Canadian chicken farmers say Ottawa’s plan to change labelling regulations for meat imports will be a setback for national food safety standards.
The government plans to introduce regulations this fall ending the requirement that imported meat products carry a label pre-approved by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency indicating that the content meets Canadian standards.
Instead, the CFIA will respond to complaints about inappropriate products found on store shelves.
“This valuable program is being terminated in favour of one that would only investigate problems as they arise,” Chicken Farmers of Canada chair David Fuller recently told members of the House of Commons sub-committee on food safety.
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“This move from prevention to reaction is something that goes against the food safety principle of HACCP (hazard analysis critical control point). Switching to a reactionary mode is not a progressive step.”
Fuller is the second witness to raise the issue of label pre-approval for imported products during food safety hearings called to investigate last year’s listeria outbreak.
Earlier, Robert de Valk, executive secretary of the Canadian Association of Regulated Importers, also complained that it was a backward step for food safety.
Critics of the move say the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Canadian Meat Council have pressured the CFIA to end the more rigorous labelling requirement because they want to replace label pre-approvals with in-store inspections.
Fuller said the plan should be cancelled.
“Canadian consumers assume that the Canadian government has done everything possible to ensure products on the shelf are safe,” he told MPs.
He also complained that federal and provincial governments haven’t yet created an audit recognition program for a national certified on-farm food safety system, despite 10 years of industry efforts to build such a system.
“Our organization is deeply concerned that the government finalization of the criteria for the (government) recognition process has been stalled,” he said.
“Without FPTA (federal, provincial, territorial) recognition, a decade of work will be put in jeopardy.”
Fuller also said the meat industry must cope with different rules in different jurisdictions because Ottawa and the provinces have not been able to agree on one national standard for slaughter and processing plants.
“In Canada, there are at least 11 different standards for processing chicken, one at the federal level and 10 at the provincial level,” Fuller said.
“As there is only one consumer, there is no reason that meat and meat products sitting side by side at the meat counter should meet different standards.”
The attempt to create a national standard has gone on for more than a decade without resolution.
Only products from plants meeting federal standards can be exported or cross provincial boundaries. Provincially or municipally inspected plants can sell only into local markets.
Provinces have objected that forcing small plants to upgrade to national standards would put many small rural slaughter plants out of business.
“One concern with a process that has different standards is that there are products that come into this country from outside Canada,” Fuller said.
“Those products need to meet the same Canadian standards as the Canadian chicken farmer has to meet, and today that is not happening.”
