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Canadian meat inspectors failed to learn crucial lessons from a deadly listeria outbreak a decade ago, experts on the bacterium suggested yesterday as the food-safety crisis spread further with three more deaths, including that of a woman in Saskatchewan, under investigation.

And the federal agency responsible for food safety this year began to let the industry conduct its own food testing, The Globe and Mail has learned.

A leaked cabinet document that outlined plans for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to give the food industry a greater role in the inspection process raised the ire of opposition politicians last week.

However, some of the plans have been in place since March 31, according to a CFIA manager and an official from the union that represents the federal inspectors.

At the Maple Leaf plant behind the listeria outbreak, a single federal inspector was relegated to auditing company paperwork and had to deal with several other plants, the manager and the union official said, contradicting the impression that officials had left last week that full-time watchdogs were on-site.

Under the new system, federal inspectors do random product tests only three or four times a year at any given plant. And meat packers are required to test each type of product only once a month.

Under the old system, inspectors had a more hands-on role on the plant floor, did more of the tests themselves and had more freedom to investigate, said former CFIA inspector Bob Kingston, who is national president of the Agriculture Union, a branch of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said that the massive Maple Leaf meat recall highlights the need for Ottawa to overhaul its meat-inspection regime.

"It's necessary to reform and revamp our food- and product-inspection regime after some years of neglect," he said yesterday. "As you know, in the recent budget, we put considerably more inspectors and resources into this."

Mr. Harper rejected any suggestions that the federal government is not doing enough.

"Obviously we want to make sure that the companies maintain their responsibilities and that we fully review all the facts here to understand what went wrong and how we can prevent it in the future."

Some scientists said yesterday that Canada has also not required companies to adopt new processing methods that would make their products safer.

Canada simply failed to react in the same way as the United States did to the 1998 deaths of 15 people who ate infected hot dogs, the scientists say.

Many U.S. companies now pasteurize sliced turkey, ham and other ready-to-eat meat products after they have been packaged to kill any microbes.

"It is proven [to be] effective. But people don't like using it," said University of Guelph food microbiologist Keith Warriner, who suspects companies don't like to introduce new technologies.

Another expert on listeria warned that meat slicers are also a source of contamination, and recommended supermarkets throw out any meat that might have come in contact with slicers and knives used to cut the tainted products. Meat not involved in a recall can get contaminated after tainted meat has gone through the slicers at a deli or meat counter, said Elliot Ryser, a microbiologist at the University of Wisconsin and a listeria researcher.

"We've shown it gets transferred to the next 100 slices or more. About 90 per cent of the transfer occurred in the first 10 slices," said Dr. Ryser, who has written an 800-page book about Listeria monocytogenes, bacteria that can cause symptoms similar to food poisoning, including vomiting, diarrhea and fever.

Maple Leaf also sells deli meats under the Schneider and Shopsy's labels, and its products are in sandwiches sold at Mr. Sub and McDonald's.

Federal inspectors across Canada are concerned about the new inspection procedure begun earlier this year, Mr. Kingston said.

He said the inspector responsible for the Maple Leaf plant in Toronto also had to supervise up to half a dozen other facilities.

Under the new rules, instead of heading to the plant floor to inspect with their own eyes, inspectors are sent to the office to confirm that the meat packer has performed the required tests and the results are satisfactory, Mr. Kingston said.

"We don't swab for listeria any more. The industry does all that themselves," he said. "They just document all this stuff. We read their reports. If their reports say they do everything fine, then they do everything fine."

The federal rules require only that inspectors perform three or four random tests annually at a plant, Richard Arsenault, a manager at the CFIA, said in an interview. The rest of the time, inspectors rely on the company, which is required to do at least one test a month for each type of product.

"It's like in aviation, we can't look under each jet engine of an airline, but we can make sure the maintenance service works," he said.

The Maple Leaf Toronto plant was one of the plants where the CFIA began testing the new inspection system a year ago. "All I can say is that with the new system that has been set up, there's always an adjustment phase," Dr. Arsenault said, when asked about Mr. Kingston's criticism.

"We expect the companies to be responsible and not just go through the motions to placate the inspectors."

The Conservative government's changes are the subject of heated controversy as academics and the opposition express concerns over the few details that have emerged so far. The 2008 budget indicated the CFIA was asked to find savings to pay for new programs. The leaked document indicated savings would be found by transferring some meat-inspection duties to industry.

Mr. Kingston said the new paperwork demands mean inspectors are no longer doing walkabouts of plants or watching whether plant workers properly clean the equipment. "By the time they finish doing the paperwork, they've got very little time to actually look at anything and it bothers them."

In the United States, companies have the option of pasteurizing the meat, adding compounds such as lactic acid that kill listeria, or doing extensive testing. In Canada, federal rules and regulations don't spell out these options, says University of Alberta food microbiologist Lynn McMullen.

She said companies don't like pasteurizing their finished product in hot water because liquid in the meat can seep out, and consumers don't like soggy-looking cold cuts.

Listeria is deadly only in high doses, Dr. Warriner noted.

"A big outbreak like this, definitely something went wrong," Dr. Warriner said. "The fact is listeria needs a very high dose ... How did such meat products get contaminated with such a high level of listeria in order to cause so much illness? It needs over a billion cells to actually cause illness."

By the numbers

29 Confirmed cases of listeriosis

across Canada (22 in Ontario,

four in B.C., two in Quebec

and one in Saskatchewan)

30 Suspected cases (16 in Ontario,

10 in Quebec and four in Alberta)

6 Confirmed deaths caused

by the outbreak (all in Ontario)

11 Suspected deaths (Six in Ontario, two in Alberta, one in B.C., one in Sask. and one in Quebec)

Public Health Agency of Canada, Alberta Health and Wellness