Listeriosis warning: policy is no protection

In an editorial of measured anger, The Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) has charged that errors of public health policy in the present government helped produce the "worst epidemic of listeriosis in the world" in Canada.

 

The editorial, which will appear in the CMAJ issue of October 7, 2008, was given early release this week through the CMAJ website.

 

The current listeriosis epidemic, begun with food processed at a Maple Leaf Foods facility in Toronto, has killed at least 16 Canadians. The listeriosis death toll is already double the infamous E. coli outbreak in Walkerton, Ontario. "And since Listeria monocytogenes can remain latent for 2 to 3 months, the deaths, illnesses and other effects such as spontaneous abortions may not be over yet," the journal warns.

 

Furthermore, the CMAJ editorialists say that the inquiry announced earlier this month by federal government "will be inferior to every epidemic inquiry in recent Canadian history" because of limitations put on its scope and powers of investigation.

 

As the government shifts meat inspection responsibilities from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency towards "self-inspection mechanisms" that allow industry to manage food safety themselves, they have reversed much of the progress made on "governing for public health," says the CMAJ.

 

The editorial points out that the safeguards and changes in institutions put in place following the SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic of 2002-2003, Walkerton water supply contamination of 2000, and Royal Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada of 1997 are being dismantled.

 

"Canada is far less prepared now for epidemics than in the past" as a consequence of dismantled or transferred public health responsibilities, the CMAJ says. "Listeriosis pales in comparison" to the consequences of future epidemic threats, and the editorial calls for a "full-scale public inquiry into the major failings of Canada’s food inspection system."

 

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Sources: Canadian Medical Association Journal, October 21, 2008, 179(9)

 

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/rapidpdf/cmaj.081459

Shifting to food industry self-monitoring may be hazardous (CMAJ, PDF format)

 

Listeriosis is the least of it (CMAJ, PDF format)

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/rapidpdf/cmaj.081477