Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members, for inviting the Canadian Supply Chain Food Safety Coalition to appear during your hearings on the supply chain.
An understanding of the role of the food supply chain in Canada is important for many reasons, two of which are directly related to the mandate given the coalition by its members: food safety and emergency preparedness.
However, prior to discussing these, I would like to take a minute to introduce our organization.
The coalition was formed in December 2000 and incorporated in 2007 to act as a single strong voice for industry along the food chain, with the public and government, on industry-wide food safety issues. Our membership is composed of national, provincial, and regional associations involved in the agrifood industry and of individual companies that provide services to the industry.
At the start of the year, the coalition had 27 national associations as members, three provincial or regional associations, and five companies as allied members. These organizations represent businesses at every link in the supply chain, from input suppliers through primary production, transportation, processing, manufacturing, distribution, and importing to final marketers at export, retail, and food service.
Our vision is that Canada’s agriculture, aquatic, and food industry will have a world-class reputation for producing and selling safe food. Our mission, as the coalition, is to facilitate, through dialogue within the food industry and with all levels of government, the development and implementation of a national, coordinated approach to food safety to ensure credibility in the domestic and international marketplaces.
Over the past 11 years, we have been actively involved in consultations with ministers and with officials at all levels—provincial, federal, and territorial—and in intra-industry discussions about the future shape of Canada’s food safety system. Several years ago, because we are the only Canadian organization that includes members from all segments of the food supply chain, the members assigned the coalition a role in pandemic, emergency, and critical infrastructure planning. Your review of the supply chain should probably explore this facet as well.
To meet its members' needs, the coalition undertakes monitoring and analysis, with a particular focus on Canadian and international trends; policy development, either with its members or with governments; advocacy; and special projects, such as our current project on food safety auditor qualifications and competencies.
From our perspective, the supply chain is defined very broadly indeed. It includes, for us, service producers, which are businesses that work with the supply chain in key areas such as pest control, quality and food safety consulting, or audit and certification; input suppliers, which are businesses that manufacture, import, or distribute farm chemicals, animal health products, seeds, fertilizers, food additives, and other chemicals used in processing, packaging materials, and equipment manufacturers; primary producers, including farmers, aquaculture producers, the fishing industry, and even those involved in niche sectors like wildcrafting; processors, further processors, and manufacturers that transform those products into food or feed ingredients or ready-to-consume food; transporters that play a key role at every link of the chain and cover all modes as they move ingredients and finished products along the chain and to every community in Canada; importers that handle inputs, ingredients, feed, and food; distributors of all sizes that provide the logistical system that ties the chain together; and final marketers, including retail and food-service establishments, institutions, exporters, and yes, even food banks, that provide our goods to the consumers here in Canada and elsewhere.
As I've noted above, the coalition has members from all these key segments of the supply chain. Why? Because they all have a strong common interest in providing Canadians with a safe food supply.
Mr. Chairman, when we appeared before your Subcommittee on Food Safety in June 2009, we made a number of recommendations based on a set of four principles that our members had strongly supported earlier that year.
Principle number one is that food safety is the shared responsibility of all participants in the supply chain, all governments, and consumers.
Principle number two is that governments at all levels, the agrifood industry, and other stakeholders should foster and facilitate the development of an integrated, coordinated, and national approach to food safety policy and regulation, based on sound scientific risk assessment and risk management principles, and on international standards.
Principle number three is that industry and government food safety initiatives should encourage the implementation of HACCP and/or HACCP-based food safety systems by businesses all along the supply chain.
Principle number four is that food businesses, governments, and other stakeholders have a responsibility to adequately resource, proactively manage, update, maintain, and continually improve their individual and collaborative food safety systems and food safety initiatives.
Your subcommittee endorsed these principles.
The coalition members were particularly pleased that the subcommittee, on page 4 of its report, adopted our recommendation for a national food safety strategy by stating that:Governments at all levels, the agri-food industry, and other stakeholders should be invited to participate in and facilitate the development of an integrated, co-ordinated, and national approach to food safety policy and regulation based on sound scientific risk assessment and risk management principles and on international standards.
We were also pleased that the subcommittee restated our declaration that Canadians, no matter where they reside or purchase their food, are entitled to the same level of assurances about its safety—assurances that should be based on common standards and expectations. A corollary of this statement is that agrifood businesses within each link of the supply chain should be asked to operate according to common standards and expectations within and amongst responsible jurisdictions. Our expectation of imported food products should be, as a matter of course, the same as we would expect from our national system.
