Tougher CFIA Standards Don’t Include Imports

(Canwest News Service – Sarah Schmidt)

Ready-to-eat meats can be imported without new, rigourous CFIA requirements

Importers of ready-to-eat meats can continue to ship their products into Canada without having to disassemble and “aggressively clean” their meat slicers to check for listeria - a directive that Canadian operators now face.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued the advisory earlier this month to federally registered ready-to-eat meat plants operating in Canada after Maple Leaf Foods announced listeria building up “deep inside” two slicing machines at its Toronto plant was the most likely source of the deadly listeriosis outbreak.

The company made the discovery after completely disassembling the machines, where the bacteria had accumulated and eluded Maple Leaf’s “rigorous sanitization procedures.”

Importers of ready-to-eat meats are not required to follow the same protocol to maintain access to the Canadian market, a spokeswoman for the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed Thursday.

The CFIA is not “requiring us to do anything additional. We have controls in place and we verify them. They are not requiring anything of us.”

The spokeswoman also confirmed that the sanitation protocols in the United States are not prescriptive and do not require the complete disassembly of meat slicers. Formax Inc., the manufacturer of the meat slicers at the Maple Leaf plant, also does not prescribe complete disassembly of the equipment on a periodic or annual basis.

In Canada, federally registered plants are required, at their next scheduled line sanitation, to disassemble and perform a “systematic and thorough aggressive cleaning and sanitation procedure” of all meat slicing equipment, including all internal parts, “to address this potential risk factor,” according to CFIA’s advisory, issued September 5.

Operators in Canada must also review their sanitation procedures of meat slicers with CFIA inspectors to ensure that the “internal working parts are being suitably cleaned and disinfected on an ongoing basis.”

Maple Leaf Foods on Thursday confirmed that it had never completely disassembled the meat slicers since they became operational nearly 11 years ago; spokeswoman Linda Smith said the company followed the manufacturer’s recommendations, which included the daily removal of some parts to get at and sanitize all surfaces that come into contact with food.

As a result of the outbreak, Maple Leaf will now completely disassemble its 84 meat slicers at the plant on the weekly basis “for the foreseeable future,” said Smith.

According to Statistics Canada, more than 86 million kilograms of processed meats, worth about $403 million, were imported into Canada last year.

The United States is the single largest importer. Since the beginning of 2008, about 38.3 million kilograms of meats – worth US $173.6 million – have been imported, according to the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

It’s not uncommon for foreign governments to slap restrictions on countries that import foods out of safety concerns. In the past week, for example, the CFIA has directed border officials to refer any shipments of baby formula or yogurt from China to its Import Service Unit for further inspection and testing amid a growing scandal in China involving contaminated formula.

The U.S. government temporarily ramped up testing last November for listeria and salmonella in ready-to-eat deli meat imports from Canada after an annual audit by its Food Safety and Inspection Service showed multiple violations of food-safety protocols at Canadian meat plants.

The increased product exams – at the rate of about double that of the past year – was in place for a few weeks before the U.S. agency returned to normal levels of testing.

In Canada, the CFIA advisory only applies to federally registered meat plants in the country, and cannot be enforced at provincially registered facilities, which outnumber federal ones.

The CFIA declined requests to explain its decision to limit its advisory to disassemble meat slicers to domestic plants.