& Courtney Tower
Freelance writer
news
With some misgivings, the Senate last week approved legislation that will allow the April 1 launch of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The formality of proclaiming the legislation into effect will take place this week or next.
Once functioning, the agency will gather together more than 4,000 employees who now work in food inspection at the agriculture, health and fisheries departments.
Art Olson, Agriculture Canada assistant deputy minister, has been named head of the new agency and senior Agriculture Canada food inspection bureaucrat Ron Doering will be his deputy.
Read Also
Government, industry seek canola tariff resolution
Governments and industry continue to discuss how best to deal with Chinese tariffs on Canadian agricultural products, particularly canola.
The Senate approved the legislation March 6 but not before a Senate committee suggested the government take some steps to alleviate unease expressed by farm and union representatives.
The committee recommended the new agency present its business plan and budget quickly, figure out if its proposed user fees will hurt the competitiveness of Canadian food sectors and make the advisory board as representative of affected groups as possible.
Recommendations came after representatives of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and the Public Service Alliance of Canada told committee members many questions remain unanswered just weeks before the agency is to be created.
For the farm sector that will help pay for it, the new government body remains something of a leap of faith, said CFA president Jack Wilkinson.
He said the agency remains a vague concept with its budget, its advisory committee and its cost recovery plans still withheld from farmers and food industry players who will help pay for it through user fees.
“The CFA urges this committee not to allow this legislation to come into force until a business plan and budget have been tabled and approved in the House of Commons,” Wilkinson told the senators. “Industry consultations must be included in the formation of both the business plan and the budget of the agency.”
He also urged senators to insist that creation of the agency not result in any more cost recovery fees for the industry.
Larry Leng, president of the agriculture union of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, warned the new agency will reduce employee protections, provide no cap on user fees and open the door to more private sector and food processor responsibility for food inspection.
His union represents most of the more than 4,000 employees who will be transferred into the agency from other departments.
Leng said private sector inspection would undermine public trust in the safety of Canadian food.
“The reality is that company employed inspectors will be beholden to their employer and not to the public,” he said.
He warned the more the government raises user fees, the greater will be company pressures to reduce costs by doing the inspections themselves.
Handle federal inspections
The merger brings under one agency 10 federal laws and inspections run by the agriculture, health and fisheries departments. The new agency will do all the federal inspections while Health Canada continues to set the overall food safety policy and standards.
The agency is expected to cost $300 million a year and will earn back about $60 million in user fees.
Under the system, Canada will embrace the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points system. It is fairly well launched in Canada already, especially in poultry and dairy.
HAACP means that industry sets up control points, at critical stages in the processing chain, where temperature and other monitors keep watch on cleanliness and disease.
In a typical meat plant today, Doering said, “you have a veterinarian on the kill floor and four or five federal inspectors doing significant organoleptic (carcass) inspection still.”
The one federal inspector in future “will be there in a lab coat and a checkboard, checking what they (the plants) are doing and their records.”
The inspectors not used will be placed in areas where the health risks are greater and require closer monitoring, he said.
