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Farm-Scape, Episode 2243

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency hopes to begin the third and final pilot of phase two of its program for reviewing Canada's on-farm food safety programs next month.

To validate Canada's on-farm food safety programs internationally, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has developed a two phase technical review process designed to ensure the soundness of the programs and their management systems.

19 national commodity groups are currently involved in the recognition process, 12 have completed part one of the review and two have completed part two.

On-Farm Food Safety Recognition Section national coordinator C. Warren Smandych explains phase one of the recognition process examines the technical soundness of the program and phase two evaluates its management system.

"The review for part one basically assesses technical soundness of their program as it relates to HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) based food safety programs which leads us into, once this has been done, and the process that we're following right now is the technical review part two which is the review of the management system for a national producer organization.

The management system is the system that's developed to make sure that the national producer organization can assure that the program is being implemented as written and as well gives them the tools to show us that they are going to also conduct internal audits, on-farm audits and basically to ensure that the program is being delivered nationally as written."

Dairy Farmers of Canada completed the first pilot of the second phase of the technical review this past spring and Chicken Farmers of Canada completed the second pilot this summer.

Smandych says the third pilot could begin early next month, depending on the timing of the official request.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.