While the XL Foods facility in Brooks, Alberta is still awaiting the go-ahead from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to resume production, the Cargill plant in High River has been operating six days a week, using workers from the same union as XL Foods’ employees.
The XL Foods facility in Brooks, Alberta, will resume partial operations on Tuesday after laying off its entire work force of 2,000 employees on Saturday and recalling 800 on Sunday.
. Doug O’Halloran, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 401, said there is a “desperate need” for an improved culture of food safety at the plant.
The Hong Kong Centre for Food Safety is advising companies to stop selling and to recall what it describes as "a small portion" of beef from XL Foods which had made its way to local shops.
FSIS now estimates that approximately 1.1 million pounds of trim and approximately 1.4 million pounds of primal and sub-primal cuts and ground beef were received by U.S. firms.
XL said it will use video cameras to audit plant processes, will expand washing the sides of beef with high-pressure hot water to eliminate E. coli contamination, and add staff to each shift to monitor sanitary procedures.
Richard Arsenault, director of the CFIA's meat programs division, said first XL Foods needs to implement at its Brooks plant new data analysis procedures.
In conducting standard recall effectiveness checks of U.S. domestic establishments receiving beef from XL Foods, Inc. (Canadian Establishment 038), the USDA discovered that whole muscle beef cuts prduced on the same production dates as beef subject to recall in Canada were being used to produce raw ground products.
