OTTAWA – In two months Canada’s federal and provincial agriculture ministers will be asked to approve for the first time a code of national food inspection rules.
“We are proposing a harmonizing of national standards in health and safety and inspection,” said Ian Sutherland, director for meat and poultry in Agriculture Canada’s food inspection directorate.
“We anticipate that ministers will endorse it when they meet in Winnipeg.”
The proposed new code is the result of a year of work by federal and provincial agriculture and health department officials.
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It would not produce dramatic changes in existing Canadian inspection practices, but would ensure inspectors across the country use the same rules for judging such areas as acceptable bacterial levels, hygienic rules for packing and processing plants, butterfat content rules and packaging requirements.
“In some cases, there are different standards in different provinces and that can be a problem,” said Sutherland.
Governments co-operate
He said the work has proceeded on a technical level, without the usual jurisdictional and federal-provincial bickering that often accompanies attempts to create national standards.
“It has not been politicized so far,” he said. “In part, it is because we have endeavored not to take a patronizing federal attitude that we know what is best for the provinces.”
A spokesperson for agriculture minister Ralph Goodale indicated that approving a national inspection system is “a top priority” for the industry.
“The benefits of such a system are many and the efficiencies are many,” said Lyle Vanclief, parliamentary secretary to Goodale, in a recent House of Commons debate.
Delivery system more efficient
“It will streamline the inspection delivery system. It will enhance market performance and competitiveness. It will reduce trade barriers and regulatory pressures on industry.”
In part, uneven inspection standards have developed because of different jurisdictions in Canada’s federal-provincial system.
Food products that stay within provincial boundaries are inspected by provincial or municipal officials. Food products that cross provincial or national boundaries are the responsibility of federal inspectors.
The review of the jumble of standards was driven both by concerns about interprovincial trade barriers that undermine the Canadian economy and by a recognition that new international trade agreements impose inspection requirements on Canada that must be met.
Sutherland said the goal of the bureaucrats working on the proposal for ministers have been motivated by one common goal.
“The essence is that a Canadian food inspector is an inspector applying the same standards no matter where in the country he works.”
