Emails a window on listeria outbreak
November 8, 2008
Comments on this story
(6)
Robert Cribb
STAFF REPORTER
The first Friday in August, as a listeria outbreak quietly brewed at Maple Leaf's Bartor Rd. plant in North York, company president Michael McCain was issuing a "belt tightening" call to arms.
With dismal financial results in the first two quarters, cost cutting and a hiring freeze were top priorities. Project Braveheart – a plan to save money by cutting discretionary spending – was firmly in place.
In his regular Friday email to thousands of his employees, McCain shared details of his week, projects underway and upcoming challenges.
It is a kind of candid diary, peppered with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and exclamation points, that never passes through an editor, McCain said in a recent interview.
The memos possess "a level of frankness that we would probably not replicate in the outside world," he said. "It's meant as a private, intimate conversation between the people of my organization and myself."
Missing from his chatty email on Friday, Aug. 1, was any reference to internal test results from the Bartor Rd. processing plant that would soon emerge as ground zero of Canada's listeria outbreak.
In the interview at the company boardroom, McCain acknowledged there were positive tests showing up at the plant prior to the outbreak being known.
But they were nothing out of the ordinary and not enough to trigger any alarm bells.
Through a series of company emails and an exclusive interview with the Star and CBC, a picture emerges of how McCain and his company were at first slow to recognize the threat that would become Canada's worst contaminated meat outbreak, claiming at least 20 lives and sickening hundreds.
Once engaged, McCain shut down the offending plant, launched a public relations campaign and privately railed against class action lawyers who will sue over "tummy ache stuff."
McCain was raised in the New Brunswick-based McCain food empire started by his father, Wallace, and uncle, Harrison. Their company grew into one of the biggest French fry producers on the planet.
When a bitter dispute forced Wallace out of the executive ranks he went west to Ontario, purchasing Maple Leaf. Michael became president in 1995.
Michael, respected in Bay Street circles as an aggressive leader with a hint of Maritime charm, has spent more than a decade transforming a once tired brand into a national food giant.
As he does at the end of many of his weekly memos, McCain, a 49-year-old father of five, lays out his weekend schedule.
"My plan is to be at the cottage on Georgian Bay, lots of water sports and boating," he wrote, "some great family time, a few bottles of good wine and some wonderful meals."
He signs off each missive, "Leadership Edge, Michael."
Well below McCain's radar, a troubling number of listeria cases across Ontario were starting to point toward Maple Leaf.
On Aug. 12, a Maple Leaf manager received a call from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) saying they were looking into sliced meat from the company's Bartor Rd. plant in North York.
The next day, Maple Leaf sent letters to its distributors warning them to hold shipments of certain products.
It was a common enough occurrence that it didn't reach the vacationing McCain, he said in the interview. High food costs and troubled financial markets were affecting the company's bottom line. His Aug. 15 memo continues the cost-cutting theme with updates on "scrubbing our budgets and looking at what we can do to tighten the belt this year" including printing documents on both sides of the paper, cutting consultant costs (for whom McCain writes he has a "healthy disregard") and cancelling catering at company meetings.
McCain told the Star/CBC that he didn't learn of the suspect meat until the next day, Aug. 16, when he got a late-evening call in Georgian Bay on the weekend.
"(The manager) told me that they had received a call from the CFIA and they found three Sure Slice products that tested positive for listeria monocytogenes."
It was certainly bad news. But it triggered no sense of urgency or doom. He stayed in Georgian Bay for the weekend and returned to the office Monday, as usual. ``My first reaction was, okay, it's unfortunate, disappointing. It happens to all brands. Every brand in America has had this occur ... We didn't know anything about illness or health or any connection at that time."
From that moment forward, the outbreak – and the fortunes of one of Canada's most prominent companies – went into hyper drive.
An initial recall on a handful of products was issued Aug. 17.
Two days later, the CFIA called, warning of a possible link between Maple Leaf meat and a listeria outbreak that had led to illnesses and at least one death.
"That's when everything changed for us," he said in the interview.
In McCain's internal memos, the first reference to listeria comes on Aug. 20 when he announced a "breach" in the company's commitment to food safety. He wrote: "There have been recent confirmed cases of listeriosis, but so far these cases have not been linked to our products."
