OTTAWA — When can a chick or a pig claim Canadian residency?
It's a tricky question that's confounding the federal government, as it struggles to sort out what meat products can claim to be a "Product of Canada" on food packaging.
The conundrum dates back to 2008, when the government didn't factor in how imported live animals fit in to strict new Product-of-Canada-labelling guidelines unveiled by Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz. The new policy, in effect since the beginning of 2009, requires any food to contain 98 per cent of Canadian ingredients to be considered a Product of Canada.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency now has interim guidelines for imported cows, permitting cattle to be considered Canadian for labelling purposes if they live in Canada for 60 days before being slaughtered and processed in Canada. But CFIA says it has yet to establish residency rules for other animals, such as imported chicks and swine so, for now, the 60-day residency period only qualifies to cattle.
"The Product of Canada guidelines did not explicitly deal with live animals when they were put in place. At that time, the application of the guidelines to imported animals was not highlighted as an issue," the agency said in a statement, adding it's still reviewing "how these guidelines can be best applied to meat products from live animals imported into Canada."
Ron Bonnett, who operates a cow and calf farm in Bruce Mines in Northern Ontario, said the 60-day residency rule for cattle "definitely helps."
That's because the life of a cow, which usually spans 20 to 26 months from birth to slaughter, often involves cross-border travel, said Bonnett.
"Cattle do move a lot back and forth across the border. It's not uncommon for cattle born in my farm, I don't finish them. They might go into a feed lot in Canada or they might go into a feed lot in the states. And you can end up with Canadian born cattle, sent to a plant in the states and meat is imported back in, and it still wouldn't qualify. It just gets messy," added Bonnett, who chalks up a resolution to the cattle-residency question to the government's "cross-border harmonization effort."
But Bonnett, president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, said the government still has to address serious concerns from producers about requiring virtually all ingredients in a food product to be Canadian in order to be marketed as a Product of Canada.
Bonnett's organization has been pushing the government to establish a threshold of 85 per cent to allow processed foods made from local produce, such as Saskatoon-berry jam, to be sold as a Canadian product, even if incidental secondary ingredients, many of which are not available in Canada, are sourced outside the country.
"Very few products actually meet that requirement," Bonnett said of the 98 per cent threshold.
"I'm not really sure what happened there. I think one of the problems is they made a decision to go with the 98 per cent, and then they realized, 'Well, that isn't working,'" said Bonnett. "I don't think they want to trip on this again."
Until this policy change, a food product could be labelled as a Product of Canada if 51 per cent of the total production cost occurred in the country, even if all the ingredients were imported.
Just days before Ritz pressed ahead with announcing the 98 per cent threshold, the top official in his department warned that the proposed Product of Canada rule might not help local producers and could cause confusion among consumers, an internal memo released to Postmedia News shows.
CFIA said Tuesday it is maintaining the current guidelines related to the 98 per cent threshold, "with no changes to its current policies regarding these claims."
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