Canada Looks to Strengthen Livestock Traceability

The proposed changes would enhance the Government of Canada's ability to:

• protect public health and strengthen food safety;
• rapidly respond to disease outbreaks and natural disasters (for example floods and ice storms) that affect Canada's animal resource base.

Traceability is the ability to follow an item or a group of items-such as animal, plant, or food products or their ingredients-from one point in the supply chain to another.

The focus of this initiative is farm-to-slaughter traceability of livestock and poultry species. The proposed changes touch on some of the following elements:

• animal and location identification
• animal movement reporting and recording
• information and privacy protection

This initiative supports a commitment made in 2006 by federal, provincial and territorial ministers of agriculture to create a national livestock and poultry traceability system.

A consultation document explaining the proposed changes is available on the CFIA's website and is open for comments until May 3, 2012. The CFIA will use comments from the public and stakeholders to help shape the proposal moving forward.

Feedback and further info on the consultation can be found here.