Maple Leaf Foods

Project overview

Objective

I had the opportunity to work on Maple Leaf Foods' food-safety training film — a piece that needed to make a technical, sometimes abstract subject feel deeply personal. Food safety lives or dies on the everyday choices of the people on the production floor, so the film had to do more than explain procedures. It had to communicate why those procedures matter, and move every employee to see themselves as personally accountable for the safety of the food they produce.

The goal was to pair the human weight of a real foodborne-illness story with a clear look at how Maple Leaf approaches food safety — its HACCP plan, good manufacturing practices, and its commitment to being a global leader in the field — so that trust and responsibility carried through the whole organization.

Client: Maple Leaf Foods
Industry: Food Manufacturing
Piece: (05/09)

The solution.

Solution

I played a key role in planning and filming the piece, thinking through each shot so the story would land with the gravity it deserved. That meant capturing a wide emotional range — from intimate, heartfelt interviews to walkthroughs of the production floor — and aligning those visuals so the personal stakes and the operational reality reinforced one another.

By grounding the food-safety message in real human experience, the final film underscored the importance of employee accountability and Maple Leaf's commitment to leading on food safety, inspiring a sense of trust and responsibility across the organization.

Thefilm.

I'm so lucky that my sister and I are still close. She never blamed me because, frankly, she could have. I was being very careful because we had wanted these babies so much, of course. I mean, you can't go through something like that and not be different and wonder if your children would be different. You know, the fact that I live with the guilt of having fed Tracy food that almost killed all three of them makes me devastated to my core. Tracy kept saying after the babies were born that she did not feel well and she started sweating and feeling terrible and she was very very cold and we learned that she had almost crashed on the table and was going into septic shock. She had to do her recovery in the ICU and not with the other mothers. Her children were brought down to the NICU. They were given last rites. Luke, he was alive. He was breathing, but they couldn't register a temperature on him. He was having seizures. Then we were told that I needed to get up to go and see him because it might be the only time that I would be able to. My daughter, his twin sister, was a few, incubators away. They said the level of the Listeria infection in her blood was every bit as high as Luke's, but they didn't think it had quite gotten to her brain as much as it had gotten to his. So it was just a very difficult, difficult time. The horror of the time and the loss just she couldn't nurse her children. She couldn't she had to bring Chloe home and leave Luke in the hospital. The guilt, the frustration, knowing that Paul was by himself, ready to lose his wife and both of his children all in one fell swoop. The dream was gone and, you know, that was after we knew that they would maybe make it, that they were likely to live. This video has been created in partnership with the Stop Foodborne Illness Alliance. And while Tracy's story is not associated with the Maple Leaf outbreak, it is representative of what can happen when things go wrong. Our hope in producing this story is that you take it to heart, that you understand the importance of your role in producing safe food. When I think about what it requires to to have great confidence in the products that we produce, I think about people. And, and it turns out that that what our people do and and how they interact with the products and the processes that we have turns out to be the most important thing. The basics of food safety, start with our HACCP plan. You understand what all the risks are that could impact the food you're producing. And those those are generally categorized into three areas, microbiological, chemical, and physical hazards. The one we frequently think about is microbiological hazards, and the one that impacted maple leaf foods in two thousand eight was a specific bacteria called Listeria monocytogenes. But there are literally dozens of of, foodborne pathogens that we have to be aware of. We have to understand how they