Alberta’s Agriculture Minister worried about impact XL Foods closure could have on local beef producers

Alberta’s Agriculture Minister showed his support for Alberta beef in Camrose, Saturday afternoon, shopping for beef at a local supermarket.

Minister Verlyn Olson says while it is a priority to find out what went wrong at the XL Foods plant in Brooks, he is worried about the impact the closure could have on Alberta beef producers.

“My immediate concern is getting the plant open, doing whatever needs to be done to get the plant open so that our producers can start delivering their product.”

He says the situation for producers isn’t critical yet, as it has only been a few days however, the impact will get increasingly worse as the closure of XL Foods continues.

Minister Olson also spoke about Alberta’s reputation for producing high quality beef products. He says it is very important to protect that reputation.

“Our reputation as a country, and certainly as a province is that we produce safe food of very high quality, and that reputation is extremely important and valuable to us,” Minister Olson said adding, “This is the type of thing that gets everybody’s attention and gets us all thinking about how things could be done better.”

Minister Olson believes the entire situation has been handled well however, he doesn’t believe the issue comes down to stricter guidelines on how beef is handled. He says it comes down to properly following the guidelines that are already in place.

“My understanding is that the issues that are involved have been a series of issues that, any one of them alone may not have been enough to be a major problem but, together may have conspired to cause a problem.”

This comes as more beef products continue to be recalled. On Friday, whole muscle cuts were added to the list of recalled products.

For a full list of recalled products visit the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s website.

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