In the three years since the subcommittee reported, some—but not enough—progress has been made to realize this key objective. Industry furthered its discussions. Federal, provincial, and territorial ministers and committees of officials have continued to meet, and industry-government sessions have championed the idea. Most recently, it was a key recommendation of a national food safety forum in Edmonton, sponsored by the Alberta government in January of this year. However, substantive discussions involving all the stakeholders have yet to begin.
We cannot overemphasize the importance of moving forward now to develop a national food safety strategy. It should be the foundation of the modernization of Canada’s food safety legislation and regulations at both the federal and the provincial-territorial levels.
Over the past decade or so many of our trading partners—developed and developing countries alike—have established new food safety strategies and implemented major changes in food safety legislation and regulations. I believe you have a copy of my brief in front of you. You can see there's quite a list there of those that have dealt with it in the past decade. I think it's fair to say that of the OECD countries, Canada and New Zealand are now the last two to proceed with the modernization of their food safety legislation and regulatory systems. Legislation is currently before Parliament in New Zealand.
All these legislative initiatives are based on a full supply chain, farm-to-fork approach, and incorporate at their core the requirement that all food businesses implement preventive controls using HACCP or HACCP-based requirements.
The U.S. initiative is particularly important. Yes, they are our biggest agrifood trading partner, but this is not the only reason. The new U.S. approach to food safety will push their requirements well beyond their borders. Initiatives respecting preventive controls, food defence, traceability, registration, importer responsibilities, third-party certification, etc. are now putting great pressure on Canadian agrifood exporters and will have ramifications in our domestic market for years to come.
In their December 2011 response to the Weatherill report, the Minister of Health and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food indicated that a new federal food safety bill would be forthcoming. In correspondence with the coalition earlier this year, the ministers have also clearly stated that consultations with stakeholders would precede its introduction into the House. As well, there was a reference in last week's budget.
These statements are all good news.
The promised consultations will provide an opportunity for the elaboration of a national strategy, and the introduction of a bill, perhaps even a separate food act, will provide a mechanism for modernizing the federal food safety regime. These consultations should also provide an opportunity for serious discussions about how industry and governments respond to the international challenges identified above.
One of the key mechanisms for meeting this last objective is the industry-led food safety programs that members of the coalition and other industry associations, working closely with governments, have developed and implemented for almost every segment of the supply chain. We now have 20-plus national HACCP-based, commodity-specific, on-farm food safety programs covering 99% of primary production.
For other segments of the supply chain, industry associations have developed, or are in the process of developing and implementing, national programs covering: input suppliers, like feed mills; specific food products, such as bottled water, or ice manufacturing—one of the latest ones deals with kosher products; distribution, for example, fresh produce at the wholesale level, grain handling, retail distributors, and warehouses, even retail stores and food banks; and then services, including trucking, packaging, and water and waste water.
Industry-led food safety systems and the national on-farm and post-farm food safety recognition programs established by governments are now an integral part of Canada's food safety approach. They are a necessary complement to the capacity of governments at all levels to engage in direct inspection and auditing activities. And they are a clear example of the supply chain working together in a pre-competitive way to meet an important societal need: food safety.
Looking ahead, in terms of future investments, our 2009 strategy document and the subcommittee's report both strongly endorse continued investment by agrifood businesses, their associations, and governments, to ensure that these systems are implemented and adequately resourced, proactively managed, updated, maintained, and improved.
Ministers and officials are discussing new program and funding arrangements for the agrifood sector under a Growing Forward 2 framework. Farmers and others have been consulted. The coalition strongly believes that food safety must have a priority role in this framework. Food safety cuts clearly across major policy objectives outlined in the 2011 Saint Andrews Statement. It's essential for competitiveness, for innovation, and for the assurance of our infrastructure.
Growing Forward 2 should commit both levels of government to a set of clear food safety objectives. We would recommend the following as some examples of what these should be: development of a new national strategy; modernizing and harmonizing FPT food safety legislation and regulations; creation of new national food safety decision-making mechanisms to ensure ongoing harmonization; continued funding for all segments of the supply chain—but in particular for micro-, small, and medium-sized enterprises—for food safety system development and implementation; formal agreements by the FPT ministers to finalize the national on-farm and post-farm food safety recognition programs for the strengthening of Canada's surveillance capacity; and adequate resourcing for FPT initiatives.
In conclusion, the coalition would like to thank the committee for asking it to make this submission. An understanding of the role of the supply chain is essential to understanding the Canadian agrifood industry, including, we would again emphasize, the fishing and aquaculture parts of the chain.
Food safety, as we have stated, is viewed by the participants in the supply chain as a pre-competitive matter, a scenario where all segments must work together. It's also an area of significant and continuous change. All stakeholders, industry, and governments need to collaborate to ensure that we have a world-class reputation for producing safe food.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.