Evidence of more Conservative negligence on Listeriosis

Disgraceful and shocking:

Four months before the Maple Leaf outbreak started claiming lives, Canada’s food safety agency quietly dropped its rule requiring meat-processing companies to alert the agency about listeria-tainted meat, a Toronto Star/CBC investigation has found…Before April 1, if a company preparing meat for sale to the public had a positive test showing listeria it “would have had to have been, not only brought to the (federal) inspector’s attention, but the inspector would have been involved in overseeing the cleanup,” says Bob Kingston, head of the union that represents Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) inspectors…The inspection agency confirmed to the Star/CBC that there is currently no onus on companies to alert inspectors about positive bacterial results. The change came as part of a federal decision to allow companies to write their own food safety plans, with federal approval.

As a result of this Harper-Conservative initiated deregulation and loosening of the rules, due to his ideological opposition to anything remotely to do with the federal government having any oversight, we’ve probably had far more deaths (now up to 20) then might have been the case, had the original rules been in place requiring a company to report any instances of listeria-affected meat to the federal authorities.

Again, the parallels to the tainted water tragedy of Walkerton and the attitudes and policies of the provincial Conservative government of Mike Harris toward government oversight is very striking. This is yet more evidence that Harper’s Conservative deregulation of health food safety has partly been responsible for this Listeriosis health crisis and tragedy.

(H/T Impolitical)