Farmscape for January 30, 2006  (Episode 2047)

Dairy Farmers of Canada has become the first commodity group to enter phase two of the review that will ultimately result in federal recognition of its on farm food safety program.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency's On-Farm Food Safety Recognition Program is a two phase initiative designed to provide national recognition of Canada's on farm food safety programs.

National Coordinator Warren Smandych says several commodity groups have completed phase one and Dairy Farmers of Canada has agreed to pilot phase two of the review.

Clip-Warren Smandych-Canadian Food Inspection Agency  

The first part of the process was submission of the generic HACCP model.

From that they developed the producer manual for an on farm food safety program.

This technical review was conducted and completed with the letter of competition for technical review part one given in December of 2002 however the competition for the process was November 2002.

Since that time they have been working with their producers developing a management system which includes basically four components, the general management system, the technical component which ensures that the technical part of the on program is maintained and current.

There's a conformance component which deals with the on farm auditing or validation, what ever term the NPO or national  producer organization wishes to chose.

Then finally, the training component which is component that will be used to ensure understanding of the program not only for the producers or members but as well the on farm validators, provincial delivery agents, whoever they are going to be determined to be, as well as auditors.

Smandych says a second commodity group has submitted its request for a phase two review and a number of others are almost ready to submit.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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