Global Food Partnerships

Canada appears to be outpacing the U.S. in terms of implementing traceability. On June 2, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) published a discussion document outlining in general terms proposed regulatory mechanisms for product traceability as well as for licensing, preventive control measures, foreign inspections, and foreign regulatory systems equivalency. According to “A New Regulatory Framework for Federal Food Inspection,” Canada will implement “at a minimum” the international standard for traceability established by the Codex Alimentarius Commission—namely recordkeeping to identify product movement one step forward and one step back in the supply chain. Retailers who are covered by the regulation would not be required to trace food products sold to the final consumer, however.

“The question is whether Canada can draw the rest of the world in traceability.”

—•David Acheson, MD, director of the food and import safety ­practice, Leavitt Partners

“There is a big opportunity for Canada under the Safe Food for Canadians Act to move forward more quickly than the U.S. on traceability standards,” Henry says. “They can put a stake in the ground and state, ‘This is what we will require from anyone moving product into my country or [from product that is] domestically produced.’”

Cameron Prince, vice president for inspection modernization at the CFIA, says implementation of the traceability regulation is “fairly imminent in terms of how bureaucracy goes” with a final regulation expected by the end of 2014 or in early 2015. “It would be naïve to say this will be nice and smooth because there are many perspectives on this,” Prince told the Food Safety Summit. “Some industry players say they don’t want the long arm of the government involved directly with information like that and prefer the government to have just an oversight role. Others want to see more rigorous traceability standards in place. So the debate is just beginning.” Combined with an already established identification framework for beef and pork, the traceability mechanism would create a “farm-to-fork approach,” according to Prince. “It’s a broad vision and many countries share that vision. The question is how to get there.”

But whether Canada’s traceability mechanism will become the de facto international standard remains to be seen. “The question is whether Canada can draw the rest of the world in traceability,” says Acheson. “Typically, they haven’t been able to [influence the world] because they are too small. Europe and the U.S. could, but for Canada, maybe, maybe not.”

Mutual Recognition

Australia’s Parker ties growth in world food trade with the way governments cooperate and recognize each other’s food safety systems. “This is no small body of work by any stretch of the imagination. But we see the Food Safety Modernization Act as an opportunity for us to work with FDA and, through some of those issues, work out exactly what each of our systems should be doing to provide confidence in both countries over their food safety systems,” he says.

“The additional audits mandated by FSMA may be viewed by some in industry as regulatory duplication,” Parker explains. “Accordingly, Australia is working with the FDA and the outcome we are hoping for is for simplified compliance arrangements under which Australia’s regulatory system is recognized, similar to how New Zealand’s regulatory system is recognized by the FDA.”

This is in reference to the fact that, in December 2012, the FDA and New Zealand regulators signed a voluntary “systems recognition agreement” acknowledging that each other’s food safety system provides “comparable” levels of safety assurances. Expected benefits from this first-ever arrangement will include enhanced information sharing to allow food products to be imported without duplicated inspections.