Listeria has again been found at a plant owned by Maple Leaf Foods but the Canadian food giant has insisted that there is “no risk to the public”.
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The company, which last summer closed its Bartor Road site following listeria contamination, issued a statement on Saturday (24 January) after it emerged that tests at its Coppola Food plant on Friday had shown the presence of the pathogen.
“The finding of listeria in a food plant may occur daily,” Maple Leaf Foods said in a statement. “The goal of a well-designed programme is to generate those findings, create data patterns for additional investigations and to use the results of these findings on a daily basis to eradicate it at the location in which it was found.
“The greater food safety risk to the Canadian public are those plants which are not finding positive results, largely due to the inexistence or lack of penetration of a properly designed testing programme.”
Maple Leaf said it has implemented a number of new practices at its Cappola plant in a bid to detect and eradicate listeria, following the Bartor Road outbreak last August.
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By GlobalDataLast month, Maple Leaf reached a C$25m (US$20.4m) settlement arising from August’s listeriosis outbreak, which was linked to the deaths of at least 20 people.
The lawsuits were launched on behalf of people who consumed, or purchased for consumption, products that were subject to the recall, which resulted in the recall of 191 Maple Leaf products.
Maple Leaf resumed production at the Bartor Road facility in September.
