Canada Prepares for New International Feed Manufacturing Standards
Farmscape for June 8, 2004 (Episode 1532) The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says Canada will be reviewing its programs to make sure they comply with a new international code of practice for livestock feeding. A new International Code of Practice for the manufacture and use of feeds for food producing animals is expected to be approved next month. CFIA Feed Evaluation Coordinator Judy Thompson says Canadian standards will be reviewed to make sure they meet the new guidelines and, if minor adjustments are required, they'll be made. Clip-Judy Thompson-Canadian Food Inspection Agency The document deals with the manufacture and use of feeds for food producing animals. It basically sets standards around what kinds of controls you should have in place, what kinds of record keeping should be there. What will happen is the Canadian government will review our regulatory authorities, work with affected industries and make sure that what we're doing here in Canada meets the requirements of the code. We're pretty close. We have a good set of regulations in terms of ingredient use under the feeds regulations, the medicated regulations are currently being developed and finalized so that will contain some of the other controls and the health of animals amendment with respect to the mammalian feeding ban contains most of the rest so I think we're in pretty good shape. The other thing that puts us in a good position is that the on farm food safety program in Canada is quite far along in terms of the development and a lot of the things that we're looking for will be in that. We'll be able to use both the voluntary programs that are out there with third party oversight and the regulatory programs to come up with something that will meet these requirements. Thompson says the federal government has been quite active in the area of feed manufacturing and the livestock production sectors been very innovative and in their efforts to remain at the head of the pack internationally. She says Canada, in particular, is in a very good position to meet the new requirements the code will set forth once it is adopted. For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane. *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council