Walking into the North Shore Food Co-op on a misty Vancouver morning, I’m struck by the quiet anxiety hovering around the dairy alternative section. Where shoppers once casually browsed oat and almond milks, they now scrutinize labels with phone flashlights, checking batch numbers against recalled products lists on their phones.
“I switched to plant milk for health reasons,” says Mei Lin, a 38-year-old teacher filling her basket carefully. “Now I’m wondering if I’ve been trading one risk for another.”
Lin’s concerns aren’t unfounded. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced last week an unprecedented inspection blitz of plant-based milk production facilities across the country following a listeria outbreak linked to a major producer that has sickened 26 people in four provinces and led to one death in Ontario.
The outbreak, traced to cross-contamination at a processing facility in Quebec, has become a flashpoint in conversations about food safety oversight in Canada’s rapidly expanding plant-based sector. CFIA officials have ordered the temporary closure of three facilities while conducting inspections at 18 others, making this the largest coordinated food safety action in the alternative milk industry to date.
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, tells me this outbreak reveals critical gaps in our food safety systems. “The plant-based sector has grown faster than regulatory frameworks could adapt,” he explains during our phone conversation. “We’ve been operating on assumptions that these products inherently carry lower risk, which this outbreak proves dangerously untrue.”
What makes this outbreak particularly concerning is how listeria contamination occurred in products many consumers chose specifically for safety and health reasons. Health Canada data indicates approximately 22% of Canadians now regularly consume plant-based milk alternatives, with that number rising to nearly 40% among those under 35.
Walking through the production floor of Vancouver’s Urban Oat Collective, one of the smaller producers not implicated in the current outbreak, I get a firsthand look at the challenges of maintaining sterile environments in alternative milk production. The facility, housed in a renovated warehouse in East Vancouver, hums with stainless steel equipment where raw ingredients transform into the creamy beverages that have become a staple in many Canadian refrigerators.
“People think plant milks are simple—just blend nuts or oats with water—but commercial production is incredibly complex,” explains head of operations Jameela Krishnan, guiding me through the intricate network of pipes and pasteurization equipment. “Every surface, every connection point is a potential vulnerability.”
The CFIA investigation has revealed that the contamination likely occurred not in the primary ingredients but in the post-processing environment where finished products were packaged. This highlights a critical vulnerability: while the raw materials may have low contamination risk, the production environment still presents traditional food safety challenges.
For Indigenous communities across northern British Columbia, this outbreak has reopened conversations about food sovereignty and safety. In Hazelton, community health worker Thomas Wells has been fielding calls from concerned residents who rely on shelf-stable alternatives due to limited access to fresh dairy and high lactose intolerance rates among Indigenous populations.
“When you’re already dealing with food insecurity and limited access, food recalls hit differently,” Wells tells me as we walk through the community garden project he helps coordinate. “People here don’t have the luxury of multiple shopping options if something gets recalled.”
The outbreak has prompted Health Canada to accelerate new regulations specifically addressing plant-based production environments. The proposed changes, previously scheduled for implementation in late 2024, will now be fast-tracked for approval this summer, according to officials.
These regulations will require enhanced environmental monitoring specifically designed for plant-based processing facilities, addressing the unique contamination risks that differ from traditional dairy operations. Industry will have six months to comply once the regulations are finalized.
“We need to recognize that different food production environments have different risk profiles,” says Dr. Martine Dubuc, former Chief Food Safety Officer for the CFIA who now consults on regulatory frameworks. “The assumption that plant-based automatically means lower risk has been thoroughly disproven.”
For consumers like Lin, the outbreak represents a jarring reminder of invisible risks in our food system. “I read labels for allergens and ingredients, but bacterial contamination? That’s completely invisible to me as a shopper,” she says.
The CFIA has published interim guidance for consumers, recommending they check their refrigerators against the expanded recall list available on the government website. They also suggest that immunocompromised individuals, pregnant women, elderly people and young children exercise additional caution with all ready-to-eat foods, including plant-based alternatives, until the outbreak investigation concludes.
Back at the Urban Oat Collective, Krishnan shows me their newly implemented testing protocols—more frequent environmental sampling and finished product testing than regulations currently require. “We’re not waiting for new rules,” she explains. “This outbreak is a wake-up call for the entire industry.”
As I leave the facility, workers in full protective gear are conducting the afternoon cleaning protocol, meticulously sanitizing surfaces with a precision that feels more medical than culinary. It’s a vivid reminder that food safety exists in the details—the spaces between equipment, the microscopic environments where bacteria can flourish undetected until it’s too late.
For Canada’s growing plant-based industry, this outbreak may represent a difficult but necessary maturation. The coming months will test whether enhanced oversight and industry self-regulation can restore consumer confidence in a sector that has built its reputation on being the healthier, safer alternative.
