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Vol. 76/No. 41      November 12, 2012

 
Canada plant shut for
weeks due to tainted beef
 
BY ANNETTE KOURI  
MONTREAL—Lakeside Packers, a beef processing plant owned by XL Foods in Brooks, Alberta, was shut down Sept. 27 after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency linked the facility to several beef products tainted with E. coli, a bacteria that causes illness and can lead to death. Sixteen people became sick across Canada from food infection. In the largest recall in Canadian history, more than 1,800 product lines were affected. The Food Inspection Agency allowed the plant to partially reopen Oct. 29.

Lakeside Packers is the largest beef processing plant in Canada, slaughtering nearly 40 percent of all domestic cattle. The 2,200 production workers are members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401.

“There’s not enough employees for the 4,000 pieces they process every day … and that’s why there’s this problem too,” production worker Wilfred Garcia said at an Oct. 10 union news conference. In 2005 Lakeside processed about 2,500 cattle a day, now it is 4,000.

It took 14 days after E. coli was found in XL beef before the public was alerted and another 12 days before the Food Inspection Agency shut the plant down.
 
 
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