A proposal by agriculture ministers that rules be changed so some provincially regulated packing plants can sell product across provincial borders has produced grumbling and questions among federally regulated plants.
Currently, only federally registered and regulated packing plants can sell product interprovincially or internationally.
“Absolutely, this is raising questions and creating unease for my members,” said Jim Laws, executive director of the Canadian Meat Council. “If they are planning to change the rules for provincial plants, it makes people nervous because many of my members have made great investments in buildings and processes and equipment to meet the pretty stringent regulations and they are worried they’re going to see their investment removed.”
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Laws said the federal packers have little information about the proposal but noted that changing rules in legislation, regulations or the operating manual for the packing industry has been a slow process.
“This is not going to be an easy task and it will not happen quickly.”
At a mid-February federal-provincial agriculture ministers’ meeting in Toronto, ministers agreed to launch 19 pilot projects to see if regulations could be changed to allow provincial plants to meet a national standard that would allow interprovincial trade without compromising food safety.
They said it is an attempt to improve internal Canadian trade.
Federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said the objective is to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy that keeps smaller provincial plants from reaching an as yet ill defined national standard that would allow them to compete for customers in other provinces.
“What we want to do is go through the list of requirements under federal standards and find out what we can do to simplify them or make them fit in a smaller operation,” he told a news conference.
Jean-Pierre Blackburn, veterans affairs minister and minister of state for agriculture, said it is an effort to increase internal trade.
“This program aims to increase trade in Canada. We’re going to enable smaller companies to use different means in order to be able to achieve strict national norms or standards.”
Laws said the idea of a national standard for trade within Canada as a middle point between provincial regulations and federal regulations has been around for years.
“We actually believe there should only be one standard, the federal standard,” he said.
Laws said that in some provinces, the rigorous inspection or frequency of inspection required at federal plants is not required.
Any attempt by governments to create a new national registration level to allow interprovincial trade would be illegal, he said.
“We wrote to the minister to remind him that they have no authority to exempt anyone from the act and regulations,” he said.
He suggested that a unilateral decision to register provincial plants meeting national standards as federal could be challenged.
Any scheme to give provincial plants more market power could create unfair competition because federal plants pay for meat inspection while in many provinces, there is no charge, he said.
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