Inspecting the Algorithm: What CFIA Cuts Mean for Food Brands After Joriki

I have wanted to write about the 2024 Joriki plant-based milk listeria outbreak and the 2025 CFIA audit of the perceived shortcomings of its multiplicative algorithm, the Establishment-based Risk Assessment ("ERA") Model, leading up to the crisis. For context, the Globe and Mail reported that Joriki went approximately five years from when it received its licence under the Safe Food for Canadians Act ("SFCA") until the outbreak response without a licence inspection. By the time inspectors finally arrived in June 2024, three people were dead, twenty were sick, and Joriki, the co-manufacturer behind national leading brands of plant-based milks, was weeks away from shuttering its operations (it would go on to file for creditor protection with over $200 million in outstanding debts). But up until that point, the ERA model's algorithm did not direct CFIA to require them to go in.

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Inspecting the Algorithm: What CFIA Cuts Mean for Food Brands After Joriki is an episode from Welcome to the Food Court.

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This episode was published on Mar 20, 2026.

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