CQA Nears Completion of Phase One of CFIA Recognition Process

Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1253

The Canadian Pork Council says its on farm food safety program is very close to completing phase one of the process that will qualify it for federal government recognition.

The Canadian Pork Council is one of 19 commodity groups seeking Canadian Food Inspection Agency recognition of their on farm food safety programs.

Phase one of the process involves a technical review of each program's HACCP generic model, the scientific backbone of on farm food safety, as well as how the HACCP model has been incorporated into the producer manuals.

National Canadian Quality Assurance Coordinator Dawn LeBlanc says the latest update of the CQA model was submitted in April, just days before the review process was put on hold.

"The documents that we have submitted include an update. All of the producer materials and HACCP model were reviewed over the last year or so and we've updated some of them.

We've included a little more information on good production practices for the producers and made a few changes to the questions that the producers use to write up their protocols just to clarify a few points for everyone.

Those updated materials are the ones that we submitted to CFIA and we feel they're pretty close to being ready to go.

Basically we're going to submit them as they are with the updates. Right now we're waiting to hear back from CFIA on getting things up and going. We expect that it will be happening shortly.

We have been meeting with them and talking about what some potential time lines might be and we'll be the next commodity group out of the blocks to go through this technical review process."

LeBlanc estimates, once the process resumes, it will take the technical review team about a month to re-evaluate the CQA documents. She says, once that review is complete, the program will be able to move into the final steps of phase one of the recognition process.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.