Months before the tainted meat from the Maple Leaf Plant in the Toronto area began claiming lives, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency adopted a new policy that meat inspectors now say removed clear language that required companies to report any positive listeria tests directly to inspectors.
CFIA inspectors have told the CBC and the Toronto Star that on April 1, they essentially became auditors of the companies' paperwork, which is part of the compliance verification system. CVS details the measures the country's 198 meat processing plants must adopt to ensure they're operating safely.
"Prior to April 1,
would have had to have been, not only brought to the inspector's attention, but the inspector would have been involved in overseeing the cleanup," said Bob Kingston, head of the union representing CFIA inspectors.
"The CFIA would have been doing their own testing to validate the success of the cleanup. But after April 1, with the changes they brought in, none of that happened. They weren't required to bring their cleanup activities to the inspector's attention, they wouldn't have been required to bring a failed cleanup attempt to the inspector's attention, or repeated positives."
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/10/05/listeria-inspections.html
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