Despite industry complaints and government emphasis on extending on-farm food safety and traceability programs, governments have cut millions of dollars out of national food safety program funding this year.
Bette Jean Crews, vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and co-chair of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture food safety committee, said money set aside to fund farm and post-farm food safety systems including traceability and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) systems have been cut in this fiscal year by close to 40 percent.
“This is going to have a huge impact on the Canadian On-farm Food Safety Program and on the work of the Canadian Supply Chain Food Safety Coalition,” she wrote in an OFA commentary.
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“There will be a major impact on what can be accomplished in food safety programs on-farm and post-farm.”
Crews said the funding cut in the transition year between the agricultural policy framework and the next five-year policy called Growing Forward, contradicts the government’s stated goal of having farm traceability programs in place by 2009.
“We have been moving on this but the 40 percent cut is a real setback, even if it is restored next year,” she said. “Momentum is lost, food safety staff are laid off and the government priority on this is questioned.”
The missing money could have been used to pay for implementation of HACCP systems and programs that would have helped farms be compliant with traceability requirements.
Crews said the problem is definitions and averages.
When federal and provincial governments could not complete negotiations on details of Growing Forward non-business risk management programs, such as farm environmental plans and on-farm food safety funding, they promised that funding would be continued in the 2008-09 fiscal year, which started April 1, until the programs kicked in April 1, 2009.
Agreements signed by ministers in Quebec City in July said the policy would make sure “tools are available for the sector to put in place enhanced food safety assurance procedures (and) industry is taking a leadership role in implementing measures to assure food safety.”
However, bureaucrats decided that the way to continue food safety funding in the transition year would be to provide for 2008-09 the same level of funding as the five-year average during the APF since 2003.
The problem is that there was little funding in the early years of the APF and only by 2008 were farmers ready to implement programs and apply for significant funding.
“To me, this was a win because it meant that after years of planning, we were ratcheting up the actual implementation phase and systems were being designed and put in place,” said Crews.
“But it meant spending in year five was much more than in year one, yet funding this year is an average of those years and it really means a 40 percent cut. The government insists it is fulfilling its promise to provide transitional funding at the same level but it really leaves food safety programs on hold.”
The CFA has protested what it sees as a budget cut even as governments insist it is not.
“The argument from government is that there are only so many dollars available and if you are not getting as much as you say you need, then you have to cut corners,” said Crews.
“But they have identified food safety as a priority, farmers and post-farm sectors have bought into it and now they are telling us that for this year, just hold back. This is a real setback and I don’t see any government willingness to rethink this.”
