Joriki Inc., the company that owned the Pickering, Ont., facility that was linked to a deadly listeria outbreak last year, filed for protection from creditors in January.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
A federal investigation into a deadly listeria outbreak last year has found significant flaws with an algorithm-based system deployed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that oversees how often food-production facilities are inspected.
A report by CFIA Inspector-General Scott Rattray also found the agency has failed to meet its annual inspection targets – and that a large number of facilities have not been scrutinized because of weaknesses in the system.
Late last year, Mark Holland, who was then federal health minister, called for the probe after three deaths and dozens of illnesses were linked to a listeria problem in plant-based milks sold under the Silk brand, which were manufactured at a facility in Pickering, Ont.
The Inspector-General’s office found the algorithm could not effectively process certain data – including consumer complaints – which are meant to keep tabs on problem food manufacturers. The algorithm was also fed inaccurate data from some companies, impairing its ability to identify higher-risk sites that need closer scrutiny.
Mr. Rattray’s office also conducted on-site inspections of 54 food-manufacturing facilities in Canada, with a focus on those that produce plant-based products, including non-dairy milk and cheese, which – much like regular dairy – can be at risk for pathogens.
The Inspector-General found that 26 of those sites had never been visited by the CFIA, even though “the Agency’s program direction requires that all domestic establishments be subject to an annual inspection.”
About 40 per cent of the 54 sites were not in compliance with food-safety regulations, “resulting in failure to identify Listeria as a potential hazard and therefore a lack of documented control measures,” the report said.
Three of the sites investigated, or 5 per cent, “were found to have critical food safety issues that required an immediate response by CFIA inspection staff to protect public health.”
In these cases, one food manufacturer’s licence was suspended, while two facilities voluntarily surrendered their licences, the report said. The CFIA did not disclose the identities of those factories.
A Globe investigation last year revealed flaws with the CFIA’s algorithm-based system, which was introduced just over five years ago with the goal of making the agency operate more efficiently by allocating inspectors and resources to facilities deemed a higher risk.
The Globe investigation, which relied on government documents and sources within the CFIA, found the algorithm system failed to flag potential problems inside factories, and misjudged the risk of certain products, including the potential for pathogens in plant-based milks.
Much of the information inputted into the algorithm – 12 of 16 key data points – that determined how often a facility would be inspected was supplied by the companies themselves, often on a voluntary basis, and was not verified by the CFIA, The Globe found.
This led to manufacturers mistakenly being deemed low-risk and therefore a low priority for inspections. The Globe investigation found that the site in Pickering that the listeria outbreak was eventually traced to had not been visited by a CFIA inspector for five years, and that instance was for a matter unrelated to listeria. The agency had no record of the site ever being inspected for listeria or evaluated on-site for listeria protocols.
The Inspector-General’s report made several recommendations for fixes to the algorithm system – known as the Establishment-based Risk Assessment model, or ERAM – for the CFIA to implement.
They include making it mandatory for manufacturers to supply all necessary data for the algorithm to be more precise in its analysis, and the development of “a quality assurance strategy” to increase the accuracy of the information that is gathered.
“There is a risk that missing or incomplete information detailing food safety controls could impact the ERAM categorization and resulting assigned inspection frequency,” the report said.
The Inspector-General struggled to determine exactly how many plant-based food manufacturers Canada has because the information in the CFIA’s database was inconsistent in how companies describe their operations. “These data challenges are compounded with licence holders entering incorrect information,” the report said.
One data point used to calculate risk at a food-processing facility – consumer complaints – wasn’t being fed properly into the algorithm because of formatting problems with government databases, the report said. That meant signals about potential problems, including sicknesses or reports of quality-control issues such as mould, weren’t being tracked properly, “which may incorrectly impact the risk rating.”
Even if unverified, such signals shouldn’t be ignored, the report said. “These complaints serve as valuable intelligence that may indicate an underlying manufacturing problem or broader systemic risk,” the Inspector-General wrote.
The report raises alarms about the CFIA’s ability to properly inspect food producers in Canada.
After 24 people died from a listeria outbreak in 2008 at a Maple Leaf Foods plant in Toronto that produced lunch meat, a federal probe determined more resources should be focused on meat facilities, which are considered highest-risk for pathogens. The algorithm system was developed as a way to triage inspections based on risk level.
However, this has not fixed the problems, the report said.
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“Because the majority of the CFIA’s inspection resources (70%) are fixed and assigned to the meat sector, the Agency continues to be challenged to meet inspection frequencies of all non-meat food commodities (including the manufactured food sector), as well as supporting unplanned, on-demand tasks such as food safety investigations,” the report said.
The union representing CFIA inspectors said it has long questioned the effectiveness of the algorithm system, which was introduced to “do more with less” amid tightening resources.
“This is not a surprise,” Milton Dyck, national president of the Agriculture Union, said of the report.
“We’ve been saying we’ve been short-staffed for a long time. We’ve had concerns about the algorithm for a long time.”
With the federal government now looking for budget cuts across multiple departments, Mr. Dyck said he is concerned about how the problems highlighted by the Inspector-General will get fixed.
CFIA president Paul MacKinnon said the agency is reviewing the findings.
“The Agency will announce an action plan in response to the recommendations of the report early this fall,” he said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Health Minister Marjorie Michel said she will work with the CFIA on the plan, placing more scrutiny on potential bad actors in the industry, while not punishing companies with clean track records.
“We aim to strengthen the system while avoiding additional unnecessary administrative burdens on law-abiding and responsible actors in the agri-food sector,” Guillaume Bertrand, spokesperson for the minister, said in an e-mail.
Joriki Inc., the company that owned the Pickering facility that was linked to the outbreak, filed for protection from creditors in January.