Federal food-safety regulator launches inspection blitz after deadly listeria outbreak

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is embarking on a mass campaign of inspections after last year’s deadly listeria outbreak in plant-based milks, and will examine more than 2,400 food-production facilities that are licensed to operate but have not yet been inspected.

The blitz, which the CFIA is calling the largest co-ordinated inspection effort ever undertaken in the manufactured-food sector, comes after an outbreak at a facility in Pickering, Ont., that killed three people in the summer of 2024, and sickened dozens more. The factory was never scrutinized for listeria protocols because it had been deemed low risk by the regulator.