THE stickiness of a situation involving Saskatchewan jam, an Ontario business person and Canadian labeling regulations highlights a need for change.
As reported in last week’s issue, Ontario store owner Mark Loney decided to buy and market Saskatchewan jam and sell the product in Canada and the United States.
In his attempts to label the product in accordance with Canadian Food Inspection Agency regulations, he found himself mired in rules involving imperial versus metric, French and English listings, and even the acceptability of capitalization.
After major expense and 10 months of back and forth with the CFIA, only three of six product labels have been approved for use in Canada.
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Loney recently told the House of Commons agriculture committee that regulations on both sides of the border are onerous, but he clearly expected better than he received from the CFIA.
There was a time when consultations with government required that business be conducted by regular mail, and perhaps there was a time when a 40-day turn-around for a response was acceptable.
There might even be a reasonable explanation for why the abbreviation for tablespoon must be lower case rather than upper case, according to the CFIA.
But if that is the case, the explanation wasn’t adequately provided to Loney. In the 21st century, surely speed of response could be improved, not to mention some modernization of regulations.
One has to wonder how many other would-be entrepreneurs, faced with the same requirements and red tape, have abandoned the effort through sheer frustration .
Two weeks ago, the House voted against a bill that would have required mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients.
Given the above described level of complicated requirements, it appears that bill’s defeat may have prevented a tangle of red tape with potential to choke the best of intentions regarding informative food labels.
Several issues surrounding food labeling have furnished fodder for news stories of late. Besides the jam case and the GM labeling bill, proper labeling of organic products has been debated. So has the thorny question of whether Product of Canada labels should be changed to better reflect food origins.
Considering all that debate, it is clear that labeling regulations are needed. Consumers are interested in the ingredients of the foods they buy and eat, and their demands for clear and logical labels are likely to grow. ÂÂ
The current plethora of tongue-twister ingredients and confusing information on recommended daily intakes and serving sizes won’t suffice for much longer.
The onus will thus be upon the CFIA to update its regulations so that new products can find their way to Canadian store shelves. And once those products are there, it must ensure that consumers can understand what’s in them.
Will it be easy? Not at all.
But it is crucial, on several levels, that improvements to the current process are made.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, D’Arce McMillan and Ken Zacharias collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
