Many stores across Canada and the U.S have now been recalling certain foods including pork jelly, beef jelly, and frozen waffles due to a possible contamination of Listeria.
Listeria is known as a foodborne bacterial illness that is caused by bacteria and is found within different foods.
“I mean the safest way you’re going to eat if you want to eat safe food, is kill it yourself and cook it right away but obviously you can’t do that, so anytime you handle something it increases risk.” Says Dr. Michael Rieder, a western professor for Schulich Medicine & Dentistry.
Rieder continued to talk about a statistic he came across with food illness in Canada.
“It points out the fact that food handling involves risk, and this risk is about your contamination. It’s common because, part of it is seeing that we’re looking more into it and if you look at the numbers, there’s about one in every six people, so 15% of the population gets sick in any given year from some kind of foodborne illness.
grocery store meat section
He also spoke about what many of the problems are with food handling in Canada nowadays.
“You know I’ve been talking with people involved this industry and I’ve asked can we find ways to make testing foods simpler and more rapid. There are ways you can do it, but it does involve changing some regulations and dealing with a very conservative industry and changing the way things are.”
Another thing Dr. Rieder had said was that it hurts the agricultural sector of the City of London.
“It’s a big part of our economy. In addition to making people sick, London has the Health Science center and there a major hospital for the whole region. So that’s an issue because as you know, our healthcare doesn’t need any extra straining, because it’s been strained already.
He finished by discussing the best advice for people to go about these contaminations and if they might have the illness.
“I think people must be aware you know. They must know the contamination that could occur and be able to act on it as soon as possible.”
Listeria is a rare disease within Canada, but many foods that are at risk of contamination that aren’t already recalled are refrigerated smoked fish raw, unpasteurized milk and unpasteurized cheeses.
The people that are the most at risk are people with weak immune systems, adults aged over 60 and pregnant women, including their unborn or newborn baby.
