The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is proposing a new set
of regulations that will make it more difficult to import livestock feed,
screenings, seed, forages and field crops.
It also proposes huge increases in fees for export
inspections and certificates.
The proposals have caught the industry by surprise.
Dave Buttenham of the Ontario Agri-Businss Association has
alerted members.
“It appears that knowledge of this directive and its
potential impacts is very limited,” he has written to members.
The deadline for commenting on the proposals was Nov. 5.
They are due to take effect Dec. 1.
Karl Mielke, agricultural economist at the University of
Guelph, comments that “if this isn't
border thickening/closing I don't know what is.”
Importers will need
permits for every shipment of seeds and crops, other than rye, barley,
triticale, wheat and oats which are governed by the Canadian Grain Commission
under separate legislation.
The CFIA says the
regulations are needed to protect Canadians from invasions of insects, weeds
and diseases.
Inspection fees,
posted separately on the CFIA website, are now 50 per minute for seeds, $100
plus $1.80 per hectare for seed growers and $9.60 per hectare for seed corn,
$80 per plot of breeder’s seed.
If traders need
inspection, it will cost $1 per minute in 15-minute packages.
Buttenham said in
an e-mail that the Ontario Agri-Business Association members are “very
concerned with the possibility of retaliatory response/reaction by the U.S. to
the implementation of this CFIA directive and the potential negative impact it
could have on free and open trade of grains and oilseeds between our two
countries.”
He said is is “very
difficult . . . to provide appropriate comments” on the directive because the
CFIA has not addressed issues such as where the noxious weeds of concern are located,
what programs are already in place to manage these weeds, and how likely is it
that seeds from these weeds could end up on a shipment of grain to Canada.
“The directive does
not contain a risk assessment that identifies the cost-benefit of this
proposal,” Buttenham wrote.
But he began by
saying that “the OABA fully understands the importance of keeping noxious
weeds, such as the ones listed (in the directive) as regulated pests . . .”
I am scratching my head, wondering who asked for these regulations. And where, pray tell, is Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz on this directive? Is he globe-trotting on another "trade mission" at some tourist destination?
