On behalf of Steve Levasseur, my president and an apple producer from Frelighsburg, Quebec, I thank you for the invitation. Being an apple producer, and with the temperature as it is today, he is out in the fields.
The Canadian Horticultural Council is the national association representing the producers of fresh fruits and vegetables in Canada. What I would like to address with you here today is food safety in Canada's horticultural sector.
In 1999 our association, through the board of directors, made a decision to take a proactive and leadership role in the development and dissemination of an on-farm food safety program for those who grow, pack, and store the abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables enjoyed by Canadians. Since then we have accomplished a great deal. Thousands of on-farm food safety manuals have been distributed on farms across Canada, and a very conservative guesstimate of that is at least 5,000, and quite possibly more.
I must note that the accomplishments would not have been possible without the collaboration and support, in financial resources and technical expertise, of both Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The Government of Canada has made considerable investment in helping industry develop the program. The importance of this support cannot be emphasized enough. It is critical that such support continue into the future and be available to early adopters and those who must now update those programs, as well as those who are either new to the program or implementing it in a more formal way.
Our role in on-farm food safety has been to provide the tools to enable and facilitate the sector to respond and compete in the marketplace in Canada and beyond. Our mandate was to deliver a realistic, cost-effective, voluntary, and market-driven program based on member input and needs. It would seek to minimize the risk of contamination from produce grown in Canada, make a positive contribution to the safety of the Canadian food supply, and ensure consumer confidence. It would need to be technically sound and credible, created through a transparent process, founded on the best available science, and be a buyer-recognized standard.
It was a huge undertaking for a sector that includes over 120 different fruit and vegetable crops. In order to organize and facilitate the process, the crops were grouped into eight commodity-specific manuals, each with its own generic HACCP model. The result was the implementation of a four-year strategic phase-in of one program for horticulture in Canada, owned by the council on behalf of members.
A supply chain approach is key, and we established and relied on the links between programs both up and down the supply chain. We have striven for mutual recognition of programs by supply chain partners. It is important that programs take a common approach that is HACCP-based, technically sound, and auditable. Programs must be market-driven and responsive to consumer expectations.
The CFIA role, which we have supported, is to lead the government recognition program for on-farm food safety programs developed by national producer associations. This includes establishing the criteria for a technically sound HACCP-based program and having a recognition system in place to do in-depth technical reviews to ensure credible risk-based programs.
As of May 1 of this year, we are awaiting closure and CFIA sign-off on our leafy green and small fruit programs. The technical review process for our final modules is under way. Technical review of the on-farm programs by government will continue to be key to their credibility. There is a role for CFIA and Agriculture Canada to play in actively promoting the government's role in program recognition to an international audience.
The government recognition program provided CHC with the context to proceed as we did to develop a national HACCP-based program. That has helped our members respond to market pressures and be proactive in addressing food safety concerns.
Participation is market-driven. We have a certification component, and as of December, nearly 300 producers have been certified to the program. There is additional detail on the certification program, the audit protocols, and so forth in the packages you have.
The program has been endorsed by several major potato processing companies, including McCain Foods Canada, Simplot, Lamb Weston, and just recently Loblaw Companies Limited, a major Canadian retailer.
For further information, I again encourage you to see the documents or visit our website.
I'd like to talk a little bit about the international context, because for us it is very important. Trade in fresh produce is global, and food safety is an international concern. Our proactive initiatives extend beyond Canadian borders to ensure industry competitiveness and influence and to position the Canadian HACCP-based approach as a model internationally. Global benchmarking of our program is a goal, and we have indeed initiated the process with both GlobalGAP and the global food safety initiative.
On benchmarking, in the spirit of a supply chain approach, stakeholders in the Canadian fresh produce industry--our group, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, and the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors--have agreed that food safety should be a non-competitive matter. The best means of achieving this is to have credible HACCP-based national food safety programs all along the supply chain and, in due course, recognize each other's national programs and promote food safety equally between domestic fresh produce and imported fresh produce.
We initiated a joint comparison project in 2007 entitled “Comparing Canada's National Industry-led Food Safety Programs in the Fresh Produce Sector with Food Safety Programs Available in Importing Countries”. If you'd like a copy, I'd be pleased to provide you with one. It showed that Canada was clearly a leader and had much to be proud of. There was significant interest in the report.
The CHC belongs to a group called the International Federation for Produce Standards. It was formed in 2006 to provide an international forum for the produce industry to address areas requiring standardization across international borders. The primary focus included food safety; good agricultural practices; harmonization; and produce identification, including the PLU stickers--the data bar codes you find on a number of things. A lot of those things are channelled through that group.
Membership comprises a number of groups: the Chilean Association of Exporters, CHC, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, the Fresh Produce Consortium in the U.K., Fruit South Africa, Horticulture Australia, a group in Norway--I must apologize that I cannot properly pronounce the name--the Produce Marketing Association in the U.S., and United Fresh in New Zealand.
At our annual meeting in April we had clear consensus on the following points related to food safety: a single set of internationally recognized criteria against which food safety programs are benchmarked should be established; the outcome must encompass the total fresh produce supply chain; and one global benchmarking system is preferable for the produce sector.
I'm sure traceability is also something of interest to you. We participated in an initiative related specifically to produce in a North American trade task force to establish a global fruit and vegetable traceability implementation guide. This was a joint venture between Canada and the U.S. involving retailers and grower associations. We achieved that in 18 months. There is a document that is being finalized and will be available in July. It is a global recipe for benchmarking data-set capture and so on, which is very important. Trade moves very fluidly, and it's important to be capturing the same data.
In summary, resources are required to help the Canadian produce industry implement and sustain the program for farms across Canada. The program is costly to run, and the technical components need ongoing revision to maintain currency with developing science. Current projections show that our program will be running a deficit for at least the first five years, with debt accumulating until year eight.
Investment is required for Canadian industry to contribute to and be involved in the direction of industry-driven standards here at home and internationally.
There are also a number of research needs in the area of on-farm food safety for fresh produce. Many questions have yet to be answered definitively, and investment is needed to advance studies in those areas. In 2008, a priority list was compiled by Health Canada, CFIA, CHC, and the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, and it is available on Health Canada's website.
With that, thank you very much.