KEY POINTS:
Officials charged with overseeing public health and ensuring the safety of our food have some explaining to do over their handling of two listeria contaminations this month.
It's bad enough that the contaminations occurred at the same company - Leonard's Superior Smallgoods. But it is worse that Leonard's contaminated food has been consumed by the public during this month at at least 31 cafeterias in the upper North Island, and neither the Auckland Regional Public Health Service nor the New Zealand Food Safety Authority will tell us where.
Nor will they tell us the level of the listeria contamination. At this point, they don't know if the food had a large or a small amount of the extremely resilient bacteria present. Worse, both organisations have been extremely slow in providing information.
The Food Safety Authority has a "Recalls and Alerts" section on its website, but as of 3.30pm yesterday there was nothing about the listeria contaminations.
Auckland Regional Public Health hasn't been particularly proactive either. Its press release for the first contamination came out on February 21 and didn't name Leonard's as the culprit. That was three days after Waikato Hospital confirmed listeria monocyotogenes in Leonard's sliced beef and withdrew it from its cafeterias and patient menus. Elsewhere, by the time the recall went out, most of the bad food had been eaten.
The organisation wasn't any better at informing the public about the second contamination - in corned silverside - only putting out a press release after the Herald called on Monday evening.
The only groups acting responsibly in this sorry saga are the hospitals.
It was Health Waikato's Food and Nutrition Service which found the first contamination and took immediate action.
And it was Waitemata DHB, after the second contamination - discovered in tests ordered by distributor Wilson-Hellaby - which took the precaution of removing all processed cold meat products from its cafeterias and patient menus.
We are told Leonard's is now under investigation and has ceased distributing all bulk and sliced corned silverside, roast beef and other sliced meats until their safety can be assured. About time. But it really isn't good enough. It is true eating listeria-contaminated food in low levels is unlikely to pose too serious a risk to healthy people.
But for YOPIs - young, old, pregnant or the immune-compromised - this is potentially fatal. For that group, knowing where they might have eaten contaminated food would be useful information.
Chris Barton is a senior Herald feature writer
