Safeguarding Canada's Beef

The massive recall of processed meat products from Calgary's XL Foods plant has been extended to a whole whack of products.  It seems the Canadian Food Inspection Agency might have been a trifle tardy in exercising its authority to isolate and shut down the plant, rather than take the lackadaisical approach that allowed it to continue processing meat and sending out the product across the country and into the U.S.

Where, it seems, American food inspection authorities picked up warnings of E.coli in some samples away back at the end of August, about the same time the CFIA picked up their own warnings.  It has taken that long for the CFIA to fully implement safety precautions to ensure that no more consumers become ill.  There will be hell to pay if anyone who has become infected with the E.coli bacteria becomes seriously ill and dies.

As it is, it appears that a very young child may have suffered some dire consequences, with impacted kidneys.  It's estimated that, apart from people falling ill from contaminated products, it costs the country about $250 million annually in terms of medical costs and lost work time.  Whereas if the country spent $50-million in effective vaccination, the potential of such outbreaks would be significantly reduced.

This is feasible simply because a vaccine is available; a professor of microbiology at University of British Columbia was responsible for creating that vaccine that prevents cattle from shedding the deadly bacteria responsible for this massive meat recall.  "It just breaks my heart, because these people should not be getting sick" Brett Finlay said in an interview.

His research team in fact developed the very vaccine to which he refers, a decade ago.  And while the vaccine represents a successful Canadian piece of research and production persuading the federal and provincial governments to provide millions in loans for the construction of a plant for mass-production of the vaccine, it is still not in universal use.

The hitch appears to be the cost: $6 to treat each head of cattle.  But treated, that E.coli strain, 0157:H7, of no harm to animals but a potential trigger of a range of illnesses in humans, could be arrested from infecting meat products.  Symptoms of E.coli infection in people include headaches, nausea, severe stomach cramps, bloody diarrhea; the development of kidney damage, and ultimately even death.

Fifty percent of all cattle carry this bacterium at some point.  They release the microbe in their feces.  "And you have these cows that are super-shredders, and they just pour out this 0157", says Dr. Finlay.  "You can have a million inspectors (and) you'll never catch it all."  Yet studies have demonstrated that the federally licensed vaccine reduces the bacterium in a cow's digestive tract by 99%.

Bioniche Life Sciences Inc. is the company that has the licensed right to produce the vaccine.  A state-of-the-art production facility is being built in Belleville, Ontario.  That plant, according to its president of food safety, is capable of producing more than adequate vaccine to vaccinate all of the country's cattle. 

He sees the issue as one of persuading the cattle industry that this vaccination is a necessary component of raising healthy cattle meant for human consumption.

According to Dr. Finlay, government should take the initiative along with the cattle industry to share the cost of a universal vaccination program.  The added expense could be passed along to the consumer who would not be averse to paying slightly more for a product that would be reliably safe.  

"It's going to happen again and again and again until they do something about it.  It's just nature in action", he said.