Union leaders call on new management to clean house at XL Foods

The federal government is defending its food inspectors in the wake of a CTV News investigation that found major problems at XL Foods plants, while union leaders say problems will persist until company management is overhauled.

CTV News reported Wednesday that XL Foods was repeatedly cited for deficient food-safety standards by U.S. inspectors, long before an E. coli outbreak at the company’s Brooks, Alta., meat-processing plant prompted the largest beef recall in Canadian history.

Documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed that XL Foods plants have been shut out of the U.S. market numerous times since 2001.

XL Foods’ owners, Brian and Lee Nilsson, were repeatedly forced to clean up their facilities after audits by the USDA found numerous sanitation and food-safety issues.

Problems cited by the U.S. inspectors included improperly washed animal carcasses, meat hooks still dirty from the previous day, as well as blood and “other liquids” dripping onto edible meat pieces.

Doug O'Halloran of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents workers at the XL Foods’ plant in Brooks, said the union was not aware of the extent of problems plaguing the company.

But he said he’s not surprised. “The food-safety system is broken and it needs to be fixed,” O’Halloran said.

O’Halloran and other union leaders called on XL Foods’ new managers, JBS USA, a subsidiary of Brazil-based JBS S.A., to clean house Thursday, after the company announced it was taking over.

O’Halloran blamed XL Foods’ troubles on poor management and the weaknesses of Canada’s food-inspection system.

“Black hats who are the top management people in the plant literally tell the food inspectors: ‘Look, you’re nobody. We run the plant,’” he said.

But Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz’s office took issue with CTV’s report, which noted that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency doesn’t inspect overall food plant conditions. The CFIA issued a statement Thursday saying it does monitor the overall state of facilities, but only at critical junctures.

“Yes, we do need to take a look at how we do inspections because having 46 inspectors looking at carcasses is probably something that could be changed,” the agency’s director of meat programs, Richard Arsenault, told CTV News. “And if we could use more of those inspectors to take a look at those quality-control aspects, I think we could get far better results than we do right now.”

The head of CFIA food inspectors’ union, Bob Kingston, said the task of ensuring that meat plants are clean and sanitary ends up falling to the plant employees, “so they self-regulate.”

Meanwhile, opposition parties in Ottawa are calling for an independent investigation into the XL Foods fiasco.

So far, the Conservative government has refused to hold an inquiry or let commons committee hold hearings on the issue.

With a report from CTV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife