Marketing food safety: Maple Lodge Farms deli-meat edition
Maple Lodge Farms is often confused with Maple Leaf Foods, the latter of the listeria mess in Canada a year ago that killed 22 people.
In an effort to protect their brand, Maple Lodge has taken to marketing food safety. And I’m all for it.
These full-page advertisements are from a couple of Canadian magazines, the Sept. 2009 issue of Today’s Parent (right), and the Oct. 2009 issue of Canadian Living (below, left).
There’s far too many sick people, and far too much bureau-dancing around foodborne illness: The best food producers, processors, retailers and restaurants should go above and beyond minimal government and auditor standards and sell food safety solutions directly to the public. The best organizations will use their own people to demand ingredients from the best suppliers; use a mixture of encouragement and enforcement to foster a food safety culture; and use technology to be transparent -- whether it's live webcams in the facility or real-time test results on the website -- to help restore the shattered trust with the buying public.
Those companies that promote food safety culture can market their activities, and then consumers have a way to choose at the check-out aisle, providing feedback to those companies that make food safety a public priority.
Maple Lodge isn’t so much promoting a food safety culture as a technological fix. But at least they’re out there. A case could be made that the tomatoes, lettuce and sprouts pictured in these sandwiches also pose a significant food safety risk. That’s why buyers have to source food from safe sources.
Michael McCain of Maple Leaf: Should pregnant women eat deli meats?
There’s been an outbreak of babies amongst the food safety stalwarts in my lab. Katija delivered in June, Ben’s gonna be a daddy next month, and me, trying to keep up with the cool kids, at the end of November.
Michael McCain, the president and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods, seems sincere enough. He said yesterday that listeria is "pervasive" adding that,
"It (Listeria) is virtually impossible to eradicate in its entirety. It exists in plants, in supermarkets, potentially in your kitchen.”
That’s true. And deli meats and other refrigerated ready-to-eat foods like smoked salmon are particularly good sources of listeria.
Back in May, U.K. environmental health officers from 42 local authorities purchased 1,127 samples of sliced-at-the-counter cooked meats from food retailers including butchers, delicatessens, market stalls and supermarkets.
Laboratory tests found that 15 per cent of the samples were contaminated with low numbers of listeria on the day of purchase, while 7.3 per cent were contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, the more serious form of listeria.
Although these were within European Food Safety Standards, when the contaminated samples were tested again after storage for 48 hours in a refrigerator, the L. monocytogenes in some of the contaminated samples had multiplied to unsafe levels.
In July, 2008, health types in Ireland warned pregnant women to avoid ready-to-eat, refrigerated and processed foods, such as soft cheeses, cold cuts of meat, pates and smoked fish after an increase in pregnancy-related listeriosis.
A Dec. 2007 review of listeria in pregnancy states,
“One of the most important changes during pregnancy is the down-regulation of the cellular immune system. Because the fetus is genetically different from the mother, the body treats it as a graft. To prevent the maternal immune system from rejecting the fetus, cell-mediated immunity must therefore be suppressed during pregnancy. This is favored by high levels of progesterone. However, reduced cell-mediated immune function leads to increased susceptibility of the woman and her fetus to infections by intracellular pathogens such as Listeria monocytogenes. That is why pregnant women are 20 times more at risk of contracting listeriosis than are other healthy adults. Pregnant women account for 30% of all cases of listeriosis and 60% of cases among persons 10 to 40 years of age.
“Typically, systemic infection occurs most frequently after ingestion of food contaminated with L monocytogenes. The bacteria cross the mucosal barrier of the intestine, probably aided by active endocytosis of organisms by epithelial cells. Once in the bloodstream, bacteria spread to different sites, but they have a particular affinity for the central nervous system or placenta. While circulating, the bacteria are internalized by macrophages and other plasma cells and are thereafter spread cell-to-cell through phagocytosis. As a result, antibodies, complement, and neutrophils become unable to protect the host.”
And that’s why 6-months pregnant Amy hasn’t touched a deli product in over six months. But most women don’t know this. Neither do a lot of doctors or health professionals. During one of our prenatal visits, I asked the aid if there were any foods pregnant Amy should be avoiding.
She said, “no, not really.”
I specifically asked about deli meats.
She said, “Get the deli meat from the counter cause it’s fresher than the pre-packaged stuff.”
She didn’t know about listeria. Most people don’t. Researchers reported in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Health that in a survey of 586 women attending antenatal clinics in one private and two major public hospitals in New South Wales between April and November 2006, more than half received no information on preventing Listeria.
So, Michael McCain, I know what I’d tell my wife or any other pregnant woman. What would you tell a pregnant woman about deli meats? Would you be willing to put a health advisory on the back of the package?
