I just looked it up.
It's 17 years since the Maple Leaf deaths.
17 years.
And yet we're still reading the same things.
Poor fabrication.
Cleaning not quite what it should be.
Poor hygienic design.
I was in a factory recently and I pointed out an area of fabrication damage. "Oh we've not prioritised fixing there because we've not had any swabs fail in that area."
I can't go into detail here but there was a reason I could detect why swabs might not be effective in picking up Listeria in that area.
I'm still seeing factories that wait for a swab failure to correct the things they know are wrong. They're waiting to sort out fabrication, cleaning, condensation etc. They are waiting till they actually have Listeria in their facility. Let that sink in. They're not acting until they have something which will probably become a resident strain.
Boars Head, pasta recalls and more. And deaths of people who didn't need to die.
More are happening and with whole genome sequencing, even if they've not been linked yet, they might be in the future (even historical cases).
But when are we going to start with accountability on freely available information that "if you don't do this, you WILL have a problem?" It feels like (in the UK at least) the only people who ever get imprisoned are the little guys, the takeaway owners etc. In the US you have to be wilfully dishonest to be put in prison. When will food safety get the same penalties as people safety? Because it is people safety, the people are just not in front of you when they die.
