Paperwork that certifies meat imports from New Zealand will arrive by computer beginning in June.
It’s the first step to streamlining the documentation of meat imports from other countries, said Dr. Lou Skrinar with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
“There’s big gains on the horizon,” said Skrinar.
Now, the paperwork is faxed to one of the three Import Service Centres in Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal, and keyed into a Canadian computer.
Skrinar hopes retrieving the meat import information off a secure New Zealand website will reduce errors, make it harder to produce fraudulent paperwork and free people from this data entry job.
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“I’m convinced the electronic data transmission is safer than by paper,” said Skrinar.
Canada imports beef, lamb and venison from New Zealand.
Skrinar is also working with Australian ministry of agriculture officials for similar electronic certification from that country.
The Australian program would use e-mail instead of a website. He hopes that program will kick in two to three months after the New Zealand certification program.
Talks about a similar program with the United States and Mexico are in the preliminary stage.
The electronic certification project has been discussed for a couple years, but gets pushed aside when there are disease outbreaks like foot-and-mouth around the world.
Because Skrinar is in charge of all meat imports and possible diseases associated with meat imports, the recent cases of foot-and-mouth in Uruguay and Argentina have slowed the certification process, he said.
