Health Authorities to sustain talks with meat packing companies

SANTIAGO.- Within the next 48 hours, Health Department authorities and meat packing companies will meet to coordinate measures that need to be taken in order to prevent listeriosis, which has already allegedly been the cause of two deaths.

The meeting was announced by the Minister of Health, Álvaro Erazo, as he was leaving a conference he attended with President Michelle Bachelet and the undersecretaries of Health and Aid Networks, Jeanette Vega and Julio Montt, respectively.

According to the state official, the objective of the meeting will be to incorporate the companies in a quest of "food control, so that they can effectively perform laboratory control measures that will become the basis upon which we will be able to work".

Additionally, Erazo pointed out that the ministry requires "companies that are dedicated to food safety" in the thick of a situation that, according to him "is possible to bring under control with the measures that we are instating".

The Minister of Health called on the public to remain calm, indicating that authorities have already taken necessary preventive measures, such as the removal of 90 products from the Doñihue plant, where there was a breakout of lysteria in January of this year.