Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz held another news conference on Thursday to clear up any misunderstanding about the beef recall at the Brooks packing plant.

He says there is a lot of misinformation circulating about the plant reopening and states the plant will remain closed until the Canadian Food Inspection Agency gives written confirmation the facility is safe.

"We continue to enhance the ability of the CFIA to address these types of situations," he says. "The CFIA acted according to the information they got as soon as they got it. They've issued recalls, they've issued health hazards, they've issued a number of things that no one is pointing to."

On Wednesday, the president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said there was a delay getting information on tainted meat from X-L.

U-S border agents first detected E-coli in a meat shipment on September 4th and the recall was issued on September 16th.

Ritz says at this point, doctors have confirmed only four cases of E. coli that have been tied back to XL.

"We are scientifically looking at other cases, but this is a science project, not a political process," Ritz states.

Ritz says the recall will continue to expand so Canadians know what they shouldn't eat.

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However the National Farmers Union says federal agriculture and trade policy created the conditions leading to Canada's largest beef recall.

The NFU says there are too few packing plants and they aren't regulated stringently enough.

Glenn Tait, an NFU spokesman, says the beef recall is already hurting cattle producers by driving down the cost of cattle by up to 30 per cent.

"It is a disaster and one we could certainly see coming," he says. "With the concentration in the meat packing industry, there are economic consequences for farmers and ranchers."

He says with a plant this big, the consequences are huge and in this case resulting in half the beef packing industry in Western Canada shut down.

The XL foods plant in Brooks processes about 35 per cent of Canada's beef, with Cargill processing slightly more.

Tait says the packer concentration needs to be reduced and the CFIA needs to have more authority behind it.

"They've only been able to request paperwork and these 700 new inspectors the CFIA has, aren't actually on the meat lines, there are no new people at the plant in Brooks and the ones that are there, are checking the paperwork the company themselves are putting forward."

Tait says if the plant is not re-opened soon, many cow-calf producers will suffer serious losses that may drive them out of business.