verify that meat and poultry products leaving federally inspected establishments or being imported into Canada are safe.
The findings raise serious issues of consistency in poultry safety and regulation in Canada, says food science expert and Guelph University professor Keith Warriner.
He says poultry is the major contributor of food born illnesses and these reports highlight the need for more communication between plant workers and CFIA inspectors.
Warriner says the biggest area of concern with regards to improper sanitation is the risk of multi-drug resistant salmonella.
“When people actually get sick with this type of bacteria, and they go to the hospital to be treated, very little can be done because the bacteria has evolved to be able to fight off the effects of many antibiotics,” Warriner says. “The results can be deadly.”
But CFIA national inspection manager Tom Graham says despite these findings, regulations in Canada are very strong. “Other countries look to Canada as a leader in food regulation and inspection,” he says. “Obviously no system is perfect, but we are pretty up there.”
Graham says that inspections and food safety will improve through a new regulation coming out in 2015 under a new Safe Approved Canadian Act Regulation. He says that the regulation goes further with providing the CFIA the ability to fine companies, like Maple Lodge, who repeatedly break the rules.
But food expert and University of Manitoba professor Rick Holley says he thinks these new regulations won’t do much to improve poultry safety.
He says the main challenge within the government is ensuring that food safety
inspectors are rigorously trained to uniform standards.
“The root of the problem is not the inability of the CFIA to regulate, but rather their inability to get plants to recognize the importance of the changes,” Holley says.
He says a greater sense of consistency needs to exist to prevent miscommunication between workers and inspectors.
Both Warriner and Graham say the size and complexity of operations can lead to omissions.
“They’re working on thousands of birds a minute,” says Warriner.
He says that workers in the plants operate under intense pressure from management to produce and this could be why issues of sanitation sometimes fall through the cracks.
Warriner warns that while some violations are minor, reoccurrences can result in situations like the XL Foods beef recall in 2012-the largest recall of beef in Canadian history due to E. coli tainted meat that caused 18 to become sick. Reports later found that the reason for the recall was in part due to a failure to clean equipment properly.
Maple Lodge Farms representatives were not available for comment and did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails over the past week.
*Attached below is a small pdf of documents relevant to the ATIP assignment including requests to Veterans Canada, CFIA, and correspondences via email. A lot of my correspondences were over the phone as well.
*The last four pages in the pdf are the most relevant information from the 204 page document I received from my ATIP request. It requested the inspection reports by CFIA inspectors produced at Maple Lodge Farms, Lot 2, Concession 6, in Brampton pertaining to the transport holding, and slaughter of poultry from July 1, 2013 to July 22, 2013. Although there were a lot of relevant pages in the document- these four are the ones I focused on in my story. The first discusses non-compliance issues in the IQF room of the plant and lists all violations. The second cites pest control issues over the course of a few days in mid July. The third describes a miscommunication regarding an instance when the product was trying to cross the US border but did not have the right documents. The final page is a write up of the plant not meeting the requirements for the humane treatment of animals.
This information was helpful in analyzing issues facing the plant and their broader implications for poultry regulation and safety.