The federal government has quietly reversed an earlier decision to reduce the amount of funding available for on-farm food safety programs this year.
The decision, which came after pressure from farm groups, means commodity organizations and farm groups that administer on-farm food safety programs will receive the same funding this year that they received in 2007-08.
“This is very good news,” said Brigid Rivoire, executive director of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.
“There had been a great deal of concern in the industry about a funding cut that would have disrupted momentum toward a better on-farm food safety system.”
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She praised Agriculture Canada officials for taking industry complaints seriously and then finding additional money to supplement the original budget.
“Department officials worked really hard with us to identify the gap and the need and then looking for funding,” Rivoire said.
“Originally they said the last year of the program under the APF was oversubscribed, but they came to see that take-up as a good thing for the goals of the program.”
The department had earlier said funding would be an average of the past five years during the current transition year between the agricultural policy framework and the new Growing Forward food safety program that kicks in next spring.
Farm groups noted that since farmer involvement and program spending had increased in each of the past five years, the transition year funding amounted to a 40 percent budget cut.
Farm leaders bombarded the department and the office of agriculture minister Gerry Ritz with complaints.
Across the country, opposition election candidates used the cuts as evidence of a pattern of Conservative government neglect of food safety.
In early September, Canadian Horticultural Council president Larry Buba wrote to Ritz to complain that his member industries were losing $9.1 million this year in funding for on-farm food safety programs. He called it a “serious situation” at odds with Conservative commitments of a stronger food safety regime.
“Canada’s ability to innovate and compete in the marketplace have been negatively compromised (by the funding cut),” he wrote Sept. 4.
“Funds must be reinstated immediately and in fact enhanced and we are seeking your assistance in this regard.”
Little more than a week later, departmental officials quietly let farm groups know that they received the message and would find the necessary funds to keep programs running in the transition year at the same level as in 2007-08.
Despite criticism of the earlier cuts, the government did not publicly announce that it was restoring funding.
Rivoire said the farm lobby fought the proposed budget cut but tried to do it behind the scenes to avoid scaring consumers.
“We didn’t make a big media issue of this because we didn’t want to undermine consumer confidence, worrying that food safety was being cut by 40 percent,” she said.
“That wasn’t the issue. But it would have been a setback for the efforts we and the government have been making to increase food safety measures and systems at the farm level and beyond. This had a happy ending.”
