The federal government must change regulations to ensure food grown in Canada is properly labelled, says the president of the country’s largest farm lobby.
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture board of directors met in Ottawa Oct. 26 and the labelling issue was high on the agenda, CFA president Bob Friesen said.
“We are proposing they change labelling regulations to create a category called ‘grown in Canada’ and stick to it,” he said. “We are asking the government to do this and to set aside a budget to advertise this among consumers. It is important that consumers have the choice of buying Canadian product.”
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Existing regulations say that if a majority of the product cost was incurred in Canada, including processing, packaging or retailing, it can be called a product of Canada.
This led to an incident on a recent national CBC television program during which garlic labelled “product of Canada” was shown to have been primarily garlic imported from China.
“This is a very important issue for us and an issue government can deal with,” said Friesen. “This is not a COOL (country of origin labelling) proposal like they have in the U.S. meant to discriminate against imports. It is a proposal for a voluntary rule that would give consumers the ability to support food products that actually were produced in their own country and to support their own farmers.”
CFA leaders meeting in Ottawa also called on federal and provincial governments to announce quickly whether they have a deal on a new set of farm safety net programs to kick in April 1, 2008, and if not, whether existing programs will be extended.
Recently, federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said federal and provincial agriculture ministers will meet Nov. 15-16 in Toronto for the first time in more than four months to try to settle details at least on business risk management programs.
Ritz said he could promise farmers that new financial safety net programs would be in place by April 1 but other programs such as farm environmental plans and innovation or food safety programs likely would have to continue in their existing form into the new fiscal year.
Despite Ritz’s assertion that new safety net programs will be in place within months, when the ministers last met in June they were divided on key issues.
These include how to define a disaster, which level of government would pay what portion of the disaster cost and whether Ottawa would agree to resume co-funding of province-specific companion programs designed to meet local needs.
