Sofina Foods Inc. to pay $330K penalty toward safety program after Edmonton worker's death

Madeline Smith · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 20, 2025 1:14 PM EDT | Last Updated: 7 hours ago

An Ontario-based multinational nutrient institution was "significantly negligent" successful information failures that led to the decease of an Edmonton worker, a justice says.

Justice Michèle Collinson sentenced Sofina Foods Inc. connected Thursday successful Edmonton Court of Justice after the institution pleaded blameworthy to 1 Occupational Health and Safety Act complaint successful the March 2023 decease of Samir Subedi.

Subedi, 32, died aft a coworker recovered him unresponsive during his displacement arsenic a superintendent astatine Sofina's southbound Edmonton nutrient processing plant. 

Collinson said Subedi's decease was easy preventable, with workplace risks created by the company's "incompetence, inattention, oregon a operation of both." 

After going into a smokehouse to show immoderate nutrient products drying inside, Subedi got trapped arsenic temperatures roseate to 92 C.

An exigency grip to unfastened the smokehouse doors from the wrong had breached off, and contempt attraction requests that went backmost to May 2022, it hadn't been replaced — successful usurpation of some provincial idiosyncratic information standards and Sofina's ain policies.

Instead, a makeshift doorway stopper was installed that could lone beryllium activated from the outside. There's nary grounds that Subedi, who'd been astatine Sofina for astir 11 months, had been trained connected however to usage either the exigency grip oregon the doorstopper.

"It was not hard to spot that determination was a hazard of an mishap successful the smokehouse … fixed the deficiency of safeguards and training," Collinson said.

"The information determination had been nary incidental anterior is much an cognition of luck than thing else."

The justice accepted a connection for a originative sentencing bid that sees the institution wage a $330,000 penalty, which volition spell toward backing a nutrient idiosyncratic information grooming programme tally by the Alberta Food Processors Association.

The grooming volition beryllium tailored to code the accrued dangers of confined spaces specified arsenic smokehouses to assistance forestall akin deaths successful the future.

Collinson noted that earlier the institution was charged past year, they had already made voluntary "direct reparations" to guarantee Subedi's woman and children could screen the outgo of their mortgage. She said Sofina has expressed genuine remorse.

Since Subedi's death, the institution has added caller informing labels to smokehouses telling employees not to participate portion they're running, and to cheque for the beingness of the interior exigency grip — if it's missing oregon broken, they're instructed not to spell wrong astatine all.

Collinson called the level of workplace deaths successful Alberta "unacceptably high."

She addressed portion of her determination straight to Subedi's family.

"Your nonaccomplishment and the grief causes symptom and suffering, and the world is that the process successful tribunal does precise small to alleviate that. Some things conscionable cannot beryllium fixed; they tin lone beryllium carried," she said.

"We don't nonstop our loved ones disconnected to enactment reasoning that this is the past clip that we're going to spot them."

The remaining 25 OHS charges laid against Sofina Foods Inc. were withdrawn.