A day after announcing it was going to temporarily layoff 2000 workers, XL Foods is recalling 800 to its plant in Brooks.

The move follows word from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency it was going to send its inspectors home because there was no production to over see at the facility, which is at the centre of the country’s largest-ever beef recall.

Lakeside Packers was shutdown last month, after an E. coli outbreak which led to the recall of more than 2,000 beef products, not only in Canada but in the U.S. and overseas as well.

XL Foods is recalling some of its workers to process carcasses already in the facility; the resumption of partial operations will help the CFIA determine if the plant is meeting E. coli mitigation standards.

The Mayor of Brooks, Martin Shields, tells Citytv it’s time company and government officials got together to hammer out a real timeline as to when things might return to normal at the plant.

Shields says too many innocent bystanders are getting hurt by the pro-longed shutdown.

Meanwhile, the CFIA needs to prepare for its own inspection; for the first time in three years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is going to audit the body.

Even though it will include a tour of the XL Foods plant, an official with the CFIA says the audit was planned months ago and has nothing to do with the E. coli outbreak.