WASHINGTON (AP) – More than 4.4 billion pounds of Canadian meat and poultry made its way into the United States despite federal officials’ misgivings that health inspections were seriously lacking, Agriculture Department investigators reported.
Food safety officials within the department warned that public health was at risk, yet the department failed for two years to act, the department’s inspector general said in a report obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
In fact, the department says it needs until November 2007 to decide whether it should act.
There are three big concerns with Canadian inspections, the inspector general said:
-Inspections are not done daily at Canadian food processing plants.
-Canada lacks adequate sanitation controls.
-Inspectors don’t sample finished products for listeria, which can cause deadly food poisoning.
Daily inspections are required in the U.S., and the law requires foreign countries to have equivalent inspections.
U.S. officials halted imports from Australia in June 2004 and Belgium in 2003 because those countries didn’t have daily inspections.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.