ON-FARM FOOD SAFETY AND TRACEABILITY Today’s consumers are increasingly concerned with the quality and safety of the food they buy. Not only do they want their safety and quality guaranteed,

Although Québec agri-food products enjoy excellent reputation as regards quality and safety, producers consider that the farm production sector should be able to demonstrate this through credible and recognized systems.

On-farm food safety programs

In Québec, farmers groups have already taken action to improve and control food safety and quality in response to signals from the marketplace. For example, they work to develop and implement on-farm food safety programs based on HACCP (Hazard analysis critical control) principles, a system recognized the world over.

Launched in 1997 by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Canadian On-Farm Food Safety Program (COFFSP) provided financial support to the development of systems aimed at ensuring the safety of the food produced on farms. At the moment, a number of food safety programs intended for some 30 different production sectors are at various stages of development and implementation by both Canadian and Quebec producers’ organizations.http://www.coffs-safc.ca/commodity-programs.thml

In collaboration with provincial and territorial governments, the CFIA launched in 2002 an official recognition system aimed at demonstrating the credibility of the sectorial programs. The CFIA recognition process (http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/fssa/polstrat/reco/recoe.shtml) is a multi-party evaluation of the technical soundness and administrative effectiveness of the sectorial on-farm food safety programs. Currently, eleven productions (chickens, turkeys, milk, table and hatching eggs, pork, beef, sheep, grain, potatoes and fruit trees) have successfully passed the technical examination stage.

Traceability

Traceability is the capacity to locate and know the history of a given food product as it progresses through the agri-food chain. Product identification is first made on-farm and is maintained up to the consumer table. The farm sector is currently working to develop and implement traceability systems.

What are the reasons for identifying and tracing?

Traceability is an indispensable tool for the proper operation of quality assurance programs and consequently, it is a required component of food safety and security programs. In addition to meeting the new demands of consumers, the implementation of traceability systems provides, both for industry and governments, the possibility to contain and rapidly respond to food risks or contagious diseases that may occur in livestock. In this regard, the advantages are numerous:

	Human and animal health protection;
	Limitation of economic losses and safeguarding of livestock value;
	Safeguarding of our access to international markets;
	Meeting the requirements of WTO, which encourages the implementation of such systems;
	Possibility for exporting in countries requiring such a system as they already have one in place.

Traceability also provides a means to differentiate products, throughout the food value chain, which conform to certification programs designed to meet specific consumer demands. By guaranteeing the authenticity of certain niche products, such as regional or organic produce, traceability allows consumers to make informed decisions on what they eat and also opens the door to the promotion of high quality local products.

Born of a partnership between the UPA, the MAPAQ and the Financière agricole du Québec, Agri-traçabilité Québec inc.(ATQ) (http://agri-tracabilite.qc.ca/) was officially created in September 2001. ATQ’s mandate is to manage the implementation and operation of farm products permanent identification and traceability systems. Programs are already implemented in the bovine, ovine and cervidae sectors, and others are under development in the pig, the cervid, lettuce and the table eggs sectors. With such initiatives, the Quebec acts as a leader in the area of agricultural products traceability in Canada.

With respect to safety and traceability, it is impossible to control all the risks at only one point. Each stakeholder of the agri-food industry, including consumers, is thus accountable of the risks generated by his activities. As part of their mandate to protect public health and support the industry, the federal and provincial governments must support agricultural producers as well as the industry as a whole in the development and implementation of these initiatives. The goal is keep consumer confidence, while maintaining the competitive capacity of Quebec and Canada’s agri-food industry on both domestic and international markets.