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A New Traceability Standard for Food Safety & Bird Welfare in Canada |
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January 19, 2007
Food Safety
In order to achieve the desired results throughout the entire industry, we must build a strong foundation beginning with a partnership between Consumers, Consumer Groups, Retailers, Animal Welfare Advocates, Producers, and Government Agencies.
The first move is to develop a strategic plan that will allow us to reach our goals and establish harmony between members of all of the above groups… ultimately defining Canada as a world leader in safe egg production.
It is our position that to be truly effective, we must first provide to conscientious consumers the ability to validate their purchases… a method of verifying that the eggs they have purchased truly come from Canadian farms using Cage, Cage Free or Free Range Organic production methods and are authentic Omega-3 enhanced, Vitamin enhanced, Vegetarian or Classic eggs.
This method of verification, and the level of confidence that it provides, can only come from a National Egg Traceability program that provides transparency of the egg industry to the Canadian public, and empowers each individual to authenticate their own eggs.
Radical and immediate change cannot be sustained without complete and total disruption of a reliable egg supply. However, a continued steady transition is desirable as it will allow the producers and their conversion to maintain an output consistent with the increasing consumer demand for specialty egg production. Based on the European model, this process will take 6 to 24 months to reach its maximum effectiveness, ultimately eliminating all non-traceable eggs from Canadian egg production.
Bird Welfare
We must also encourage government policy makers to strive to improve bird welfare by increasing the amount of floor space, feeder space and water availability required for each bird. This increase in space per bird effectively reduces the number of birds that can reside in existing cages. As producers will not willingly abandon production quotas, they will be forced to build new facilities for the birds that are removed. These new facilities are most likely to be a more bird-friendly cage system or wholly cage-free if the message from the public is clear that Canadians are choosing more specialty eggs or eggs from Cage-Free production.
It is essential to achieving any of these goals that we are able to penetrate the CFIA’s resistance to traceability. We must insist that the CFIA support a national traceability initiative such as EggsacTrace. We must persuade them to increase the minimum space per bird. We must demand that they increase their inspections of producers and graders and support a system that offers fully traceable eggs to consumers.
We can only affect change within the CFIA by demonstrating that we have overwhelming support from the public and private sectors including the consumer. In order to gain this support, we must get our message out through all possible media outlets and communication channels. This of course will take advertising dollars we do not have and therefore, fundraising and contributions from the government to further the cause. If effective, the funds raised can even be used to assist producers who wish to convert to on-farm printing and become a member of Verified Eggs Canada, thus fast-forwarding the conversion process.
Animal Welfare Advocates are well positioned to further mutual goals as they have the ear of concerned consumers and a louder collective voice. Traceability is an important factor to attain consumer confidence.
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Traceability Standard
