Farmscape for January 20, 2005  (Episode 1698)

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says proposed medicated feed mixing regulations will be more consistent with systems already in place through the rest of the food production chain.

Proposed national medicated feed mixing regulations could be published as early as May or June of this year and could be finalized by early 2006.

CFIA Feed manufacturing Coordinator Judy Thompson says the new regulations will focus on the process rather than the product.

Clip-Judy Thompson-Canadian Food Inspection Agency 

The current feed regulations are product based and what that means is that there's standards established for the product in terms of composition and they have to meet those compositional standards.

For instance, for a medicated feed, it has to meet the guarantee plus or minus the analytical tolerance that's allowed for that particular medication.

The challenge with that kind of a situation is you take the sample, you send it into the lab for testing and by the time the result comes back the feed is gone out of the mill most likely.

It's most likely been fed and the pig may have been shipped so you're actually dealing with something after the fact.

It's a very reactive approach to regulation.

A processed based regulation is where you look at the system with a critical eye and you determine what parts of the system you can impose controls ahead of the fact so that you have more confidence in the ability of the system to manufacture that.

It's a proactive system.

If you look at food systems, many years ago they were product based as well so there would be very intensive product sampling part of the whole process.

Now with the HACCP systems in place they've identified the critical areas where controls are needed, they've established what the controls should be and what the critical limits are and so now they're producing products where those controls are in place.

You still have to do some end product testing to verify that the system is effective but the number of samples you have to take is significantly reduced.

Thompson says feed is a component of food production and the new medicated feed mixing regulations will reflect trends being adopted worldwide.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council