Science or Politics?

[ASRG]

It looks like Nilsson Bros. little power play with the layoffs worked...didn't take very long either!
The CFIA suddenly had their eyes opened on the road to Damascas and decided everything looks good to go! They still mumble about they need to be satisfied the science is being met and NO PRODUCT will leave the plant until they are convinced it is safe....yea right....how much fresh or frozen product can XL store? A big plant like that turns product over as fast as possible....like in two days or less!
But politics never had anything to do with it, right? I bet when Ritz finally realized that when all those workers were out in the street crying in front of the tv cameras, even Stephen Harper would have to kick his ass down the road!
Good for Brian and Lee Nilsson for lighting a fire under this idiot, or the keystone cops would be dithering for another month!

[riders2010]

So I guess the cfia must have picked up the mail and read the note from xl that the plant is clean now! lol too funny

[rkaiser]

For big shots in the beef business, the Nilsson brothers have been able to keep an astonishingly low profile during the past month, even while their company has been in the spotlight.

Brian and Lee Nilsson own XL Foods, which runs the massive meat packing plant in Brooks, Alta. that has been linked to at least 15 cases of E. coli infection and is the source of the largest beef recall in Canadian history.

Until Thursday, when Brian gave his first interview to Post-media reporter Sarah Schmidt, the Nilssons had spoken only through press releases in a response that has left public relations experts scratching their heads. The invisible Nilssons have been contrasted to the high-profile response to a similar crisis by Michael McCain, the president and CEO of Maple Leaf Foods.

McCain's public performance during the listeriosis outbreak in 2008 is held up by marketing experts as the right way to manage a potential public relations nightmare.

During the listeriosis outbreak, people were dying. The future of the company was at stake. Maple Leaf had to show that it was doing everything it could to track down the source of the problem, clean it up and then do right by its customers who had been poisoned by the products it sold.

McCain stood in front of the television cameras, took responsibility for the outbreak and apologized to the victims. He invited the media into the plants and quickly settled the class action suit that resulted from the injuries and deaths.

The result was that despite the seriousness of the illnesses that were caused, consumer confidence in the brand was maintained and the company has thrived in the aftermath of what could have been a fatal blow.

By that standard, Brian Nilsson's first public appearance and public apology in a print interview fell pathetically short. Most Canadians still don't know what he looks like and have never heard his voice either taking responsibility for the problems in the plant or expressing sympathy for the victims of what is by all accounts a nasty illness. Lee Nilsson has never been seen or heard.

On one level it's fair to compare McCain and the Nils-sons, since they have both been engaged in an exercise of both cleaning up meat packing plants and persuading consumers that what comes out in the end will once again be safe to eat.

But there are big differences between XL Foods and Maple Leaf. As has been noted elsewhere, Maple Leaf is a publicly traded company that has more stringent reporting requirement than does a privately owned company like XL Foods.

More important than the ownership structure, is who the customers are and how they are served.

This is where the two companies are dramatically different. Maple Leaf is a brand that Canadians were familiar with long before the listeriosis crisis.

As far as most consumers are concerned, XL Foods is a complete unknown. It might as well be brand X.

None of the dozens of products being recalled were sold under the XL name. They were sold by dozens of retailers big and small, including Costco, Safeway, IGA, Thrifty Foods and Urban Fare, and often only identified by the name of the store. So from a business sense, the customers whom XL needs to be most concerned about are not those who are afraid of getting sick, but the merchants who buy and resell XL meat under their names. As XL's E. coli recall spread from ground beef to whole meat products and led to the plant shutdown, I'm sure I'm not alone in starting to look at where the beef - and other meats - that are sold with just a store label come from.

If enough customers get interested and stay interested after this latest crisis is over, the stores that sell XL meats under their names will have to do more than just offer mystery meat. They'll have to provide a lineage, not back to the individual animal - I don't need to know whether my burger was once called Bessie - but to the packing plant.

That interest has the potential to remind us that meat isn't grown in grocery stores and to keep a better eye on the plants that turn cattle into beef.

Maybe then we won't have to depend on American border officials to alert us that we're being fed bad burgers.

cmcinnes@vancouversun.com

©

[InAHurry]

I beg to differ ASRG ..... "IF" Brian
and Lee Nilsson and their management at
Lakeside would have done the proper
testing and kept accurate records .....
in short .... nobody would have to be
covering their arses if Nilsson's would
have wiped their own first!!

