Last summer’s listeriosis outbreak has caused Canadians to change their eating habits, a University of Guelph survey suggests.

Of the survey group of 2,000 people in Guelph, about 70 per cent said their perception of meat products changed after the listeriosis outbreak, which killed 20 people.

Before the outbreak, only six per cent of respondents said they never consumed ready-to-eat meats at home. That number jumped to 39 per cent after the outbreak.

University officials say the results for the southwestern Ontario city can be extrapolated to the general population of Canada.

"It provides a snapshot of a city that is representative of Canada," said John Cranfield, a professor in the university’s Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics.

Seventy-five per cent of respondents said they still consider lunch meats safe to eat.

The listeriosis outbreak was traced to a Maple Leaf Foods processing plant in Toronto. With files from the Canadian Press