Don't give in to the 'listeria-hysteria'
Published Friday September 5th, 2008
As you eagerly rip open your little brown bag in the office cafeteria today, only to be confronted with the day's offering of tofurkey sandwich and tofu-tots topped off with to-jam on toast, I wonder dear reader if you feel as I do.
Locked as we are in the fevered grip of listeria-hysteria currently sweeping the land, will the universe unfold as it shouldn't tonight at the dinner table?
It surely has in our household, where our two teenaged daughters have informed us they will never again indulge in so much as a slice of prosciutto.
"Lips that touch lunch-meat shall never touch mine."
But I suppose one must show some forebearance for this earnest credo.
As young females, they flirt with the vegan lifestyle even at the best of times and as teenagers, it is their sworn duty to view all adults, including Dear Old Dad who admittedly indulges in a bit of Newfoundland Steak from time to time, as dim-bulbed dinos who can't help but follow the same old calcified path of meat-atarianism.
But good gravy, folks (or, in my opinion great gravy) must we really throw out that package of Maple Leaf weiners we threw in the deep-freeze three months before The Hysteria?
Is there really a need for a local bulk-buy store to call a customer -- as a fellow staffer here in the newsroom told me yesterday -- to tell them that package of pastrami they bought two weeks ago came from that same Toronto processing plant, albeit from a different production line?
Is there any chance my friend didn't eat the whole package the minute he got home?
I know he is a confirmed meatatarian just like me, so I also know the answer to that one.
But we all seem to be looking for answers today about what is safe and what is not safe to eat.
Well, there are no guarantees in this world, but if life is a gamble, I am willing to bet a whole package of Maple Leaf weiners (still ensconced in the deep freeze) that the safest place on the planet to buy a kilo of delicious black-forest ham today is that very same production line in Toronto.
I do not make light of the deaths and illnesses that have occurred as a result of what has happened, but I would ask any reasonable person to put in context the number of illnesses with the number of people who consumed any of the dozens of listed products that have been listed.
As anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant or a processing plant or their own kitchen already knows, the 10-second rule has been known to go by the boards from time to time and occasionally, something goes wrong.
The same wrong thing goes on every day; people get sick from food poisoning every day and sometimes, the elderly or the health-compromised succumb to the illness.
The fact is, New Brunswicker, Mount Allison University alumnus and Maple Leaf President Michael McCain has taken full responsibility for what has happened and given his heartfelt assurance that if there is a way to make this factory safer, in a country that is among the best in the world when it comes to protecting consumers, then it will be done.
At the very least, New Brunswickers and particularly Monctonians should not give in to hysteria and should not, irrationally, stop buying the things they like to eat and by association, punishing the company's Moncton plant, one of the Metro area's most important employers.
n Rod Allen is an assistant managing editor with The Times & Transcript.
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The word "but" is the eye opener, Mr. Allen; you'd be better off PR'ing for Maple Leaf Foods than working as a Journalist for the T&T Tabloid. Deaths have occurred, Rod; there's no "but" when it's a daughter or a son, a husband or a wife.
It's time Big Business put more effort into their customers rather than sutting corners for the almighty dollar.
So Michael McCain accepted responsibility, but what else was he going to do? This is no small matter. It takes up to 70 days for the stuff to incubate, so people are very likely going to keep dying because of this.
Again, why is an editorial of this nature allowed on front page? Is this how one large company panders to another?