Nearly four dozen beef products sold at Cooper’s Foods have been recalled due to an outbreak of E. coli at an XL Foods meat processing plant in Brooks, Alta..
According to a list posted by Overwaitea Food Group on its website on Sept. 28, 45 beef products, most of which are steaks, were removed from the shelves of Overwaitea stores, which includes Cooper’s Foods in Revelstoke. The complete list can be found here: www.owfg.com/sites/default/files/september_28_xl_product_final.pdf
Ben Harrack, the manager of the Revelstoke store directed questions to the head office, who did not return a phone call requesting an interview. Overwaitea posted the following statement on its website.
“Though we do not buy ground beef from XL Foods and have not for quite some time, our third party beef supplier does procure certain beef products from XL Foods that are now affected by the CFIA’s expanded recall. We are very proud of the facility we work with and the processes they have in place to provide us with a very high standard of food safety which includes extra steps that make the risk of this kind of contamination extremely low for us. However, as a precautionary measure, we have voluntarily initiated a recall of all potentially impacted products and we’ll be replacing removed product with unaffected supply over the next few days.”
Ray Cooper at Ray’s Butcher Shop said he received a recall list, but none of his products were affected.
“Almost all of my beef comes from there but no products have been recalled,” he said on Friday, adding he would continue to check to his fax machine for updates.
At Southside Grocery, the meat manager said they they do not get any meat from XL Foods so they have not been affected by the recall.
A full list of all recalled products can be found on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency website, www.inspection.gc.ca.
There have been 10 confirmed cases of E. coli after the consumption of tainted meat in Alberta, and four are under investigation. None have been reported in B.C.
XL Foods is one of the largest beef processing plants in Canada and is based out of Brooks, Alta. Its license was suspended by the CFIA on Sept. 27. Contaminated meat was originally discovered in a shipment at the U.S. border in Sweetgrass, Mont., on Aug. 30. That beef tested positive for E. coli three days later and the American inspectors for the Food Safety and Inspection Service reported it to their Canadian counterparts. Beef at a processing facility being inspected by CFIA in Calgary tested positive on Sept. 4.
With files from Annalee Grant/Black Press