Plant-based milk recall: Class-action lawsuits filed over Listeria outbreak

Two class-action lawsuits have been filed against the manufacturers of plant-based milks recalled in Canada over potential Listeria contamination that has left two people dead.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued the nationwide recall on July 8 for 18 beverages under the Silk and Great Value brands, manufactured by Danone Inc. and Walmart Canada Corp.

The agency urged Canadians not to drink the recalled beverages with expiry dates up to and including Oct. 4 over a possible Listeria outbreak, a bacteria commonly found in soil that can cause symptoms like diarrhea, abdominal cramps, nausea and vomiting.

In serious cases, it can even cause death – and two people in Ontario have died from the outbreak.

“Canadians should be able to trust that the food and beverages that they consume are safe and do not present a serious risk of harm to individuals,” said Saro Turner, partner at Slater Vecchio LLP, a Vancouver-based law firm that filed a class-action lawsuit.

“This lawsuit seeks to hold the companies that distributed these allegedly contaminated beverages accountable for their conduct in Canada, and to obtain compensation for individuals who got sick or suffered economic losses.”

Slater Vecchio LLP, which filed the class action in British Columbia Monday against Danone and Walmart Canada, is not the only law firm that has filed litigation.

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Montreal-based law firm LPC Avocats filed in Quebec on July 18. The proposed class in both lawsuits is for anybody in Canada who purchases the products that were impacted by the recall.

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) says 12 people have fallen ill to date, with 10 cases in Ontario, one in Quebec and the other in Nova Scotia.

Nine people have had to be hospitalized, and two have died.

Most of the illnesses reported were in adults aged 60 years old or older and in women, PHAC said. Overall, people who have fallen sick in this outbreak are between 37 and 89 years of age.

“More recent illnesses may continue to be reported in the outbreak because there is a period between when a person becomes ill and when the illness is reported to public health officials,” the agency said.

Lori Burrows, professor of biochemistry and biomedical sciences at McMaster University, recently told Global News the outbreak was not ordinary.

“The unusual thing about this is the plant-based milk source of the infections, because people … think of plant-based milks as kind of a healthy alternative,” Burrows said.

Lawrence Goodridge, director of the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety at the University of Guelph, said Listeria can be found everywhere in the soil, but he “can’t recall another time where there was an outbreak linked to plant-based milks.”

In 2008, Canada experienced its worst listeriosis outbreak, with 57 total cases confirmed and 22 deaths traced back to deli meats produced at a Maple Leaf Foods facility in Toronto.

Burrows said the common denominator is “always the processing plant.”

“These plants are big, they’re moving a lot of food through a lot of different lines either slicing them or in this case, transporting them for packaging through hoses or tubes and all of that has to be decontaminated routinely,” she said.

Milks usually undergo a heat treatment to get rid of potential Listeria or any other bacteria, so it’s likely that there was some of kind breakdown in that process, Goodridge said.

He said it’s also possible that there was some kind of contamination after the heat treatment when the containers were being filled.

— with files from Saba Aziz

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