Food businesses that import or prepare food for export from Canada will be required to follow new rules designed to remove unsafe food from the marketplace faster and stop the spread of disease, starting yesterday.
The new
Safe Foods for Canadians Regulations(SFCR), effective Jan. 15, cover a wide range of food safety-related efforts from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), including licensing, labeling standards, rules enforcement and new recall protocols. The program launch also includes CFIA-developed educational efforts such as
online videos covering the new rules, documents outlining fee changes, an online glossary of key terms and a downloadable handbook for businesses seeking additional information about SFCR.
The
new regulations – which are being phased in over the next 30 months – also feature traceability requirements designed to help Canadian food companies that import or send food between Canadian territories track the origins of the products they manage. Other issues covered by SFCR include packaging, organic products, excluded products and inspection standards. The latest rules stem from 10 previously enacted regulations that were current as of December of 2018.