Beef and pork and Listeria--oh my!

In Canada, there have been problems with our meat lately. If we didn’t have enough to worry about with the North America-wide recall of E. coli-tainted ground beef and the subsequent shutting down of the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alberta—a measure which turned out to be temporary, reversed once the plant showed sufficient improvement in sanitary food practices—there has been another recall, this one more localized completely to Canada.

The plant in question is Edmonton’s Capital Packers, and has received several correction notices from Canada’s food inspection agency in the last few years, many of which were not acted upon. The recall this time around is on ham-based sausages, a number of which were found to be infected with Listeria, a potentially deadly bacteria. This is the same bacteria that killed 22 people in 2008 when contaminated deli meats were sold from the Maple Leaf Foods factory in Toronto. The Capital Packers sausages are mainly sold in Western Canada, and the company is taking measures to find out if tainted sausages were in fact released to the public.

It can’t be argued that this is scary stuff, and if there was ever a case for non-processed organic food, these meat recalls are certainly making it. It seems the only way to ensure a quality, healthy product on the plate is to ensure that the meat in question has been tampered with as little as possible on the way to said plate. We all remember the mad cow disease scare of the early 2000s, and the issue at hand was the same: the issue of production.

Believe me: I’m no hippie (I eat meat, don’t I?), but the farm to table mentality makes more and more sense to me. It’s a scary thought that someone is playing with your food before you even get a chance to, and that the person playing with it may not know much more than you with regard to handling it properly. Since becoming a vegetarian is no option, it’s time to tighten restrictions on meat production, and focus on ways that more of us can enjoy a sanitary product. Perhaps the issue is with training, or equipment. In any case, the problems must be pinpointed and corrected. Let’s not forget what’s at steak.