Authorities looked into uninspected meat as part of the investigation into last year’s daycare E. coli outbreak in the Calgary area.
The outbreak last September affected 16 daycares in the Calgary area and one in Okotkos that sourced meals from the same central kitchen.
Rick Hanson, chair of the review panel, said during a July 29 press conference that investigators examined how uninspected meat and other products might make it into the food chain.
“Without addressing the sale and the production of food products, we couldn't assure people that it wouldn’t impact the downstream end of things,” Hanson said.
He said they learned there are people ignoring regulations for safe harvesting, processing and butchering of meat.
“We had to look at illegal abattoirs, we need to look at what was going on in, particularly, rural areas of the province,” he said.
In some cases, animals are purchased illegally, processed in unsanitary conditions and then packaged and sold.
“That meat is finding its way into the two big cities and other jurisdictions, and people are unaware at times that they’re potentially purchasing meat that has not gone through a proper inspection process.”
Hanson said there is no direct link to the daycare E. coli outbreak.
However, Dr. Laura McDougall, senior medical officer of health with AHS, said there were 11 other cases of E. coli that were not connected to the daycare outbreak, but that shared the same genetic footprint.
Four of the 11 cases were found to have had recently eaten privately sold meat, but there was no other connection, McDougall said.
All the meat used in the central kitchen involved in the daycare outbreak came from an inspected source, she said.
“What exactly that connection is of this other circulating strain and the daycare, and the kitchen connected to them, that’s what still remains unknown,” she said.
In April, RCMP in southern Alberta announced an investigation into the illegal slaughter and sale of livestock and said the investigation began in November.
In June, four people were charged after police confirmed that sheep and goats were unlawfully slaughtered on rural properties in Mountain View, Rocky View and Wheatland counties, and then delivered to stores and residences in Calgary.