Canada needs better food traceability

Sylvain Charlebois and Chris Yost head the University of Regina's Research Network in Food Systems. They just completed a study comparing the food safety records of the top 17 countries in the OECD. Canada ranked fifth overall, but performed rather poorly -- 13th -- in the category of food traceability and management.

Here is what Charlebois and Yost wrote in their summary:

"In Canada, no regulation regarding mandatory traceability exists (except in Quebec with Agri-Traçabilité Québec) and initiatives across the country lack uniformity.

"Traceability systems are joined-up record keeping systems. They bring together information collected at each step of the production process: deliveries from suppliers into the business, through each of the steps which process and combine the ingredients into new intermediates and products and then deliveries out of the business to the customer. Traceability systems link this information together so that the path of a particular ingredient or batch of product can be seen. The accuracy of the records of ingredient usage, production, etc. is therefore vital to achieving robust traceability.

"As such, Canada’s capacity to track and trace is deficient compared with other European-based countries. In most of Canada, unlike Europe, traceability systems have typically developed independently, designed to serve a single purpose or organization."

The study looked at three other categories: Consumer Affairs measured how well countries were connected with their own consumers. (Canada ranked third.) Biosecurity looked at a country’s capacity to contain all relevant risks related to food safety. (Canada ranked 14th.) And  Governance and Recalls looked at the effectiveness of domestic regulations and governance related to food safety. (Canada ranked fourth.) 

The U.K. ranked first overall, with superior ratings in every category. Australia was fourth overall and the U.S. was seventh.

Link to the complete report: http://www.uregina.ca/news/releases/2008/may/Food%20Safety%20Report%20Abstract%20for%20web.pdf