St. John’s chicken plant’s federal license pulled

A St. John’s, N.L. chicken slaughter and processing plant has been handed a suspension over the consistency of its food safety systems.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Friday it has suspended the operating license for Country Ribbon Inc., which markets fresh and frozen chicken, chicken parts, appetizers and deli meats under the Country Ribbon, Pinehill and Cabot Farms brands.

The suspension doesn’t involve any product recalls, CFIA and the company emphasized in separate statements Friday.

The suspension, CFIA said, comes after the company “failed to implement corrective measures required by regulation to ensure the safety of the meat products produced at the establishment.”

“Adequate controls for food safety were not being reliably implemented in the facility on a consistent basis,” CFIA said. The plant’s license will be restored only after the company has “fully implemented the necessary corrective actions.”

Country Ribbon, on its website Friday, said the license suspension relates to the “required completion of improvements to our Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) program.”

HACCP is a preventive system focused on spotting, fixing and preventing food safety hazards, be they biological, chemical or physical, in a food plant’s processes. CFIA since 2005 has required federally-licensed meat processors to have HACCP systems in place.

“Confident”

The company, which employs up to 300 people at its plant in St. John’s’ Pleasantville area, said it’s working with CFIA inspectors over the weekend “so we may resume production as soon as possible.”

In an update Saturday morning, the company said it’s working with its HACCP consultant “to finalize an approach for completion of improvements to the company’s HACCP program including administration, increased monitoring, root-cause analysis and record-keeping.”

Country Ribbon, which bills itself as the province’s only “fully-integrated” chicken producer and processor, said Saturday it’s “confident we can resolve this matter and return to regular operations after the long weekend.”

Country Ribbon’s operations in St. John’s date back to 1963, when they were part of a Crown-owned broiler and hog processing business.

The province privatized the plant in 1997 in a sale to Integrated Poultry Ltd. (IPL), which went into receivership in 2000. Co-op Atlantic and ACA Co-operative bought the plant and business that year and now jointly own the Country Ribbon company. — AGCanada.com Network