The US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a public health alert over beef products from Canadian processor XL foods on 20 September, 2012, despite first detecting E.coli in samples tested at a US border inspection station on 3 September, 2012.
Consumer group Food & Water Watch said that the delay in informing the public over the potential danger of the meat, which has been distributed to processing facilities in California, Michigan, Nebraska, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin, was unacceptable.
“After knowing for 17 days that they had a potential public health crisis on their hands, the management of USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) finally issued a ‘Public Health Alert’ at 9pm on 20 September, 2012 regarding tainted beef that had crossed the border from Canada,” said Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch’s executive director.
“Stunningly, they have yetto issue a recall on that meat, despite the fact that the Canadian authorities have issued a recall, and that meat is presently in at least eight US states.”
Call to maintain border controls
Hauter said the case highlighted the need to maintain strict border controls between Canada and the US. She called on the government to abandon plans to eliminate border inspection of meat products, as set out under the Beyond the Border initiative, which aims to remove regulatory requirements that might be impeding trade between Canada and the US.
“The pilot project to implement this initiative is still slated to begin on 30 September,” she said. “The current situation dictates that the pilot cannot be allowed to proceed.”
Food & Water Watch and two other non-profit organisations – Consumer Federation of America and National Consumers League – wrote to US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack last week, requesting that he prevent any pilot programme of reduced meat inspection from going ahead, warning that food safety would be compromised.
The letter pointed out that Canada has a higher incidence of food-borne illness than the US, there have been questions raised over Canada’s food inspection system and shipments of Canadian meat have been previously been found to have fecal and toxic chemical contamination and bacterial infection.
It also accused the USDA of a lack of transparency over the proposals, claiming that members of the Safe Food Coalition who attended the BTB meeting session on meat inspection were told by officials that they could not repeat details of the meeting to anyone on the outside.
“Even representatives of meat industry trade associations – who seemed to be very informed about the substance of the proposals that were being discussed even before the breakout session got under way – were taken aback by what amounted to a “gag order” being placed on us,” stated the letter.
