There may be pork in your ground beef: food inspectors’ union
Posted April 22, 2014 12:30 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Are the labels on your groceries accurate? Unionized food inspectors say cuts to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency mean they may not be.
The union says thanks to federal cuts, there are only four food inspectors remaining in our province and Metro Vancouver is the only major metropolitan area in Canada without anyone protecting consumers.
Local President Bob Kingston says that means you may be eating things you don’t even know about. “It’s not uncommon for some companies to mix pork or other species with their beef.”
“No oil inspections will be done, even though oil adulteration has been a big problem; olive oil is often cut with less expensive oils,” he adds.
“The project sampling that they used to do is now complaint-driven only and usually those complaints would come from competitors or the competitors might be in a position to just say, ‘Well, if nobody’s looking, why don’t I just break the same rules?'”
Kingston adds mislabelling — especially for things like ground beef — could result in more foodborne illnesses because different meats should be cooked and stored at different temperatures.
He says further government cuts to the agency would be devastating.
