A groundbreaking investigation by The Globe and Mail shattered the illusion that Canada’s food inspection agency is keeping the food supply safe and sparked a government review of the country’s entire inspection system.

In the summer of 2024, public health officials attributed at least three avoidable deaths and multiple cases of serious illness to an outbreak of listeria at Joriki Inc., an Ontario processing plant owned by French dairy giant Danone. Stores across Canada pulled millions of cartons of plant-based milks off shelves, and authorities traced the specific strain of listeria bacteria to an illness as far back as August 2023. For 11 months, no one at Joriki had addressed the problem, and no government official had examined the plant for food safety.

Through dogged research and reporting, Grant Robertson and Kathryn Blaze Baum revealed the shortcomings at Joriki and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) that led to this tragic failure. Not only had Joriki failed to comply with its duty to report a listeria finding, but the government had not inspected the Joriki plant in at least five years, even though CFIA guidelines required an annual inspection. 

As the Globe team discovered, the CFIA had long been grappling with a shortage of inspectors to adequately monitor the country’s growing food-processing sector. Instead of hiring more inspectors, the agency had decided to use an algorithm to create new inspection priorities. Using much unverified data from the food processors themselves, the CFIA’s algorithm set two priorities: producers of meat-processing plants; and—because a problem could spark a trade dispute—companies that export to the U.S.

Directing scarce human resources toward these areas left other lower priority facilities, like Joriki’s, and the public exposed. What’s more, The Globe and Mail investigation showed that one-fifth of Canada’s food manufacturing plants, more than 1,400 sites, have not yet been accurately assessed for risk. As a result, the algorithm has given them a default rating of low priority, meaning they are not inspected either.

Robertson and Blaze Baum developed a wide network of sources, including former inspectors, food safety experts, and employees of the CFIA who spoke out at great risk to themselves. They also pored over hundreds of pages of documents that detailed how these food processing facilities were expected to sanitize, test for and report contamination, the decreased supervision of these now self-policing plants, and how the CFIA’s flawed algorithm was intended to work. In addition to an historic pattern of food safety problems, the reporters discovered unfair treatment of Joriki’s workers. 

There was a cloud of legal scrutiny over this investigation and constant threats of litigation. However, the greatest obstacle was stonewalling by the CFIA. When government officials discovered some of the information that Robertson and Blaze Baum had unearthed, they refused all interview requests.

The Globe team was, however, able to tell the victims’ heart-wrenching stories. An active 76-year-old Toronto woman suffered a slight headache after drinking Silk unsweetened coconut milk, then experienced fever, vomiting and confusion. She died within a week, before doctors could diagnose and treat her for listeriosis. A 27-year-old man who drank Silk almond milk ended up in intensive care and was left partially paralyzed by severe meningitis believed to have been caused by listeriosis. And a 32-year-old was 18 weeks pregnant when she became violently ill, causing a miscarriage. She tested positive for listeriosis, and an autopsy found that listeria was present in the placenta, the amniotic fluid, and the fetus. The mother had been drinking smoothies made with Silk oat milk.

Following the Globe’s investigation, Health Minister Mark Holland ordered the Inspector General and the CFIA to review how the Agency’s algorithm was designed, and how it should be changed or overhauled. The review will be completed this summer, and it will have a direct impact on changes to Canada’s food safety system. Despite the resultant shuttering and bankruptcy of all Joriki’s operations in Canada, several class action lawsuits aimed at compensating the victims or their families are moving forward.