CFIA to Establish Medicated Feed Manufacturing Licensing Office
Farmscape for May 25, 2004 (Episode 1522) The Canadian Food Inspection Agency expects to establish a new central office, by early fall, to coordinate the licensing of Canadian facilities that manufacture medicated livestock feeds. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency plans to begin phasing in new regulations that will govern the manufacture of medicated livestock feeds early in the new year. As part of the process the agency will set up a centralized licensing office in Ottawa. Feed Evaluation Coordinator Judy Thompson, who's heading up the establishment and operation of the office, says its primary role will be to review license applications and keep track of which facilities are licensed. Clip-Judy Thompson-Canadian Food Inspection Agency The license requirement will be for anybody that's manufacturing medicated feeds for food producing animals. In order to get a license farmers and feedmills will be required to provide evidence that they have the manufacturing controls in place that are stipulated by the regulations. These relate to mixer performance testing, scale and metering device testing, equipment clean out procedures, the management of residues and directing them to the right place, recall procedures and some of the other administrative things that most feedmills and many farmers already have in place as part of their QA programs or as part of a normal food safety animal health control program. Part of the process is to track who's involved. Another part is to review the information as it comes in and to determine whether or not we should conduct an on site inspection, develop policies and procedures, to be an information centre for people that have questions about the medicated feed regulatory initiative here in Canada, that kind of thing. It's a new office that will be set up sometime, probably, in the early fall. Thompson says the new office will be responsible for reviewing license applications, tracking inspection results, maintaining a database of licensed facilities and providing the necessary administrative support...all in one central location. For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane. *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council