Officials were investigating whether human remains made their way into pork processed for human consumption at a pig farm owned by a suspected serial killer.
Robert William Pickton, 54, was arrested in February 2002 and has been charged with 15 counts of murder for killings spanning 20 years.
The remains of 22 women have been found at Pickton's pig farm east of Vancouver, Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigators said. In all, Pickton is suspected in 31 killings, authorities said.
None of the meat from Pickton's farm was sold in stores or widely distributed, authorities said on Wednesday. But Pickton often gave friends and associates frozen pork products, Dr Perry Kendall, the health officer for British Columbia, said on Wednesday.
Kendall said Pickton's unlicensed slaughter facility was very unsanitary.
"It's very disturbing to think about, but [there is] the possibility of some cross-contamination," he said. "But the degree of it or when or how much we really don't know."
Later Wednesday, police Corporal Cate Galliford refused at a news conference to use the word "remains" to describe the potentially contaminated meat.
She said the meat may have been contaminated with human DNA.
Officials at the British Columbia Center for Disease Control said the risk to those who ate the pork is remote because pork must always be well-cooked, a process that destroys most infectious agents.
"There's a very low risk of any human disease being transmitted in that fashion," Kendall said. However, he said he wanted to ensure that any remaining products are not consumed.
A formal investigation by Kendall, the CDC and officials at Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was launched last Friday.
"It's disgusting," said Lynn Frey, who learned earlier this year that her daughter Marnie's DNA had been found at Pickton's farm. "It's absolutely insane. How many people have eaten something from that farm?"
Police said they would file more charges against Pickton, who is not expected to stand trial until late this year or early next year.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
RSS