After the listeriosis deaths the government called for an extensive independent investigation. That lead to 57 recommendations.
Last fall the federal government said it would act on all the recommendations and spend $75 million more over three years to improve food safety.
It pledged to hire 166 new food safety staff --- 70 of them to inspect ready to eat meat plants. The problem has been that as quickly as the government has hired new inspectors -- old inspectors have left - so the net effect is the overall number has not increased.
And only $1 million of the $75 million pledged is committed to be spent in the next year.
There's nothing that's come to fruition yet as a result of what happened," Bob Kingston the President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada said.
"I guess the problem is the same folks that were overworked prior to the incident are the same ones that are charged with figuring out what to do with the 57 recommendations. So I guess the biggest change is the work load has actually increased," he said.
PSAC which represents the workers says we need a thousand more inspectors to cover all the food plants in the country. Seventy more -- when we get them -- is an increase of only about 6 per cent.
So are we still at risk? Sheila Weatherill, who investigated the outbreak and made the recommendations, said in her report that "food borne illnesses are now the largest class of emerging infectious diseases in the country and until the system is remedied, events like those of the summer of 2008 remain a real risk."
