Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, witnesses.
Through the agriculture committee, I had the distinct privilege of actually sitting on the subcommittee on food safety, which came out of the report I have in front of me. It talked about a number of issues that brought us to the 57 recommendations that Ms. Weatherill brought forward. I'm very happy to hear the comments about how that is moving and what has been accomplished, and at the end of the day within a very great timeline, with some of the complexities, they're actually all going to be met.
My understanding is that this is an agreement among all three agencies on how you're working together to make this happen. Would that be a fair statement? Thank you.
In the report, Dr. Brian Evans again said:
What was critical to this whole event was this determination at the end of the day that in spite of cleaning and disinfection and breaking down of equipment according to manufacturers' specifications, beyond the cutting and contact surfaces, a new threat, a new issue, was identified in this particular circumstance, which we had no knowledge about, that could colonize deep into the equipment.
Then Michael McCain, on numerous occasions, said,
“No amount of inspection, be it higher or lower, would have changed the outcome. If you want to go to the exact cause of this outbreak, it was not about a lack of inspection. It wasn't about the lack of product testing or a lack of inspectors.” Witnesses directly involved in the Maple Leaf plant repeated Mr. McCain's opinion that the inspectors at the plant did their jobs and were adequate.
Is this a true statement?
I'll talk to Dr. Butler-Jones first.