A recent E. Coli outbreak in Alberta caused grocery stores across the province, including Lac La Biche’s Extra Foods and Sobeys, to recall all of their ground beef products last week. The beef had been packaged at the facilities of meat distributor XL Foods.
On Sept. 4, during routine testing at XL Foods, a cattle and beef distribution company in Brooks, Alberta, and representatives from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) first discovered E.Coli in the ground beef. Although there have been no reports of E.Coli in the meat available in Lac La Biche, grocery stores across Alberta and throughout Canada have decided to pull beef packaged between Aug. 29 and Sept. 15 with “best before” or “freeze by” dates of Sept.9 to Sept. 23, off the shelves for precautionary measures.
“We follow what the CFIA says, so if they ask us to pull our ground beef off the shelves we do,” said Willie Abougouche, part owner and store manager at the Lac La Biche Sobeys. “It was strictly a precautionary measure.”
Extra Foods also complied with the recommendation, recalling all of their ground beef on Sept. 26 to make sure the spread of possible E.Coli bacteria did not affect area residents.
“We did recall our ground beef, but I can’t speak on that any further,” said Extra Foods manager Matthew Smith.
The Post contacted representatives from CFIA but they would not discuss how much meat was involved in the recall, and soon after, released a statement on their website saying: “There has been no indication of new cases or illnesses, but we are warning the public to not consume, or use any beef products manufactured and sold by XL Foods.”
According to the press release, CFIA has also temporarily suspended XL Foods’ licence to operate until the company shows they will comply and effectively manage food safety risks. Because XL Foods has a wide distribution, CFIA released a country-wide alert to clear the shelves of ground beef products.
Stores that were affected included Co-op stores in Alberta, Sobeys, Extra Foods, No Frills, Real Canadian Wholesale Club, Shop Easy, SuperValu, Real Canadian Superstore, and Foodland stores in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, and Metro stores in Ontario and Quebec.
Although the investigation into XL Foods is still ongoing, local shoppers have nothing to fear as ground beef not produced within the affected dates was quickly put back on the shelf at Sobeys and Extra Foods.
“We want to assure the public that ground beef is back on shelves at Sobeys and we haven’t experienced any difficulties with the product,” Abougouche said. “I want to stress that these were simply precautionary measures.”