#1 Food Safety and Food Quality

[parsley]

If you go to:

http://www.agr.gc.ca/puttingcanadafirst

You will see a Government plan for agriculture. Read it. Feel free to make your comments about the "Food Safety and Food Quality" in this thread. I'll post #2 "Environment" on another thread on Tuesday.

Parsley

[TOM4CWB]

I see this part of the APF as an increased cost with no extra return.

I believe it is much like GST book keeping, 5 times the administrative cost, with little or no reward. Joint ventures and co-operative arrangements make tracking much more complicated, if backup paperwork is required for audit trail.

I would be much more comfortable if the market was driving this side of record keeping, rather than government regulation which will cause unneeded red tape and be intrusive into every area of our lives, just like GST.

[charliep]

A couple of questions.

1) When your family shops for groceries, what do you/your spouse look for to satisfy yourself that the food products you buy are nutritious and safe.

2) What does your customer want in satisfying their needs?

3) How aware are members of society in the activities that currently go into the food safety (with all the food that is eaten daily, we don't have a lot of food safety problems)?

4) What things can farmers and agribusiness do to do satisfy these customer needs for safe and nutritious food (preferably things that are low cost)?

5) What should governments role be in this process?

[TOM4CWB]

Charlie,

I guess on food saftey, I feel no more comfortable if a record is avaliable than if one is not.

Bottom line is that just like log books for drivers, the records are often not for saftey at all, rather to satisfy a law that does not make drivers any safer, just like traceability on food is unlikely to make food any safer if the people who produced it in the beginning had integrety to begin with in the first place.

This is kind of like the gun registry, those who are honest and have integrety don't need to be monitored, and those who are dishonest will lie and cheat anyway!

I personally don't have a big problem with documenting and having an audit trail, as long as I can afford to do the extra work and get paid a fair wage for doing the extra work.

[rodbradshaw]

The market is driving the food safety and food quality issue. Government is palying catch up and is failling badly at it. Most sectors Produce (especially for processing) and meats are or already have HACCP. Producers in the potato business in Alberta and other potato producing areas are having to change how they do things and document everything that they do. When this comes to the grain industry, you are going to have to have someone doing paperwork full time. No more sitting down at the end of the year and trying to remember what all you sprayed or did in that field. You will even need to know what the neighbour sprayed and was there conditions for drift. It's not going to be pretty out there.

What the government needs to do is work with producers so that they can adjust to the new requirements or help them move on. This government is selling this policy as though it was manna from heaven. They talk about being able to export and compete globally. Yes you will need HACCP or something equivalent to export to the developed world but it will have to compete with the lowest priced substitute at the end of the day. You may have the best and safest food product going but this system is not going to guarantee a profit.

[rodbradshaw]

Less than 2% of the population is concerned about food safety and quality the other 98% of the people trust our reseach and testing which is very extensive and trustworthy to the point where you can say lets eat.

The 2% will always be raising hell about what is good for them. I think alot of pressure needs to be put on the media for printing or broadcasting unproven opinons and unsubstantiated statements just to have glorified reporting. We done have investigative reporting we have printing of rumors and total misinformation.

Besides international trade will start its own safety and quality rumors to suit its own set of tariff rules.

I think the government is blowing smoke to side step the real issues in agriculture today, with this over worked subject.