interact with our products and our processes and come up with ways to eliminate or reduce those microbiological risks. When a new employee comes to Maple Leaf Foods, you might be overwhelmed with the, the number of of procedures and and policies and and and standards that are in place and the practices that have to be followed, in order to, walk on to our operational floor and to be part of the production process. There's a reason for all of those things that we do. GMPs, that stands for good manufacturing practices, and that that includes everything from keeping our boots clean, and the protect protective, gear that we wear to washing our hands on a routine basis. There's a requirement to wash your hands as you enter the facility. And depending on the job you're performing, you may have to wash and sanitize your hands on an ongoing basis if you're handling the products. You'll also see that every night, we disassemble the equipment and clean There'll There'll be testing, and there'll be, ongoing testing of the environment that we operate in and sometimes the products that we produce. Segregation between the raw area of the facility and the ready to eat area. And the, the the traffic flows and how people move within the facility, the way that material flows through our facilities is critically important. And each of those, flows have been mapped out by the food safety team, and there's a reason why they are flowing the way they are. We have a a very robust auditing program, across Maple Leaf Foods. On a daily basis, the food safety quality team and the operational, leaders will be doing forms of audits, both to look at the safety of the product that we're producing, but also the quality. While listeriosis is a rare disease, it is an extremely severe foodborne illness. In fact, roughly thirty percent of, individuals who contract listeriosis ultimately will die from that. It's the mortality rate is is one of the highest of any foodborne, pathogen. Understanding the science and the technical part of food safety is important, but what's more important are people and people's passion for doing what's right and our employees' desire to produce safe food every day. When I reflect back on it, I feel thankful first and foremost that my family is overall okay. Twenty years have gone by, and my kids are are great. They're both sophomores in college, and my son plays tennis competitively, and my daughter does all kinds of things. She's in all kinds of different organizations. And I have recently gone back to school, and I'm studying food and drug law. I feel like I still have work to do to try to promote food safety. And I've been involved in an organization called Stop Foodborne Illness for about fifteen years, and they advocate for tougher food safety laws. And they kindly brought in families like ours to help advocate for tougher laws. My daughter Chloe is involved. She is right now working on their social media account. This whole thing affected our family, but Tracy especially in the long term, you lose that carefree expectation that things are gonna be okay. You just do. The Stop Alliance plays a a role of providing a platform for for collaboration amongst the industry and sharing best practices and innovation, going forward. So, you know, I encourage all leaders in our industry to participate, in in, in this initiative. In two thousand and eight, the Maple Leaf Organization experienced a terrible tragedy where twenty three people died on our watch. The only way we could bring meaning to that tragedy was to to commit ourselves, to becoming world leaders, in food safety, and I believe we've realized on that, vision, although it's a continuous commitment, and a journey that, won't end for us. We will place food safety above anything else, that occurs in this organization. We believe that our food safety promise is the foundation of our brands and the trust bond that it creates with the public. When it comes to the question of who's responsible for food safety, I hope that every Maple Leaf employee will raise their hand and say I am because that's what it takes to produce safe food every single day. For people who are working in a facility know that pathogens like listeria and e coli are in, They're everywhere, and we all have to eat. So just picture yourself or one of your loved ones and do the best you can do every day because it is not something you would want anyone that you know or love to go through.