With a media storm building, McCain sent his second memo in two days, reassuring his staff on Aug. 21.
"This isn't something we should ever want to be in the news about, but we have no reason to hang our heads – we're doing what is the right thing to do in this situation ... acting responsibly and with extraordinary precaution," he wrote.
For the first time, he acknowledges that two products had tested positive. (At the time, there was an abnormally high number of listeria cases and a confirmed death.) In his email, McCain plays down the connection to Maple Leaf.
"We DO NOT have factual linkage that these are related to our product, although we could not say it is impossible, given our own positive (albeit small sample) test results."
The next day's memo opens with a sombre tone.
"Well, you can easily bet this has NOT been one of the most pleasant weeks in my 30 odd years in the food industry," it begins. "People have gotten sick and one elderly person is deceased ... We are still in the middle of the storm."
He now says two more samples of meat have tested positive for listeria and the CFIA had warned of a connection to illnesses and death.
"Sadly," he wrote, "the media have made this into an extensive story."
McCain writes that reporters had failed to address the reality of listeria.
"Eradicating listeria from a plant is akin to eradicating the flu from the office – we have best practice systems in place to reduce it to the absolute lowest level because it's our reputation at stake, but eradication is just not possible."
He urges his staff to stay positive, support the company and its products and focus on recovering from the outbreak.
Two days later, McCain's worst fears are confirmed.
"I am deeply saddened to advise you that test results have been returned, and we have been advised the strain of listeria bacteria which caused the illness and death of several consumers matches the listeria strain identified in some Maple Leaf food products," reads the Aug. 23 memo. "Of course my heart goes out to all those who have become ill and to the families who have lost loved ones."
He announced an expanded recall of all products from the plant.
On Aug. 26, McCain's frustration with the media spotlight is growing. Press coverage was "extensive" he writes. And the published death count is rising fast, partly because public health agencies decided to "reclassify" the number of deaths associated with listeriosis.
The four reported deaths were up to 12 with the addition of people who died with listeria in their blood whether or not it was confirmed as the cause of death.
McCain calls the reclassification "disturbing," adding "these are elderly patients with multiple health challenges."
Any of their other ailments could have contributed to their deaths, he said in the interview.
"I don't want to be crass about this, but I was told by the health professionals that because these individuals had multiple health challenges, they were vulnerable to all of those health challenges."
Publicly, McCain expressed deep regret for the losses of life at a high-profile news conference a day later, on Aug. 27.
"It's a very difficult, tragic thing for the victims of this and I want to address ... those families. We feel very deeply saddened by this."
On Sept. 6, the metaphor in his weekly memo was light breaking through darkness.
"My instinct would say we're coming out the other side of this now," he wrote. "I can see a sunrise on the horizon."
The story was moving off the front pages and there was widespread support for how Maple Leaf handled "this terrible situation."
McCain's gamble to speak directly to the public had paid off, he wrote.
Meanwhile, daily calls to the company's emergency hotline decreased to 600 from a high of 9,000. In all, there were 50,000 calls during the first three weeks of the recall.
Reflecting on the past few weeks, he wrote: "I can't imagine that the tranquility of a July weekend in Georgian Bay seems so darn long ago now! But, that's the way it is."
A week later, with a federal election looming, the media appeared to have moved on, "which certainly is good news," McCain wrote on Sept. 13. But polling was showing many consumers "don't fully accept" that the problem has been rectified. So, the company was preparing a television spot featuring McCain, to be posted on YouTube.
Meanwhile, class action lawyers were quickly moving in.
Citing his own "extremely direct" approach with the public, McCain wrote: "Class action lawyers prey on such behaviour to use it for the purpose of fault finding, so they can bolster their case, in the process collecting outrageous fees."
He wrote that he ignored legal advice to refrain from public comments that would expose Maple Leaf to the "scourge of class action guys."
Meanwhile, plans were underway at Maple Leaf to set a "new bar for food safety standards in the country."
On Sept. 17, McCain spoke at a press conference to announce the Bartor Rd. plant was reopening, although meat would not be shipped into the marketplace without a CFIA green light. He was thoroughly briefed by the company's communications staff on handling troublesome reporters, he wrote in a memo two days later.
"It is amazing how – even when one thinks they know the subject cold – how a reporter can drive a person to say unwanted, or inappropriate things. A news reporter is more interested in a headline, than the accuracy of the story."
