British Columbia

Recalled meats pulled from B.C. Safeway stores: spokesman

All Maple Leaf meat products under a voluntary nationwide recall have now been pulled off the shelves at all Safeway stores in B.C., a spokesman for Canada Safeway said Tuesday.

No tests on healthy people who may have eaten listeria-tainted meat, health official says

All 220 packaged meats from the Maple Leaf brand produced at a Toronto plant are now being recalled. ((CBC))

All Maple Leaf meat products under a voluntary nationwide recall have now been pulled off the shelves at all Safeway stores in B.C., a spokesman for Canada Safeway said Tuesday.

Some Maple Leaf brand deli products were reportedly found in at least two Safeway stores in downtown Vancouver and Surrey over the weekend following last week's massive meat recall in connection with a deadly listeriosis outbreak across the country.

David Ryzebol, a spokesman for Canada Safeway, said the company's stores in B.C. have taken away all potentially tainted meat products from their shelves.

"Yesterday morning, everything was taken off the shelves," Ryzebol told CBC News in a telephone interview Tuesday.

B.C. health officials confirmed Monday a woman in Cranbrook, who has an underlying health condition, contracted listeriosis while in hospital prior to the Canada-wide recall of  deli meats produced at a Maple Leaf Foods plant in Toronto.

26 confirmed cases, 12 deaths nationwide

The Public Health Agency of Canada said Tuesday there are now 26 confirmed cases of listeriosis. Of the 26, there are 12 confirmed deaths — 11 in Ontario and one in B.C. The number of suspect cases is 29. Those cases are in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan.

Maple Leaf has upgraded a precautionary recall of 23 of its products, issued last week, to all 220 packaged meats from the Toronto plant.

The health authority in the B.C. Interior said Tuesday there's no way to predict whether currently healthy people who may have eaten listeria-contaminated meat will fall ill.

"If they ate deli meat, or they think they might have eaten Maple Leaf deli meat and they're not ill right now, there's no tests anyone can do to tell if they're going to come down with the illness or not," said Dr. Rob Parker, medial health officer with Interior Health.

Parker said healthy adults and children don't need to be too worried because most won't come down with listeriosis even if exposed to the bacteria.

But seniors, pregnant women, and those with weak immune systems should see a doctor as soon as they experience symptoms of the food-borne illness, he said. The symptoms include high fever, severe headaches, neck stiffness, nausea, and diarrhea.

Parker said  Interior health has put doctors in the area on alert after discovering that meat products linked to the listeriosis outbreak were served in two-thirds of its hospitals and care homes.

Warning in B.C. not considered: provincial health officer

Dr. Perry Kendall, B.C's provincial health officer, said the province has not issued any specific warning to pregnant women or seniors against the disease because meat processing plants in Canada are generally considered safe.

"In Canada, we have a pretty good food safety system and meat safety system. We would consider that for the vast majority of meats … they would be safe to eat," Kendall told CBC News Tuesday.

"If we try to ban absolutely every food or substance that has a potential for carrying contamination, bacteria or viruses, there wouldn't be much left for people to eat," he said.

But a spokesman for the Consumers Association of Canada said he wonders whether an earlier warning in B.C. could have prevented illnesses and death in the listeriosis outbreak in the province.

"We need to have more information," Mel Fruitman said Tuesday. "The format of that information, we have to decide which is way the best to do that."