Agriculture Minister to Visit XL Foods Meat Plant [Oct. 2]

Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz Visits Famed XL Foods Slaughterhouse

By Amanda Brodhagen, Farms.com

Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz will be paying a visit to the XL Foods Inc. plant, which at the centre of the largest beef recall in Canadian history. The slaughterhouse in Brooks, Alberta was found to be the source of the E. coli tainted beef, forcing a recall of over 1.5 million pounds of beef to-date.

The beef contamination wasn’t found until 12 days later and since then there has been a series of beef recalls and a number of people have fallen ill linked to Xl Foods beef. As of Tuesday, Alberta officials have confirmed a total of 10 cases of E. coli, of which only five have been linked to the Xl Foods beef plant. While in Saskatchewan, there are a total of 13 cases, but authorities are still investigating to see whether any of them are linked to the XL foods beef recall.