In a nutshell, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) is demanding that the Canada Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) comply with recommendations from an audit of the country’s food safety for meat, poultry and eggs or its exports to the U.S. will be blocked.
The CFIA, in response, is saying that no Canadian meat plants are at risk of being delisted, thereby losing their trade status with the United States, and any issues raised in a 2014 USDA audit of meat, poultry and egg production plants have been resolved.
Twenty months ago, the USDA told Canada it needed to fix operational and procedural food safety weaknesses involving government oversight, sanitation and microbiological testing. While Canada did pass the “core criteria” for the audit, they have until the middle of March to meet the other requirements, according to Food Safety news.
The USDA audit was conducted during an in-country visit from May 28 to June 14, 2014, where specific meat, poultry and egg production operations were inspected. The audit, which was not published until Jan. 14, 2016, finds Canada is maintaining an “on-going equivalence to the United States system.”
According to the audit report, 101,499,649 pounds of Canadian meat and poultry products were inspected by U.S. officials at the border. Over 89,415 pounds were rejected because of fecal or listeria contamination. The CFIA also requested that its grade be bumped up from “Average,” the lowest grade given, to “adequate,” one grade higher.
“There are no outstanding issues and there was never any impact on trade,” said Barbara Jordan, associate vice-president of policy and programs for CFIA, according to the Global News. Jordan added that after the draft report was issued in 2015, the CFIA and FSIS held a meeting and both sides agreed that Canada had addressed the problems listed in the audit and would be considered equivalent to the American system.
The press is saying that reaction to the audit is falling along party lines in Canada. The audit took place near the end of Conservative Stephen Harper’s 10-year long tenure, and now it has become an issue with Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
This is just an added thought, but in reading the final report on the audit dated Jan. 14, 2016, when looking at the Executive Summary on page three, there is an interesting final paragraph. It pertains to the Central Competent Authority (CCA), and in this case, the CFIA.
But back to the final paragraph of the Executive Summary. It states: “During the exit meeting on June 13, 2014, the CCA noted that it has already begun to address the audit findings by implementing immediate corrective actions for the short-term and long-term prevention of recurrence of on-site audit findings. FSIS will evaluate any information provided by the CCA including the submission of the CCA’s proposed corrective actions in response to the audit findings to assess the effectiveness of the corrective actions. FSIS expects the CCA response within 60 days of the issuance of this report.”
The last sentence plainly states that the CCA is expected to respond to the issuance of the report within 60 days. Perhaps someone missed this paragraph, and it is just an oversight.
