Food traceability funding announced

Thursday, July 21, 2011

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

The federal and Ontario agriculture ministers may be at loggerheads on some farm issues, but they do agree on the need for a traceability network that stitches together systems that are now working in isolation.

The Americans, the Asians and the Europeans are putting their traceability systems into place, Pierre Lemieux, parliamentary secretary to Canada’s Agriculture Minister told press in Cambridge this week. Canadian food producers, including farmers, have to do the same if they are access markets.

This week the federal and provincial governments committed $21.5 million to the Traceability Foundation Initiative for developing these systems. Lemieux described the federal commitment as “close to” $15 million. The money comes from the Federal Economic Action Plan’s Agricultural Flexibility Fund. The three-year joint federal and provincial funding program may provide up to 75 per cent cost-share funding to sector organizations and value chains to support voluntary, industry-led information sharing networks that will enhance agri-food traceability. Approved projects may be eligible for up to $5 million in funding per project.

Maria Van Bommel, parliamentary assistant to the Ontario Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, cited the chicken industry as an example. Chicken growers have to keep large numbers of records; the source of a farm’s feed for one. A system funded under the foundation initiative would enable that information to be “networked through the system to the store shelf.” Currently, there has been “a break” between the farm and the store shelf, she says.

“It’s good business,” Van Bommel  said. Other industries are familiar with ISO and

HACCP programs and farmers need to get up to speed.

The program “will sell itself as people start to see the kind of advantages that farmers who use this type of program are enjoying,” Van Bommel  says.
 

Many farmers will be familiar with ONTRACE, which built and runs a premise registry. Premise registry  is one pillar of traceability, Van Bommel says. The other pillars of traceability are product identification (identification of animals for example) and the movement of the animals through the system. BF