What's in the beef?

Warning! E. coli is in the beef. The CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) has found out that the dangerous toxin know as E Coli has been making a lot of people sick. It turns out that the XL foods of Brooks, Alberta are where all the problems started. Luckily we had the CFIA on the case. They found out what's wrong and now the USA is taking over the operation of the brooks plant so no more beef will be infected. We were safe from those bacteria because of the work of the CFIA agents. But what might happen if we didn't have that team? What would we do without them? Would we still be safe?

No. I don't think we'll EVER be safe from the E.coil out break if there were no government food inspection agency. What will happen is that people will continue to be sick and the population would decrease. In the article it says “In the U.S, an estimated 73,000 people a year are sickened by the bacteria, and 61 die." That was what was already happening when the CFIA began to investigate. Just imagine how many people would suffer even more if we didn't have a CFIA team? Think about it, if we didn't know where that disease was coming from we don't even know if it contained E.coli or not. We might not even now if it was even THAT harmful. Since so many people are sick and dead. The population would go down as well.

The reason that make me fell reassured about the safety of Canada's food supply is that CFIA has made sure that the problems that had made people sick has been resolved and that the XL foods said they would make sure it never happens again. The reasons that make me feel less certain about the safety of the food I eat is that not all people ate that beef or other foods that are contaminated with E.coli to have that disease. It was passed on, more and more people were becoming sick because it was spread across the country. That's the dangerous thing. Another thing is that the serious infection is what made the disease spread. In the article it says" Symptoms can show up within hours or may take up to 10 days to appear." and " Some people show no symptoms at all but can still pass on the disease." That means when you don't seem to have symptoms you would think you are okay and then accidently pass it on to someone else. Also when someone doesn’t show symptoms at all and you think they are perfectly fine, the disease will pass on to you when you have caught their germs. Scary things like those could happen any day.

Man, I don't know how we would have survived the disease if there was no CFIA team. That would result horribly. Fortunately, we do have a CFIA team and they saved the day. “The agency said it was confident that the problems that had lead to the contamination of beef had been resolved." That was what the article had said. So I guess we are safe from the disease. At least for now.