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Surprise audits part of tighter food safety regimes US modernization reflected in CanadaGAP changes


by PETER MITHAM ABBOTSFORD – Parallel


initiatives to overhaul food safety regulations in the US and Canada mean more paperwork and the prospect of unannounced audits for producers shipping internationally. Under former president Barack Obama, the US passed the Food Safety Modernization Act in 2011. A year later, the Safe Foods for Canadians Act received royal assent in Canada. Regulations under both pieces of legislation are under development and steadily coming into effect. “It’s a big web,” says Jack


Bates, a blueberry grower in Delta and chair of CanadaGAP, a national food safety certification body headquartered in Ottawa. The new regulations change the kinds of records producers keep, including a requirement to develop and maintain 20 water samples that reflect water quality over the course of four years. This is a shift from previous practice and will help track fluctuations in water quality


over time. Samples in the new


Microbial Water Quality Profile must test at less than 410 STV (statistical threshold value) per 100 ml. for E. coli, with zero tolerance for E. coli in water used for ice, handwashing, direct contact with handling surfaces or, of course, with the produce itself. Compliance with the


requirements of certification programs such as CanadaGAP will be monitored both through regularly scheduled audits as well as a system of unannounced audits scheduled to begin this summer. Presentations at the Pacific


Agriculture Show in Abbotsford this past January briefed producers on the changes, including the fact that the unannounced audits aren’t really unannounced. While not part of a producer’s regularly scheduled audit, they’ll take place with two to five days’ notice.


The audits must occur when the certified activities are happening. A certified berry producer that also runs a poultry operation must be


audited when it’s processing berries, for example. “It’s pretty early in the season to have any sense of how it’s going so far,” said Heather Gale, executive director with CanadaGAP in Ottawa. Gale knows of just one


producer that’s been audited to date but noted, “it will be 5% of all of the clients that are enrolled in CanadaGAP.” Contacts at various commodity groups, including the BC Blueberry Council, BC Greenhouse Growers Association and the BC Fruit Growers Association, as well as Gale, said the audits shouldn’t concern producers. “You shouldn’t be scrambling to get your food safety [materials]. It should be [done] weekly or daily to make sure your paperwork is up to date,” Bates said. Linda Delli Santi, executive


director of the BC Greenhouse Growers Association, said smaller farms might need to spend more time to assemble the materials required for the audit because they don’t necessarily have the office staff overseeing program


implementation. However, any grower who’s keeping records should have the information at hand even if it’s not all in one place. This is where advance


notice gives producers time to assemble the documentation they’re required to show and ensure an efficient visit by auditors over the course of the half- day spent at the farm. Gale said any producer that


knows they’re scheduled for an audit and hasn’t yet been contacted can expect the visit to be unannounced. “By default, if you haven’t


heard anything, then you should be thinking, ‘Oh they’re probably going to be giving me very short notice before they come,’” she said. Compliance with food


safety protocols isn’t the only area producers are having audited this summer. According to the BC Fruit


Growers Association, the province’s employment standards branch is also visiting farms this summer to ensure growers are maintaining proper payroll records and workers are receiving their due.


COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • AUGUST 2017


NAFTA on block


by PETER MITHAM OTTAWA –


Renegotiation of the 23- year-old North America Free Trade Agreement is set to start in August. “Dozens of meetings”


and more than 12,000 comments were received in the run-up to the office of US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer releasing its objectives for the negotiations with Canada and Mexico on July 17. The 18-page document


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covers an array of sectors, with agricultural goods the second item listed, followed by the closely related area of sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) measures. Countries often treat these measures as non-tariff trade barriers. Indeed, the objectives specifically “seek to eliminate non-tariff barriers to US agricultural exports” as part of ambitions to increase market access for US products. The wording implies that the US lacks the kind of access to Canada and Mexico that these countries have to the US.


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regulations is also targeted with a view to reducing “burdens associated with unnecessary differences.” Specifically regarding


SPS protocols, the US says each country should determine the kind of protections its plants and animals require. However, it says these should “build upon WTO rights and obligations.” It seeks “new and enforceable rules to ensure that science- based SPS measures are developed and implemented in a transparent, predictable, and non-discriminatory manner.”


The objectives are all about the US because US legislators must be kept informed about the negotiations at all stages. That’s not the case in Canada, though Parliament – like Congress – debates and votes on free trade agreements. Observers caution that


NAFTA renegotiations will be a long, hard road. The original negotiations of the late 1980s were compared to a mouse sleeping with an elephant.


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