Cancel Thanksgiving - More Baloney From Maple Leaf?

It's just not a good year to be named McCain. That just doesn't apply to John McCain, but to Michael McCain. Mike is the president of Maple Leaf Foods, and they've had a spot of trouble with listeriosis. In fact listeriosis has become as connected with Maple Leaf as melamine has with China ("I can't imagine how that paint additive got in the milk. Perhaps we were distracted by planning for the Olympics??"). To give you an indication of how much of a problem Mr McCain has had with the troublesome listeria monocytogenes bacteria, there have been over 20 listeriosis related deaths in Ontario so far. Things got so bad that the Maple Leaf plant was closed down on Aug 20, to facilitate a hunt for the deadly little nuisance bacteria! 191 products got yanked, and the whole misfortune cost Maple Leaf over 20 mill.

Well you can imagine Mr McCain's dismay when 4 more incidents of listeriosis were detected in the Maple Leaf plant. That's probably what motivated Mr McCain to give a special emergency news conference, to reassure consumers that they are not potential mass poisoning victims, and before the Maple Leaf stock starts dropping faster than the rest of the stock market. In the course of that news conference, McCain stated that if any plant in Canada is under the microscope (and the gun too), then it was Maple Leaf - (yet these outbreaks keep occurring. Maybe they need a stronger microscope?). Further more, he mouthed some unconvincing statistics to the effect that less than one in 35 million Canadians would be at risk (not counting the 20 poor souls who have already beat the odds). In other words Maple Leaf would have to be doing a McDonald's volume of business to start raking up more causalities.

Now to give Maple Leaf full credit, the listeriosis never made it to the market place. They were intercepted before Maple Leaf could rack up a lucky 21 fatalities. That's not for lack of market saturation either, because in samples taken from nursing homes, prior to the big shut down, two thirds were listeriosis infected. Those products include ham, corned beef, turkey and roast beef . I don't know how Maple Leaf could assuage fears on this score, except by pointing out that this only effected useless seniors, and not the general public (I'm being facetious). Well Maple Leaf and their hapless head Michael McCain are gonna have to think of something and quick, because Canadian Thanksgiving is right around the corner. That's a peak turkey sales period! Perhaps Maple Leaf could try announcing that suspect meat products are being diverted/donated to homeless shelters?? Would you swallow that?