Deli meat OK for Canadians but off-limits to Americans

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency cut off access to American markets for the Toronto plant at the centre of an ongoing listeriosis investigation connected to tainted deli meats while allowing the company to continue to produce food for Canadians, Canwest News Service has learned.

The Siena Foods Ltd., facility was quietly delisted as an eligible certified plant to export meat to the United States this week in response to recalls in Canada last week of four different deli meats for possible listeria contamination.

One of the meats, Siena branded prosciutto, was a genetic match to two serious cases of listeriosis in Ontario, the province's chief public health officer confirmed last week. The non-fatal cases were also a genetic match to Siena salami, subject to a separate recall in Canada last December.

The Siena products were distributed to primary suppliers in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta and may have been made available to consumers across the country through secondary distributors.

"CFIA requested that we delist the plant," a spokesman for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service said Wednesday.

The delisting of Siena Foods from the USDA's list of eligible plants to export the U.S goes a step further than the response from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for the domestic market.

CFIA has the authority to suspend an operator's licence, effectively shutting down production. Following last week's recalls, the agency opted to allow the plant to keep operating under a stepped-up inspection regime of a plant-wide "hold and test policy." The company then voluntarily decided to stop production on the temporary basis.

The protocol, instituted after the deadly Maple Leaf outbreak in 2008, to increase oversight at any meat plant that is subject to a product recall, permits CFIA to conduct regular product sample tests for listeria contamination and to only release the targeted products to the marketplace if the samples test negative.

In response to the salami recall in December, CFIA activated a limited hold and test policy applied to the sliced salami product. When salami samples continued to test negative, the policy was gradually phased out.

In this period, the prosciutto that was subject to the March 11 recall made it to the market and was sold to consumers after Jan. 11.

CFIA never did identify any tainted prosciutto. Rather, the agency was informed of the problem earlier this month by the Ontario Ministry of Health.

On March 3, provincial health officials gave CFIA a heads-up that there were two cases of listeriosis with the same genetic profile.

On March 10, the ministry informed CFIA that there was a genetic match between the listeriosis cases and the recalled salami and prosciutto still in the marketplace.

The following day, CFIA and Siena announced the prosciutto recall.

A day later, CFIA instituted the plant-wide hold and test policy at Siena's Toronto facility. Later that same night, Siena made the decision to voluntarily cease production at its plant to complete an intensive teardown and sanitation of equipment, the first time a processing meat facility has shut down since Canada was rocked with the Maple Leaf listeriosis outbreak.

Officials at Siena Foods, a major manufacturer of Italian and European Style processed meat products, did not immediately return calls for comment.

CFIA on Wednesday said the plant has not reopened for business. Government inspectors are on site to supervise the sanitation process and a team of CFIA food safety specialists is "conducting an in-depth review of the plant."

In November, CFIA stepped up its presence at the Siena Foods facility and dozens of other large plants after auditors with the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service found inspections were too infrequent to meet U.S. food-safety standards.

The ramped-up inspection cycle of at least one visit for every 12 hours of production was instituted so operators in Canada, including Siena Foods, could continue to export their products to the United States. These plants are also authorized to distribute their products across the country.

In the case of Siena products, U.S. officials sampled five lots of Siena products entering the country between Dec. 1 and March 12, when the border was shut to the company. All tests came back negative for any contamination, including listeria.