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CFIA Assessment of Establishment 38, XL Foods Inc.
Annex C: Letter to CFIA from XL Foods Inc.

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Barbara Jordan,
Associate Vice President, Operations Branch,
Canadian Food Inspection Agency

October 18, 2012

Ms. Jordan;

RE: XL Foods' Affirmation of Commitment to Food Safety

XL Foods Inc. is committed for converting the cultural behaviour of all management related to Food Safety throughout the organization by the implementation of the following changes from the top down through the organization.

Senior management will verbally state in a meeting to all staff, and post the letter of commitment for all employees to read and understand. That the safety of all food products manufactured in the facility is the utmost importance to provide safe and wholesome food to our customers and the end consumer. All employees (top down) understand that the basic fundamentals of sanitary dress, intervention strategies, job requirements and expectations they must perform to ensure safe handling practices are employed by all employees within the facility.

Food Safety organizational structure – see the attached organizational chart within the facility. All Management has responsibilities for overseeing the foods safety program and ensuring compliance to these programs and procedures.

The facility is committed to becoming recertified under the requirements of the Global Food Safety initiative (GFSI), the facility lost certification of the BRC program in October by not completing the audit. This audit has been rescheduled for early 2013 by the certification body.

The management and hourly work force will participate in enhanced training sessions related to food safety to improve their know and understanding of important principles. With the use on new observation tools such as Remove Video Auditing (RVA), Management will be notified of discrepancies in performance and will be able to council the employee in one on one situation with video evaluation results. Performance can be documents and tracked as to high performers or poor performers. This provides Senior management and Supervisory level management with tools to assess individual employee or job performance rating system.

Intervention strategies will continue to be assessed. Once operational we ill re-validate the Hot water wash intervention due to recent extension of the cabinet and the fabrication primal intervention where a conversation of the chemical to Lactic Acid has occurred. The company has also committed to modifying the Pre-Evisceration Carcass wash (PECS) cabinet to a Hot water wash that CFIA provided approval on September 14, 2012. This PECS hot water was will be installed in the facility by February 2013. This time frame is needed to build the necessary infrastructure to support the cabinet with the needed hot water volumes, recirculation tank and ventilation system to ensure we meet the food safety policies of the company and CFIA.

The plant management and QA staff will provide prompt and compete responses to CFIA on all issues. We will commit to providing these responses in a timely manner and ask necessary clarifying questions as needed to provide the desired information in an efficient concise manner, Warren Klymchuk is the technical Services Manager at the plant and the first point of contact for CFIA.

Everyone has a responsibility to perform and ask questions or bring concerns to the management.

Sincerely,

Brian Nilsson Co-CEO
Lee Nilsson Co-CEO

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