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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
U.S. to audit Canada's food-safety watchdog
EDMONTON -- The federal agency responsible for protecting Canadians from food-safety hazards will itself soon be under the microscope.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has confirmed it is to be audited later this month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the first time in three years.
The agency says the USDA audit is to include a visit by U.S. inspectors to the XL Foods beef packer in Brooks, Alta. The plant has been involved in a massive meat recall prompted by an E. coli scare. A strain of the bacteria linked to XL has made 15 people in four provinces sick.
Guy Gravelle, a CFIA spokesman, said the audit has been planned for months and was not prompted by the recall.
But he explained it could play a role in whether XL will be allowed to resume beef exports to the United States if the plant gets relicensed by the CFIA to fully operate again.
"If they have recently visited the facility and have deemed that it has met their standards for food safety and guidelines, I would imagine it would be fairly straightforward for them to accept the fact that it meets the standards that it requires before product is exported there," Gravelle said Friday from Ottawa.
Canada suspended the XL plant's permit to export beef products into the United States on Sept. 13 at the request of the USDA because of E. coli contamination concerns.
The U.S. is a key market for the company.
-- The Canadian Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 13, 2012 A19
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A timeline of the Senate audits controversy
12:00 PM 0OTTAWA - Here is a timeline of the Senate audits controversy.
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June 13, 2012: Auditor General Michael Ferguson releases a study ...
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