Back in March, I ran the story of a Muslim food plant employee charged with inserting needles in meat. Mastoora Qezil stuck needles into pork products at a Guelph Ontario grocery store. She had worked at the plant for seven years. Unconventional mom wrote me, "Qezil plead guilty and the Crown Attorney conceded that she didn't intend harm, so I'm sure her sentence will be lighter than 2 years less a day. Another incident occurred a few days ago in the same grocery store, this time with pork sausage. It's a horrifying thought that this could be a copycat crime or connected with an islamic group. It's a terrorist action nonetheless albeit with little press... it's a story to watch."
Spencer has pointed out that poisoning food with feces is detailed as a tactic in the Al-Qaeda manual found a few years ago by British intelligence. If feces are acceptable for such use, why not needles? It would be interesting to know if Mastoora Qezil singled out pork products, but the story of course doesn't tell us.
For the second time this year, a discount grocery store in southwestern Ontario finds itself at the centre of a food tampering investigation.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, with the help of police, are investigating how a 2.5-centimetre-long needle ended up in a package of pork sausage sold at a No Frills grocery store in Guelph, Ont. -- the second time that the same store has had a problem with tampering in 2009.
Guelph police Const. Kevin McCord said a consumer found the needle in the sausage after frying it up and putting in their mouth.
"As the person began to eat it, they sensed that there was something in the product," McCord told CTV News, when explaining how the tampering incident was discovered.
Management at No Frills has removed all of the affected product from its shelves.
Prior tampering incident
In March, Guelph police arrested a former Maple Leaf Foods employee in connection with a separate investigation into a series of meat packages that had sewing needles inserted into them.
Police then learned of 13 sewing needles that had been inserted into 12 different Schneider's meat product packages that had been sold at the same No Frills location.
No injuries were reported as a result of the tampering.
That investigation saw Maple Leaf Foods yank the affected food products off shelves within a 25-kilometre radius of the store.
The employee, Mastoora Qezil, 42, was later charged with one count of common nuisance in the matter.