Maple Leaf Foods — Food Safety Story.

Read transcript

I'm so lucky that my sister and I are still close. She never blamed me because, frankly, she could have. I was being very careful because we had wanted these babies so much, of course. I mean, you can't go through something like that and not be different and wonder if your children would be different. You know, the fact that I live with the guilt of having fed Tracy food that almost killed all three of them makes me devastated to my core. Tracy kept saying after the babies were born that she did not feel well and she started sweating and feeling terrible and she was very very cold and we learned that she had almost crashed on the table and was going into septic shock. She had to do her recovery in the ICU and not with the other mothers. Her children were brought down to the NICU. They were given last rites. Luke, he was alive. He was breathing, but they couldn't register a temperature on him. He was having seizures. Then we were told that I needed to get up to go and see him because it might be the only time that I would be able to. My daughter, his twin sister, was a few, incubators away. They said the level of the Listeria infection in her blood was every bit as high as Luke's, but they didn't think it had quite gotten to her brain as much as it had gotten to his. So it was just a very difficult, difficult time. The horror of the time and the loss just she couldn't nurse her children. She couldn't she had to bring Chloe home and leave Luke in the hospital. The guilt, the frustration, knowing that Paul was by himself, ready to lose his wife and both of his children all in one fell swoop. The dream was gone and, you know, that was after we knew that they would maybe make it, that they were likely to live. This video has been created in partnership with the Stop Foodborne Illness Alliance. And while Tracy's story is not associated with the Maple Leaf outbreak, it is representative of what can happen when things go wrong. Our hope in producing this story is that you take it to heart, that you understand the importance of your role in producing safe food. When I think about what it requires to to have great confidence in the products that we produce, I think about people. And, and it turns out that that what our people do and and how they interact with the products and the processes that we have turns out to be the most important thing. The basics of food safety, start with our HACCP plan. You understand what all the risks are that could impact the food you're producing. And those those are generally categorized into three areas, microbiological, chemical, and physical hazards. The one we frequently think about is microbiological hazards, and the one that impacted maple leaf foods in two thousand eight was a specific bacteria called Listeria monocytogenes. But there are literally dozens of of, foodborne pathogens that we have to be aware of. We have to understand how they interact with our products and our processes and come up with ways to eliminate or reduce those microbiological risks. When a new employee comes to Maple Leaf Foods, you might be overwhelmed with the, the number of of procedures and and policies and and and standards that are in place and the practices that have to be followed, in order to, walk on to our operational floor and to be part of the production process. There's a reason for all of those things that we do. GMPs, that stands for good manufacturing practices, and that that includes everything from keeping our boots clean, and the protect protective, gear that we wear to washing our hands on a routine basis. There's a requirement to wash your hands as you enter the facility. And depending on the job you're performing, you may have to wash and sanitize your hands on an ongoing basis if you're handling the products. You'll also see that every night, we disassemble the equipment and clean There'll There'll be testing, and there'll be, ongoing testing of the environment that we operate in and sometimes the products that we produce. Segregation between the raw area of the facility and the ready to eat area. And the, the the traffic flows and how people move within the facility, the way that material flows through our facilities is critically important. And each of those, flows have been mapped out by the food safety team, and there's a reason why they are flowing the way they are. We have a a very robust auditing program, across Maple Leaf Foods. On a daily basis, the food safety quality team and the operational, leaders will be doing forms of audits, both to look at the safety of the product that we're producing, but also the quality. While listeriosis is a rare disease, it is an extremely severe foodborne illness. In fact, roughly thirty percent of, individuals who contract listeriosis ultimately will die from that. It's the mortality rate is is one of the highest of any foodborne, pathogen. Understanding the science and the technical part of food safety is important, but what's more important are people and people's passion for doing what's right and our employees' desire to produce safe food every day. When I reflect back on it, I feel thankful first and foremost that my family is overall okay. Twenty years have gone by, and my kids are are great. They're both sophomores in college, and my son plays tennis competitively, and my daughter does all kinds of things. She's in all kinds of different organizations. And I have recently gone back to school, and I'm studying food and drug law. I feel like I still have work to do to try to promote food safety. And I've been involved in an organization called Stop Foodborne Illness for about fifteen years, and they advocate for tougher food safety laws. And they kindly brought in families like ours to help advocate for tougher laws. My daughter Chloe is involved. She is right now working on their social media account. This whole thing affected our family, but Tracy especially in the long term, you lose that carefree expectation that things are gonna be okay. You just do. The Stop Alliance plays a a role of providing a platform for for collaboration amongst the industry and sharing best practices and innovation, going forward. So, you know, I encourage all leaders in our industry to participate, in in, in this initiative. In two thousand and eight, the Maple Leaf Organization experienced a terrible tragedy where twenty three people died on our watch. The only way we could bring meaning to that tragedy was to to commit ourselves, to becoming world leaders, in food safety, and I believe we've realized on that, vision, although it's a continuous commitment, and a journey that, won't end for us. We will place food safety above anything else, that occurs in this organization. We believe that our food safety promise is the foundation of our brands and the trust bond that it creates with the public. When it comes to the question of who's responsible for food safety, I hope that every Maple Leaf employee will raise their hand and say I am because that's what it takes to produce safe food every single day. For people who are working in a facility know that pathogens like listeria and e coli are in, They're everywhere, and we all have to eat. So just picture yourself or one of your loved ones and do the best you can do every day because it is not something you would want anyone that you know or love to go through.

Objective

Process& tools.

Filming

Editing

The solution.

Solution

Thefilm.