On-farm food safety programs and nutritional research in the dairy sector are the beneficiaries of new federal funding.
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz on Thursday pledged up to $8.8 million from various agencies in support of a “dairy cluster” of industry and university scientific and technical expertise.
The new Agri-Science Cluster for the dairy sector is meant to study the health benefits of dairy goods, as well as ways to boost dairy animals’ productivity through improvements in breeding and animal health.
“Research will focus on strategic issues that the dairy sector has identified as priorities, to ensure the industry is well positioned to meet future challenges and continues to grow,” the government said in a release.
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The Dairy Farmers of Canada have already pledged another $3 million for this research cluster, the government noted.
On-farm audits
Separately, the government has also pledged up to $995,000 to the Dairy Farmers of Canada for further work on their Canadian Quality Milk (CQM) food safety system.
The funding is to go toward DFC’s work on a national database (the National Electronic Administration System, or NEAS) to track on-farm audits and manage the validation and registration processes for dairy producers’ on-farm food safety systems.
Based on HACCP (hazard analysis of critical control points) principles, CQM is meant to provide producers with best management practices (BMPs) and procedures to make sure potential food safety problems are caught before their production is shipped off the farm.
To be certified under CQM, producers need to meet requirements for daily testing, record-keeping and monitoring of products. DFC has said it hopes to have all Canadian producers implement CQM and be registered by 2012.
The federal funding in both cases is subject to the projects meeting all eligibility requirements and the signing of contribution agreements, the government said.
Federal funding for the dairy sector’s Agri-Science Cluster includes up to $7.2 million from the Agri-Innovations program’s Agri-Science Clusters initiative, plus $1.5 million from the Canadian Dairy Commission and $121,000 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).
The government’s $995,000 for CQM will flow through the Canadian Integrated Food Safety Initiative’s (CIFSI) Food Safety Systems Development component. CIFSI is funded under the federal/provincial Growing Forward ag policy framework.
