In April of this year the RCMP announced that they had uncovered a bio-terrorist threat involving two Canadian scientists working for the innocuous sounding: Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). The agency itself had been in the news lately due to regulatory failures leading to a number of food poising cases from bacterial outbreaks in
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Cowichan Conversations: Scandalous Government Coverup of ISA Virus In Salmon
Here is another shocking post from marine biologist Alexandra Morton Alexandra Morton-Marine Biologist The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), our global first line of defence against farm animal epidemics, just stacked the odds against stopping ISA virus from spreading in British Columbia. They stripped the lab I am using
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Chrystia Freeland writes about the dangers of increased concentration of wealth – particularly when it bears at best a passing relationship to any worthwhile contribution to society at large. And CBC’s report on Peter Sabourin’s investment fraud highlights the fact that the tax
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jason Fekete reports that the Harper Cons are taking the side of international tax evaders against other G8 leaders trying to implement an effective enforcement system. And CBC reports that the Canada Revenue Agency has repeatedly turned down the opportunity to access information
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Frances Russell weighs in on the Cons’ continued contempt for democracy: The Conservatives under Stephen Harper are running an effective dictatorship. They believe they are quite within their rights to muzzle Parliament, gag civil servants, use taxpayer money for blatant political self-promotion, stand
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the CFIA’s inability to do anything about tainted horse meat exemplifies the problems with weak and under-resourced regulators. For further reading…– Again, Mary Ormsby’s original story is here. – Andrew Nikiforuk’s take on the appointment of oil lobbyist Gerald Protti to set up Alberta’s new regulatory system
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Shut them down
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency won’t give the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alberta — the plant at the centre of the largest beef recall in Canadian history due to E. coli contamination — a firm date on the reinstatement of the company’s license to operate. The agency insists that
Continue readingsomecanuckchick dot com: When is an Agriculture minister ^NOT an Agriculture minister?
Silence is golden. A proverbial saying… With respect to the Harper government, specifically the Agriculture minister and the XL Foods recall, saying nothing is preferable to speaking. For those of you keeping track… It has been 1 week and 1 day since Gerry Ritz, the Minister of Agriculture, updated Canadians
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – No, the aftershocks of an e. coli outbreak which has unfortunately given both Canadians and export markets reason for concern about the safety of some of our major food sources aren’t about to end simply because the Cons are again pretending everything’s fine.
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Harper Conservative’s Were To Ensure Meat Safety After 2008 Maple Leaf Meats Deadly Listeriosis Outbreak!
Richard ‘Hub’ Hughes – Political Blogger The recent E.coli outbreak at the Brooks Alberta XL Meat Plant happened due to cutting back on CFIA Inspectors and relaxing regulations to allow increased efficiencies and corporate profits. Hold it! Tell me this, what safeguards were put into place during the last deadly
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Mostly competent government: Gerry Ritz edition
It occurs to me that I haven’t actually written anything in support of calls for the resignation of Gerry Ritz. Of course he should resign. Four years ago, 22 people died in an outbreak of listeriosis caused by a failure in the food inspection system at Maple Leaf Foods in
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Murray Mandryk and Bruce Johnstone both thoroughly slam Gerry Ritz and the Cons for their food-safety negligence. But Johnstone hints at the larger issue: Ritz, for all his faults, is not the cause of this latest debacle. He’s merely a symptom of
Continue readingCowichan Conversations: Deregulation And Greed Likely Responsible For Tainted Meat Threat
Richard ‘Hub’ Hughes – Political Blogger The Brooks Alberta’s XL’s Meat Processor’s handling of meat processing is likely the product of corporate greed and a compromised Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The diminished CFIA is responsible for protecting the health of consumers. In XL’s case they have flip-flopped around while the
Continue readingFive of Five: The Eat More Alberta Beef Campaign
Alberta’s Agriculture Minister Verlyn Olson makes a pouty face while stocking up on Alberta Beef in a Camrose store. Good thing there was a Sun Media photographer right there to capture the moment for the front page. What serendipity! You can’…
Continue readingFive of Five: The Eat More Alberta Beef Campaign
Alberta’s Agriculture Minister Verlyn Olson makes a pouty face while stocking up on Alberta Beef in a Camrose store. Good thing there was a Sun Media photographer right there to capture the moment for the front page. What serendipity! You can’t pay for that kind of luck. http://www.camrosecanadian.com/2012/09/29/ag-minister-olson-still-buying-beef
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Today in Contaminated Beef: The recall is still growing
Meat recall expanded to 1,500 products over E. coli threat The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Tuesday has now recalled more than 1,500 beef products in Canada from the XL Foods meat processing plant in Brooks, Alta. The expanded recall list now includes cuts of steaks and roasts, stewing beef
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: On E. coli and false economy
It’s the largest recall of beef in Canadian history and it continues to grow. Fortunately there have been no reports of additional illness connected to beef from XL Foods but the economic effects are rippling outward. Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz is insisting that “food safety hasn’t been compromised” but at
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: The system clearly didn’t work properly
When I posted yesterday about XL Foods and contaminated beef, I had to make a quick correction because I realized I had counted the same four people twice. But now there really are eight people who are sick from E. coli. Eight people are sick and several products have been
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Today in Contaminated Beef
Costco steaks linked to four Edmonton E. coli poisonings The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a health alert over some beef steaks sold at the Costco store in northeast Edmonton after four people got sick from eating the meat. … Alberta Health Services linked the strip loin grilling steaks with
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Lesson not learned
Over the last few days, in the course of curating the news for the onpoli.ca project, I had noticed a series of stories about beef products being recalled due to possible E.coli contamination. With each successive story (e.g. this from Sunday) it seemed the recall had widened and the number
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