Canada has to make the simplest things mindnumbingly confusing and bureaucratic. Who has four federal elections in seven years?

On April 29, 2011, Six L's of Immokalee, Fla. voluntarily recalled a single lot of grape tomatoes, because they had the potential to be contaminated with salmonella. The contamination was detected through a random sample obtained by the U.S. Department of Agriculture at a distributor in New York. The product is from a farm in Estero, Fla. that has since ceased production of that commodity.

The specific lot was packed on April 11 and was comprised of grape tomatoes that can be identified by Cherry Berry lot code DW-H in either in clam shells or 20 lbs. cardboard containers. The product was distributed to North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, Georgia and Canada, and reached consumers through retail stores and restaurant distribution.

No one was sick, USDA tested and found something, at least someone was awake.

But that recall grew. It grew and it grew and it grew until Canada decided it had to do something (apologies to Bob Munsch).

On May 2, 2011, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency took time off from voting in the latest federal election to proclaim that Mastronardi Produce of Kingsville, (that’s near Leamington, in Ontario in Canada) was voluntarily recalling grape tomatoes because they may contain Salmonella anatum.

Mastronardi Produce is taking this action after they were notified by a supplier about one lot of tomatoes that was later determined to be contaminated with Salmonella anatum. The supplier was Six L Packing Company from Immokalee, Florida.

Was Mastronardi, a well-known greenhouse vegetable grower, repacking grape tomatoes from Florida? No, just redistributing.

That’s what Richard Lee, operations manager of the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, told me this afternoon. He also said Mastronardi was “helping out” CFIA types, but that people are “poorly educated” about the difference between greenhouse and field grown tomatoes, so OGVG put out its own press release today.

“OGVG would like the public to be aware that this product is NOT of Canadian origin and NOT Greenhouse grown. The original supplier of these tomatoes was Six L Packing Company from Immokalee, Florida.”

(People who write in all caps are yelling; why are you yelling at me?)

“Retailers and consumers can continue to feel confident when purchasing Ontario greenhouse tomatoes,” said OGVG General Manager, George Gilvesy. “All Ontario greenhouse tomato, cucumber and pepper growers are required to pass an annual third party food safety audit as part of OGVG’s licensing regulations. This helps to ensure that all greenhouse vegetable growers are following important food safety standards.”

How often is water quality tested? How about pathogen testing? Are growers and packers notified before the auditor shows up? Are those results public? The program we designed 13 years ago for the greenhouse veggie growers had all those elements, along with round-the-clock food safety assistance and at least decent communications with buyers and consumers. But third-party auditors became the preference of the industry – the folks that enabled salmonella in peanut paste, E. coli in produce, salmonella in eggs, and virtually every other outbreak over the past decade.

At some point, people will realize that proclaiming a third-party audit in the absence of any meaningful data is groveling to the lowest common denominator.

Sorta like the way the Liberals and Bloc were annihilated in the federal election yesterday. Some Canadians woke up.
 

My colleague Jim Romahn has started his own blog, Agri 007, and in his latest entry, writes:

There appear to be lots of warnings for egg farmers and grading stations that the enforcers are coming, so few are caught and disciplined.

Take egg quota violations, for example. Egg Farmers of Ontario checks hen numbers when the birds are 23 weeks old. Farmers know when an inspector is coming. If they’re over the limit, they naturally cull their flock to get under the wire. But until then, they could be housing more hens to make more profit.

Take egg grading stations. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency sends advisories that it is coming to check compliance, often a couple of weeks in advance. There may be some merit to advance warning so the company can have its HACCP records ready for inspection, but there is certainly no merit when it comes to checking day-to-day sanitation practices and automated egg grading.

Some retail chains have hired the Guelph Food Technology Centre to conduct audits for them. In these cases, too, there has been advance warning. I am told that signs have gone up in at least one plant to advise staff to practice “zero tolerance” on those days.

The federal and provincial governments have granted egg farmers extraordinary powers over production and pricing, but in return have asked them to provide the public with a steady supply of safe and wholesome eggs. Egg farmers who value supply management and want to retain public trust surely realize that discipline is crucial, especially related to food safety.
The management at Egg Farmers of Ontario is surely aware of the possibility that some members cheat on production limits, so why not have some more surprise inspections? The management is obviously aware now of allegations that cracks have made it into the Grade A table market, posing a risk to food safety, so what has it done?
 

In May, 2010, at least 43 people were lab-confirmed to be sickened with cyclospora and over 200 displayed symptoms of illness after attending the Chef’s Challenge, a fundraiser for the Big Sisters of Sarnia-Lambton in Ontario, Canada.

"It wasn't something we were able to go ahead with this year given the incident that took place," said executive director Kathy Alexander.

Local health types figured the source of the cyclospora was a cool pesto crunch but couldn’t identify the ingredient.
 