[cpallett]

"...from a business sense, the customers whom XL needs to be most concerned about are not those who are afraid of getting sick, but the merchants who buy and resell XL meat under their names."

You can bet your bottom dollar that the big retailers will be buying from Cargill et al until it is fully established that this thing has well and truly blown over.

Consumers in general are not likely to check the brand at the supermarket as it would involve calling over staff and asking them, but a subliminal seed may well remain planted that spurs the choice to chicken or pork for supper rather than beef. While this may turn out for the best for Iain, Christoph, Randy and their ilk (the value-chain kids, I like to call them), for the majority of producers this is not a good thing.

All because nobody could identify the source of the e-coli within Lakeside with any sort of confidence or precision. If you can identify the source with precision, there is no need to run around like a chicken with your head cut off.

It is my understanding that lots of food products at processing plants or packers are routinely garbaged because of contamination of one sort or another.

How is it that the XL inspectors missed five bad days of production? How is it that the CFIA missed five bad days of production? (Well OK, I know part of the answer to that one - lack of training and no communication plan).

How is it that it takes the CFIA three weeks and counting to figure out what proper procedures and protocols should be at Lakeside? Were the procedures and protocols that were already in place so bad?

How is it that most folks figure this is entirely the Nilssons fault? The plant operated for three years without complaint and overnight it turned into a @#$%hole? Hard to believe.

If it was your money, would you continue to pour it down the drain with no end in sight when the CFIA not only cannot or will not tell you what went wwrong, they cannot or will not tell you what you have to do to get up and running? Three weeks of "We hope to get you up and running ASAP, but first do this and we'll let you know how that goes." That's a lot of spare change to flush down the toilet.

And Gerry Ritz's idea of timely assistance in all this is to offer to flip burgers at the plant reopening celebratory barbeque. Thanks Gerry.

Frankly I doubt that XL Lakeside will ever reopen. At some point when the gangrene gets so bad the only answer is to amputate.

There MUST be a public inquiry. Common sense demands it. Public safety demands it. The industry needs it.

[cpallett]

"...from a business sense, the customers whom XL needs to be most concerned about are not those who are afraid of getting sick, but the merchants who buy and resell XL meat under their names."

You can bet your bottom dollar that the big retailers will be buying from Cargill et al until it is fully established that this thing has well and truly blown over.

Consumers in general are not likely to check the brand at the supermarket as it would involve calling over staff and asking them, but a subliminal seed may well remain planted that spurs the choice to chicken or pork for supper rather than beef. While this may turn out for the best for Iain, Christoph, Randy and their ilk (the value-chain kids, I like to call them), for the majority of producers this is not a good thing.

All because nobody could identify the source of the e-coli within Lakeside with any sort of confidence or precision. If you can identify the source with precision, there is no need to run around like a chicken with your head cut off.

It is my understanding that lots of food products at processing plants or packers are routinely garbaged because of contamination of one sort or another.

How is it that the XL inspectors missed five bad days of production? How is it that the CFIA missed five bad days of production? (Well OK, I know part of the answer to that one - lack of training and no communication plan).

How is it that it takes the CFIA three weeks and counting to figure out what proper procedures and protocols should be at Lakeside? Were the procedures and protocols that were already in place so bad?

How is it that most folks figure this is entirely the Nilssons fault? The plant operated for three years without complaint and overnight it turned into a @#$%hole? Hard to believe.

If it was your money, would you continue to pour it down the drain with no end in sight when the CFIA not only cannot or will not tell you what went wwrong, they cannot or will not tell you what you have to do to get up and running? Three weeks of "We hope to get you up and running ASAP, but first do this and we'll let you know how that goes." That's a lot of spare change to flush down the toilet.

And Gerry Ritz's idea of timely assistance in all this is to offer to flip burgers at the plant reopening celebratory barbeque. Thanks Gerry.

Frankly I doubt that XL Lakeside will ever reopen. At some point when the gangrene gets so bad the only answer is to amputate.

There MUST be a public inquiry. Common sense demands it. Public safety demands it. The industry needs it.

[kato]

A McCain style public personal apology and promise to fix things would have been a smart thing to do, even if only to assure the public that the meat bought from their usual retail stores will be safe.

It would be a real good public relations effort to keep XL retail customers assured that their business wouldn't suffer more than it has. If XL wants to keep their customers, then they should go the extra mile to help them get past this. Otherwise they're going to kiss a lot of business good bye.

If none of the players in this gong show are going to man up, then the first one that finally does will be the winner.