There was more venom for the lawyers filing class action suits against the company on behalf of those who claim family members died as a result of eating the meat and others who claim they were badly sickened by it, some with life-long ailments.
"Whether guilty or not, we have accountability for some compensation. I absolutely respect that – we are highly supportive. However, that isn't where a class action lawyer makes his or her claim, or their money. They collect outrageous (multiple millions) in fees – miles beyond normal legal fees – to try and extract money for large, large bodies of people who make the faintest, thinnest of claims of so called emotional stress or illness (tummy ache stuff) ... There is no question it is absolute fraud ... Both the attorneys who make millions from this, and those that participate in these illegitimate classes nauseate me."
In the interview, McCain said the memo is a reflection of what he continues to believe.
"I find it difficult to deal with risk where there's no connection, no proof, solely on the basis of things that are as common as the common cold when those things overshadow the genuine responsibility."
McCain's Sept. 19 memo gushes with confidence, repeating the wave of congratulations he has received over the company's handling of the crisis and quoting the late American actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed in a riding accident in 1995.
"A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles."
The sentiment applied, he wrote, to the many heroes at Maple Leaf.
A week after the Bartor Rd. plant re-opened, things are in "adjustment," McCain wrote, saying "it's really awkward, almost painful in the beginning" trying to adopt new routines and protocols to strengthen food safety.
His main concern in the memo was aimed at journalists who were "crawling all over the authorities" for the level of industry oversight in Canada, calling it a "terribly misguided" message. He feared the publicity could scare off customers both in Canada and abroad.
"Thousands of jobs in Canada depend on those foreign customers having confidence in us," he wrote. "Even if we did have dirty laundry (which we don't) it sure wouldn't be wise to air that debate for their viewing pleasure."
Such public debate runs the risk of triggering an "overreaction" by authorities that regulate the industry – a risk he planned to fight by lobbying government officials.
"People always have to get their head around `risk management' versus `risk elimination' in everything we do.
"We're going to have to spend some time in Ottawa getting them to see this also."
On the roller coaster ride that was McCain's work life over the past three months, another big dip emerged in early October when test results at the highly scrubbed and scrutinized Bartor Rd. plant turned up more listeria.
McCain appeared before the media yet again, this time to explain that the findings were the result of an unusually exhaustive testing regime in place at the plant.
But in his weekly memo, he acknowledged that the news was likely going to impact the "recovery curve" negatively.
The outbreak's damage to the bottom line became clear two weeks ago when third quarter results showed a $12.9 million loss, brought on by a $14 million recall bill. And financial results for September and October were "awful" he wrote in an Oct. 24 memo.
In the meantime, the crisis prompted Maple Leaf to tighten safety rules. The new protocol required immediate quarantine of product following a positive bacteria test on surfaces in the plant. If, after cleaning, there is a second positive, the meat is then tested.
Previously, it took three subsequent positive tests to trigger product quarantine and testing.
(The Star/CBC reported yesterday that the CFIA has drafted a new listeria testing regime that requires companies to test plant surfaces, quarantine and test meat after two positive tests, report any positives to inspectors and undergo tests on ready-to-eat meat by inspectors three times a year.)
In his Oct. 24 email, McCain flags the coming protocols, noting that while his company will accept stricter rules "the government would have a serious challenge of enforcement both domestically and with imports."
In the interview, McCain said he supports changes that enhance safety as long as they are applied consistently.
Asked about mandatory labels on processed meat warning vulnerable consumers – such as pregnant women and the elderly – about the inherent risks of the meat, he said it would be a "possibility."
He also said he is open to requiring meat producers to make public bacterial test results.
As damaging as the listeria outbreak has been for Maple Leaf, the company could recover in as little as a year, McCain said. Internal company polling shows more than 90 per cent of Canadians have a high regard for how the company weathered the storm, he said.
And about 80 per cent say they'll buy Maple Leaf products again in the future.
But with class action lawyers seeking to represent thousands of victims of the outbreak, new regulations and ongoing publicity, McCain's optimism remains weighed down.
"There was a breach in (our) responsibility," McCain said quietly at one point. "And so there's a certain sadness that goes with that. And I think we all wore that, day in and day out."
Toronto Star