Currently, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is drafting new regulations to replace the existing Licensing and Arbitration Regulations (LAR) and the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Regulations under its new the Safe Food for Canadians Act (SFCA).
The SFCA is intended to strengthen and streamline legislative authorities across Canada, making food safer while increasing trade opportunities domestically and internationally.
The proposed regulations address licensing, traceability requirements, and food safety preventive control plans, in addition to grade standards, ministerial exemptions, labelling and standards of identity.
Important to Canada’s fresh fruit and vegetable industry is the fact that the CFIA is proposing two major changes that will streamline and enhance fair and ethical trading in Canada:
- The proposed regulations will eliminate the two-tier license/membership requirement and simply provide for a single body for membership and dispute resolution; a role DRC will likely fill.
- The CFIA is assessing the current list of exemptions under Section 2.1 of the Licensing and Arbitration Regulations to see if they should be transferred to the new regulatory framework. There are very strong indications (with full support from industry) that the current “b” exemption would be removed. This would mean that those buying within a province and selling outside of the province would require membership in the DRC.
If you would like more information about the Safe Food for Canadians Act you can visit the CFIA website at www.inspection.gc.ca.
[Excerpt from: The Ontario Produce Marketing Association, December 2014 Newsletter]