Officials were investigating listeria cases in July
August 22, 2008
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Steve Rennie
THE CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA–Health authorities began to suspect in mid-July that more than coincidence lay behind two people from the same Toronto nursing home who developed a dangerous bacterial infection, officials said Friday.
But a massive recall of packaged meat products was delayed for weeks while samples were tested at a Health Canada lab in Ottawa.
The federal health department notified the City of Toronto on Aug. 5 that the samples taken from the nursing home contained a strain of listeriosis, said Vinita Dubey, Toronto's associate medical officer of health.
The following day, she said the city told the Canadian Food Inspection Agency about the results. The agency and the city then went back to the nursing home – where one of the women had subsequently died of infection – to take more samples.
Robert Clarke of the federal Public Health Authority said Ontario's health ministry was "actively investigating" cases of Listeria back in July, trying to connect the dots between patients.
The health ministry did not immediately return calls on Friday.
But Dubey said the full extent of the outbreak wasn't known last month.
"What we didn't know in July was that these cases were part of a larger Ontario outbreak. That only became known the end of July," she said.
Based on the results of the first round of tests, as well as a notice Maple Leaf Foods sent to its distributors, the city asked long-term care facilities to stop serving certain products on Aug. 14.
Richard Arsenault, who oversees meat inspection for the food inspection agency, said the CFIA met with officials from Health Canada on Aug. 16 and recommended a recall.
The next day, the food inspection agency started the recall process for two ready-to-eat products made by Maple Leaf Foods.
Products from two more production lines were added to the recall on Aug. 19.
A call to Maple Leaf Foods was not returned.
Officials said they have positively identified the bacteria in 18 food samples representing six different types of the meat products.
However, they have yet to determine whether the contaminated meat is responsible for the outbreak.
Arsenault said CFIA inspectors at the Maple Leaf Foods plant in Toronto were not aware of any problems until health officials began linking cases of Listeria.
"The issue with that is that this is a bacteria that's invisible," he said.
"It doesn't take a lot. It's not like you're going to have dripping stuff all over the place. It just happens to get in there despite having a very good system with a whole bunch of checks and balances."
Currently, there are 17 cases in Canada – including the three deaths – with the same strain of listeriosis: 13 in Ontario, two in British Columbia, one in Saskatchewan and one in Quebec.
An additional 16 samples from suspected cases are currently being tested to confirm if they are related to the outbreak, Clarke said.
Twelve of those cases are from Ontario, one is from Alberta, one is from Saskatchewan and two are from British Columbia.
Clarke said the Quebec government is also investigating additional cases of Listeria in that province.
An elderly Hamilton woman was the first fatality to be positively linked to the outbreak.
On Friday, officials said listeriosis associated with the outbreak had been confirmed as the cause of death in two more cases, both elderly women.
One of the women, who lived in a retirement home in St. Catharines, Ont., died in early June, said a spokesman for the Niagara Region Health Authority.
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