Arlene Pelley, in her kitchen in Corner Brook, N.L. on Dec. 20, had a recalled product at her home and poured it down the drain. She then went to her local Dominion store about a week later to get some more, and again ended up with recalled milk.Dru Kennedy/The Globe and Mail
Soon after a Canada-wide recall was issued this summer amid fears of listeria contamination in certain plant-based milks, Arlene Pelley noticed another problem.
Upon seeing the news of the July 8 recall on social media, Ms. Pelley went to her refrigerator to check the cartons of almond-cashew milk she purchased in her groceries. Realizing they were part of the recall of Silk and Great Value brands, she promptly poured them down the drain.
About a week later, she went to the Dominion grocery store near her home in Corner Brook, N.L., and bought more. She assumed it was unaffected product, given how serious the recall was. But when she got home, she checked the codes just to be safe.
“Sure enough, it was the same,” Ms. Pelley said.
Ms. Pelley wasn’t the only one. In Burk’s Falls, Ont., Carrissa MacDonald, an organ-transplant patient who avoids dairy, realized after shopping at her local Your Independent Grocer outlet in nearby Huntsville that she had also purchased recalled cartons of Silk almond milk – after they were supposed to be pulled from stores.
“How was I able to buy it?” Ms. MacDonald said. “That boggles me.”
The July recall of plant-based milks sold under the Silk and Great Value brands has exposed multiple weaknesses in Canada’s food-safety system.
Public health officials traced a listeria outbreak that sickened 20 people and killed three to a facility in Pickering, Ont., that manufactured the products. A Globe and Mail investigation last week found that an algorithm-based system operated by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to assess risk at food-production facilities, in order to determine how often they should be inspected, had deemed the site a low risk.
As a result, the facility had not been visited by a CFIA inspector for five years prior to the listeria outbreak, and the 2019 instance was for a matter unrelated to listeria protocols. Asked when the last time an inspector had been at the site to assess listeria protocols, to swab for the bacteria, or to evaluate the company on its food-safety licence requirements, the CFIA could not say.
But The Globe’s investigation also found there were problems with the recall itself.
As both Ms. Pelley and Ms. MacDonald discovered, the product had not been removed from all stores after the recall, in contravention of Canada’s food-safety policies.
The CFIA said when it issues food recall warnings, those alerts are posted on its website and sent to various grocery industry associations, which are connected to retailers.
Behind the Story: Investigating lapses in Canada’s food safety system
The agency says the bulk of responsibility for the recall rests with the industry, in this case Danone Canada, the company that sells Silk alternative milks. The company is required to contact retailers and ensure the product is pulled off shelves.
“It is the responsibility of industry to remove [recalled products] from the marketplace immediately,” Meghan Griffin, the CFIA’s acting manager in the Office of Food Safety and Recall, said in an e-mailed statement.
“The CFIA’s role is to inform the public, oversee implementation of the recall, provide guidance, and verify that industry has effectively removed recalled food from the marketplace.”
But despite the system in place for recalled products, breakdowns occurred.
Danone Canada said it immediately suspended production and shipment of products on July 6, when public health officials alerted the company to a possible link between the outbreak and the facility in Pickering, Ont., owned by Joriki Inc., a food producer that Danone contracted to manufacture the plant-based milks.
On July 8, after the link to the facility was confirmed, Danone issued a nationwide recall of all products made on the affected production line, which the company said involved millions of cartons of almond, coconut, cashew and other plant-based milks, though it did not give a specific figure detailing the full scope of the recall.
Danone said its recall procedures include working with retailers to disable the unique alphanumeric code allocated to the products – known as Stock Keeping Units, or SKUs – which should have prevented them from being purchased at large grocers.
“Our national and regional sales teams contacted all our retail partners so that they could immediately initiate their recall protocols, which include deactivating the impacted SKUs in their systems and removing affected products from shelves,” Danone Canada spokeswoman Irénidice Morin said in an e-mail to The Globe.
She said retailers were instructed to remove the affected products from warehouses, as well as stores.
“We cannot comment on specific retailers’ recall execution,” Ms. Morin said.
The Dominion in Corner Brook and the Your Independent Grocer outlet in Huntsville are both large stores that are part of Loblaw Companies Ltd.
A spokesperson for Loblaw said the company has compliance programs to execute recalls across its network of stores.
Certain plant-based milks under the Silk and Great Value brands were recalled this year amid an outbreak of Listeria.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
“All stores conduct frequent checks following a recall to ensure product is off shelves and remains off shelves,” Loblaw spokesperson Catherine Thomas said in an e-mail. “We also conduct audits to check shelves for recalled products. In this particular recall, there were 14 different products with unique codes and date ranges.”
In addition to audits by the retailer, the CFIA said it conducts effectiveness checks to verify that unsafe food is taken off the market in a recall.
“This included 470 checks done by phone and in-person,” Ms. Griffin said.
But with so many supposed checks and balances, the consumers who purchased recalled products, which might have been dangerous if consumed, are left to wonder how it happened.
Ms. Pelley says she called the grocery store in Corner Brook and told the manager there were still recalled products on the shelf. She was worried people would get sick from it.
“I made it clear that I didn’t want a refund,” Ms. Pelley said. “I wanted to make it known that he still had products on the shelf.”
She said the manager told her the store had pulled everything from its shelves.
“I assured him that wasn’t the case. I was holding it in my hand, looking at it,” she said. “I told him people are going to get sick.”
When she went back to the store a few days later, she was relieved to see the recalled product gone.
Ms. MacDonald was similarly concerned. She knows the people who run the store she shopped at, and doesn’t suspect they would do anything intentionally wrong.
“They’re very responsible people, I don’t blame them in any way,” she said, believing that word of the recall didn’t make it through the retail system the way the CFIA and the companies believe it did.
In her case, as an organ transplant recipient, foodborne illnesses can be potentially catastrophic.
“How did that get through? How did they not get the information?” Ms. MacDonald said.
At Loblaw, Ms. Thomas said it is possible for products to fall through the cracks.
“Despite our proven practices, given the scale of this recall, human error is possible,” Ms. Thomas said. “However, it is exceptionally rare.”
The listeria outbreak involving Silk and Great Value was one of the most serious and prolonged on record involving Canadian products. Food-safety experts say the actual number of people affected is higher than the 20 official cases, as listeriosis is typically under-reported.
As part of its investigation, The Globe spoke with several people who said they were affected by the recalled products, including the family of a 76-year-old Toronto woman who died of listeriosis in June, a 32-year-old woman who miscarried last December – both she and the fetus tested positive for listeriosis – and a 28-year-old man who was nearly paralyzed with bacterial meningitis, which can be caused by listeriosis.
Ms. MacDonald questions how the recall was handled.
“This was, I don’t know, just sort of brushed off,” Ms. MacDonald said. “Definitely they could have done a significantly better job of letting people know.”