The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission is pondering a request from Svente Lind of Sweda Farms Ltd. for a full-scale inquiry into the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board and province’s dominant egg-grading companies.

And in the Superior Court, L.H. Gray and Son Ltd. has filed more than 200 pages of documents as it seeks to squelch whistle-blower Norman Bourdeau who has a treasure trove of electronic documents detailing the company’s activities.

Included are thousands of e-mails among senior staff, some of them revealing that company owner William Gray instructed employees to falsify grading and to hide damning evidence.

The information indicates that L.H. Gray Ltd. systematically altered automatic grading equipment with the result that cracks and dirty eggs were marketed as Grade A.

The court documents indicate that Bourdeau warned that this:
- Cheated consumers who paid Grade A prices for inferior-quality eggs. Bourdreau estimates consumers were over-charged $25 to $30 million per year for a number of years.
- Violated food safety standards through the marketing of cracks and dirty eggs instead of diverting them to processors.

The court documents also indicate that L.H. Gray Ltd. denies all of the allegations of wrong-doing and is suing Bourdeau for damaging the company’s reputation. Bourdeau is countersuing.

Gray’s application for an injunction to muzzle Bourdeau is to be heard in Superior Court here Feb. 22. Until then, the documents filed by the company are open to the public.

Sweda Farms has filed an application in Superior Court in Whitby to have the electronic files Bourdeau copied from L.H. Gray Ltd., and stashed in a safety deposit box, turned over to help it pursue lawsuits against Egg Farmers of Ontario, L.H. Gray and Son Ltd. and Burnbrae Farms Ltd. There’s an estimate that the electronic files contain more than one million documents.

Gray has 40 to 42 per cent of the Ontario market and Burnbrae, controlled by Joe Hudson and his family, has even more. Gray has 30 to 35 per cent of the Canada-wide egg market, some of it through outright and partial ownership of egg-processing plants.

The Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board examined Svente Lind’s egg-grading operations and calculated that he had a higher percentage of cracks and dirty eggs than the provincial average. On that basis, the board claimed it was owed almost $45,000 in levies and that producers were shorted.

Sweda will now argue that the provincial averages are wrong because L.H. Gray Ltd. failed to properly report the grade of its eggs. The inference is that something similar happened at Burnbrae.

Bourdeau also alleges that Harry Pelissero, general manager of the Ontario egg board, colluded with Gray and Burnbrae to the detriment of competitors, such as Sweda, and the marketplace.

Egg board directors are also involved. The documents indicate that board chair Carolynn Griffith was paid for 8.8 per cent more Grade A eggs than her farm actually shipped to L.H. Gray and Son Ltd. Similar gaps “between actual and reported grade” were 6.8 per cent for Roger Pelissero, Harry’s brother who was recently elected a board director, Victor Slobodian, 5.88 per cent, and Murray Delouw, 4.18 per cent.

As examples, the court documents list the discrepancies for 19 producers. It’s not clear whether the producers were aware that they were being paid for more Grade A eggs than qualified.

The documents include e-mails from William Gray indicating that he kept a close watch on grading percentages, instructed staff to achieve certain percentages for Grade As and to hide evidence of the deceit involved.

One exchange between Gray and Scott Brookshaw says “I didn’t want anything in regards to the crack detector documented.”

There is an exchange of e-mails between Gray and Pelissero outlining their intentions to thwart an application for a supplementary import permit for organic eggs. Gray expresses concern that if this permit is granted, it may develop into larger-scale imports.

Pelissero’s role is to find Ontario-produced eggs to fill the permit-applicants’ needs.

This appears to be part of a pattern of collusion to thwart applications for supplementary import permits other than those sought by Gray and Burnbrae. In one case, a request for small eggs is filled with Ontario-produced medium-grade eggs falsely graded as smalls.

Sweda complained that many of the eggs from Burnbrae and Gray, supplied to thwart applications for supplementary import permits, were inferior quality. In response, Pellisero arranged to provide clean plywood to line one of Gray’s trucks and to have Gray take special care to deliver top-quality eggs to Sweda.

The documents indicate that Bourdeau alleged a conflict of interest by Mary Jean McFaul, daughter of Joe Hudson, a senior officer of Burnbrae and simultaneously a director of Egg Farmers of Ontario.

The documents include a resignation letter from board director Bryan Durst on Nov. 8, 2009, saying Pelissero has an “impulsive nature” that “makes it necessary that he be kept on a tight reign” and that board chair Griffith was quick to defend producers and supply management, but not to keep tabs on board operations.

Bourdeau has gone to the Strathroy Police, to the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission, to Egg Farmers of Canada and to the Canadian Egg and Poultry Processors Council in his attempts to end what he deems to be huge scandals that undermine the supply management system.

He declined to comment to a reporter.