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Sunday, October 12, 2014

2.7 Canadians Die Each Year from SM's Contaminated Chicken

Based on scientific, objective evidence, we can reasonably conclude that approximately 2.7 Canadians are killed each year by contaminated chicken purchased in Canada.  Since the Supply Management system has about 99.96% market share, this government regulated, approved system run by the #ChickenMafia can (and should) be held fully responsible for those needless deaths.

This follows on my previous Blog posting "Deadly Canadian Chicken" which explored food-borne illness, and how poultry has been in the top 3 sources of food poisoning for decades.

The calculation of 2.7 Canadian deaths per year from SM poultry is based on the following data from objective scientific sources:

  1. The deaths from foodborne illness are not always the direct cause of death.  Sometimes people die from the complications caused or contributed to by the food poisoning.  For example, one 26 year old man died of a heart attack that resulted from a severe bout of Salmonella Heidelberg food poisoning (Ref. 1).  However, there is no mistaking the signs that this was food poisoning that started the problems.
     
  2. There are 35.54 million Canadians as of 2014 (Ref. 2)
  3. There is no readily available statistics on salmonella foodborne illnesses in Canada, but we can use US data as a proxy until Canada can produce our own data.  The US data says there are 0.9 cases per year of salmonella per 100,000 population, of which 71% are hospitalized and 5% died. (Ref. 3)
     
  4. US Centre of Disease Control has tracked cases of foodborne illness from 1998 to 2008, and found that between 10.1% to 29.2% of all cases of Salmonella poisoning were caused by contaminated poultry (Ref. 4)
  5. The geometric mean of the range 10.1 to 29.2 is 17.17%
  6. The calculation is as follows:   (35.54 Million)/(100,000)*(0.05)*(0.1717)=3.05 Canadians killed each year from poultry contaminated by Salmonella.
  7. Canadians consume 4.2 kg/yr/person of turkey, and 31.2 kg/yr/person of chicken.  Therefore chicken represents 88.14% of the poultry marketshare on a weighted average.  Therefore Canadian chicken is responsible for 2.7 deaths each year from Salmonella poisoning and/or the resulting complications.
  8. Since the SM #ChickenMafia has over 99% marketshare, and their chicken is 10 times more contaminated than the chicken raised by Small Flockers and processed on the farm for personal consumption (see Blog posting Hope for the Mega Meat Manufacturers? where I compare the chicken factory 3,600 CFU vs. the Small Flocker on-farm result of 133 CFU) , it seems reasonable to attribute at least 99% of these deaths to the #ChickenMafia.  On a weighted average CFU count, #ChickenMafia puts out 99.99852% of the total contamination into the marketplace, just 0.001478% by Small Flockers.
  9. Therefore Canada's #ChickenMafia (Chicken Farmers of Canada, Chicken Farmers of Ontario, and all the other provincial boards) are fully responsible for 2.7 deaths per year from chicken contaminated with Salmonella.
  10. Note that chicken is contaminated by many more pathogens than just Salmonella, so the real problem is much worse than what has been calculated here.
So what is the government going to do about an approved, highly regulated system that kills 2.7 Canadians each year?

I previously raised the issue of contaminated food, contrary to Canada's Food & Drug Act, but the Federal bureaucrats ignored the issue (see Blog posting "If It's Contaminated, Is It Food?").

Does it make it any easier or better now that we have reasonably estimated that 2.7 Canadians per year lose their life while both the Federal and Provincial bureaucrats fiddle?

If it was one of your family members killed by contaminated chicken knowingly sold in Canada, would that be OK with you?





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