Case study
A listeria outbreak linked to Maple Leaf Foods killed at least 22 Canadians in 2008. What the company did next, on camera, in public, for years afterwards, is still the case Melissa Agnes teaches as the model crisis response. This is the verified timeline, the public statements and what it means for Australian organisations.
In August 2008, Maple Leaf Foods confirmed that listeria from its Toronto processing plant had caused a national outbreak, linked to at least 22 deaths and dozens of serious illnesses. It remains the deadliest foodborne illness outbreak in Canadian history. CEO Michael McCain went on camera himself, on 23 August 2008, and said the company was fully responsible, without shifting blame onto suppliers, regulators or bad luck.
What followed was not one statement. Maple Leaf recalled the affected products, investigated the root cause, rebuilt its safety protocols, and kept talking about the crisis publicly for years, well past the point most organisations would prefer a story to disappear. The company put the direct cost of the recall at around $20 million when it first reported the figure, later revised to as much as $30 million, and separately settled a related class action for $27 million in December 2008.
A federal independent investigation led by Sheila Weatherill, appointed in January 2009, confirmed 22 deaths and set out where Canada's food safety system had failed. Maple Leaf stayed in business, kept its CEO, and by the 2024 financial year reported close to $4.9 billion CAD in annual revenue. The response, more than the crisis itself, is what gets taught from this case.
The response
Four decisions carry most of the weight in why this response is still studied today.
Verified timeline
Every date below is checked against public reporting rather than taken from the course transcript alone. Full sources are listed at the foot of this page.
Session 7 of the Crisis Masterclass walks through this whole case with Melissa Agnes, plus a closing Q&A on working with lawyers.
See the Crisis MasterclassThe words
Two lines from McCain's response are still quoted in crisis communication training today. Both are excerpted in Melissa Agnes's teaching on this case, and both are worth reading in full.
Going through the crisis, there are two advisors I've paid no attention to. The first are the lawyers, and the second are the accountants. It's not about money or legal liability. This is about our being accountable for providing consumers with safe food.
This is a terrible tragedy. To those people who have become ill and to the families who have lost loved ones, I want to express my deepest and most sincere sympathies. Words cannot begin to express our sadness for your pain.
Melissa Agnes's read
Melissa Agnes, founder of the Crisis Ready Institute, teaches this case study in session 7 of the Crisis Masterclass. Four of her points explain why the response worked, in her own words.
core values become your North Star when you're faced with controversy, when you're faced with crisis, when you're faced with so many different options ahead of you, and kind of like roadmap options ahead of you, and you don't know which one to take. Reverting back to what are our core values? What do we stand for? What do we believe in, and how do we use those to connect?
That was not a, 'Our hearts go out to all those affected by this incident. Your safety is of our top concern,' which is something that we read far too often from brands who are in similar or different, but still consequential situations, right?
an organisation might come out with a huge, beautiful statement that's all fluff, that they're not backing, that they don't actually mean. It's a PR stunt, and it doesn't fly. People see right through it. You have to have both. You have to have the right actions, the right communications being done simultaneously and mirroring each other.
I imagine that Michael McCain had a vulnerability hangover after creating that video and after that video went out into the world. But he had the courage to do it anyway, and it paid off. Why? Because connection is the goal, and vulnerability is one of the fastest, most authentic pathways to connection. And he aced it.
This is one case study out of twelve months of Crisis Masterclass curriculum.
See what's insideLaw versus reputation
In the closing conversation of session 7, Melissa Agnes is asked by Lyall Mercer, co-founder of My PR Partner, how a spokesperson without McCain's authority should handle a lawyer who says say nothing. Her answer is the line the Masterclass keeps coming back to.
One, lawyers have been taught their lane, right? That's their practice. They've been taught certain things. They look at it through their one lens. They look at it through their lens, their filter. But that is not the whole picture. There's a saying in crisis communication that you can win in the court of law and fail in the court of public opinion and not have a brand anymore. That's fact.
Legal caution and reputational judgement are not the same question, and treating them as one is how organisations end up technically compliant and publicly distrusted. Whether an incident needs this level of response in the first place is its own decision: see issue or crisis for how to tell the difference.
For Australian organisations
Three things carry over directly. Layer the response: Maple Leaf did not issue one statement and move on, it recalled, investigated, fixed, then kept talking about the fix for years, the idea Melissa Agnes teaches as a crisis is an onion. Keep action and communication on the same timeline: recalling the products and explaining why mattered as much as the recall itself, the validate, relate, prove pattern shows up in almost every McCain statement quoted above. And take the long view: whether an incident is an issue or a crisis changes how hard you respond, and Maple Leaf treated this as worth years of follow-through, not a story to manage for a fortnight and drop.
Not sure whether your organisation is set up to respond like this yet?
Take the free checklistInside the Masterclass
This case study is session 7 of the twelve month Crisis Masterclass, the month Melissa Agnes uses to tie mindset, emotion and leadership together into one real example before the program moves on to sequencing a response. See what each month covers on Inside the 12 months, or go straight to the Crisis Masterclass program page for pricing and the ten day free trial.
Sources
Every figure stated as fact in the prose above (outside the quoted material) is checked against one of these.
Taught by
Session 7 is delivered by Melissa Agnes and hosted in conversation with Lyall Mercer, who runs the closing Q&A on working with lawyers.
Lyall Mercer
Co-founder, My PR Partner
A former journalist with more than 25 years of front-line public relations experience, advising governments, executives, heads of state, industry associations and schools, and coordinating international media conferences.
Melissa Agnes
Founder and CEO, Crisis Ready Institute
A recognised authority on crisis communication, crisis leadership and brand protection, and best-selling author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand.
Common questions
Start the conversation
Tell us the scenario you are most exposed to. A senior adviser will tell you honestly how your current plan and spokespeople would hold up against it, and what a Maple Leaf-style response would take to build.