The proposal is part of a suite of changes proposed for Canada’s Food and Drug Regulations. As well as adding a front-of-packaging (FOP) label requirement for foods deemed by Health Canada to be high in sodium, sugar or saturated fat, amendments would also update nutrient content claims on food labels, increase mandatory vitamin D content of milk and margarine and tighten rules on the use of partially hydrogenated oils.

“It is anticipated that this proposal would improve Canadians’ access to easy-to-use information on foods high in sodium, sugars and/or saturated fat to help reduce excessive consumption of these nutrients,” Health Canada wrote on an information page on the issue.

“There may be positive impacts including reductions in risk of disease due to improved nutrition and health care savings as a result. Some industry stakeholders may choose to reformulate impacted products to avoid a front-of-package nutrition symbol.”

When the department first proposed FOP label rules in 2018, it said raw single-ingredient meats, poultry and fish that aren’t ground would be exempted since those products “are considered less standardized than ground meats, which make deriving accurate nutrient values challenging.”

Whole and partly skimmed milk and whole eggs were also exempted from the proposed rules. The department did note some businesses would incur more costs due to additional labelling.

The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) on Wednesday released a statement urging Health Canada to also exempt ground beef. In it, the CCA argued that the policy would treat ground beef differently from “other nutritious foods, such as single-ingredient meat, milk, eggs, vegetables, and fruit.”

“Canadians consume approximately half of their calories from low nutrient, ultra-processed foods,” the statement read. “By contrast, ground beef is a nutrient-dense protein that contributes iron, zinc, and vitamin B12. FOP labelling of whole, single-ingredient foods starkly contrast with the foundational principles of healthy eating and will distract from the real priority — Canadians need to reduce their consumption of ultra-processed foods.”

The CCA argued that the reduction in saturated fat consumption would be “nominal” if ground pork and beef were taken out of the equation, while cooling consumption of those meats might lead to less iron intake and tie into food security issues, given current inflation and food affordability.

The association further argued that other countries with FOP rules have exempted ground beef. “To our knowledge, Canada will be the only jurisdiction in the world placing a health warning label on its ground beef.”

The federal opposition Conservatives on Tuesday aired similar concerns, saying the European Union, Mexico and Israel have all exempted single-ingredient whole foods from similar FOP labelling policies.

The party’s ag critics — MPs John Barlow, Dave Epp and Richard Lehoux — said in a joint statement the government’s decision “will undercut Canadian producers both domestically and abroad.”

The U.S. government, they said, “has already identified this policy as a trade irritant potentially leading to fewer exports of Canadian beef.”

As for the current exemptions, they added, “it doesn’t make sense if roast beef and whole hams are exempt, but the same source of protein is no longer acceptable after being ground.”

Health Canada hopes to have the new rules in force by Jan. 1, 2026.

— By Manitoba Co-ooperator and Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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The Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Tuesday announced the launch for the public consultation, which includes an online survey and runs until Dec. 3.

Ottawa’s proposed updates “seek to clarify what constitutes simulated meat or poultry products” in keeping with the Food and Drug Regulations and Safe Food for Canadians Regulations, the government said.

The guidelines in question outline the rules for” labelling, advertising, composition and fortification for such products,” the government said, and making those guidelines clearer “will better support industry in their understanding and application of the regulatory requirements.”

The new guidelines would draw clearer lines between simulated meat and poultry products and “those that are neither meat nor poultry and not intended to substitute for meat or poultry products.”

While changes are proposed for the federal guidelines, the regulations on which they’re based will not change, CFIA said.

Consumers taking the online survey can share how familiar they are with these products and show what label information is important to them, the agency said.

“The consumer perceptions of these foods will advise industry on how they can better position their products in a manner that is truthful and not misleading, as required by the regulations, and provide information that supports informed buying decisions for consumers.”

The current guidelines for “simulated meat and simulated poultry products” are supposed to apply specifically to products made to resemble meat or poultry products.

Among the more recent arrivals in that category are plant-based burgers “made to look like a beef burger by using ingredients that simulate the red colour or fat marbling effect of animal-sourced meat.”

The rules today require that consumers “must not be misled as to the true nature of these products,” which means a complete common name — for examples, “simulated beef,” “simulated chicken” or “simulated tenderloin” — must appear on labels and in ads for all such products.

Simulated meat and/or poultry products also must carry the phrase “contains no meat” and/or “contains no poultry” on the principal display panel of the label near the food’s common name and in letters at least the same size as the common name.

If simulated meat is used as an ingredient in another food, such as a soup, a “contains no meat” declaration isn’t required, but pictures and vignettes on the packaging of the final food “must not suggest that meat is present.”

The Food and Drug Regulations also lay out specific amounts of vitamins and minerals that must be added to simulated meat and poultry products and declared on their “Nutrition Facts” labels — as well as minimum protein ratings for simulated meat products.

CFIA said Tuesday it “also recognizes there is a need to update the guidelines to include food products that are plant-based proteins which are not intended to resemble or substitute a meat or poultry product.”

Examples in that category include “properly identified” tofu burgers, lentil loaves and soy patties.

Unlike the new plant-based burgers on the market, such products “may have a colour or texture similar to that of a meat or poultry product” but have “characteristically identifiable nonmeat ingredients and are not aiming to be like a meat product.

“For example, a soy burger may have discrete nonmeat ingredients such as corn, seeds, entire lentils, or other cereals and legumes.”

For comparison, the guidelines today require a product labelled as “Simulated Bacon Bits” to be nutritionally equivalent to real bits of bacon and meet compositional rules under the Food and Drug Regulations — but a product labelled “Bacon Flavoured Bits” doesn’t imply a simulation, just a flavour, so rules on nutritional equivalence and composition don’t apply.

For plant-based but non-simulated products, naming an animal species or meat cut that draw a comparison to meat, on the label and/or in ads, would not be allowed under the new guidelines.

Claims such as “vegetarian,” “veggie” or “plant-based” can be made on those goods, as long as they’re “not used in conjunction with terminology that promotes the product as equivalent to meat.” For example, calling a product a “chicken-flavoured veggie burger” would be allowed.

“The growth in Canada’s plant-based foods industry indicates the need for clearer guidelines to better support industry in their understanding and application of regulatory requirements,” Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said in Tuesday’s announcement.

“We’re working to bring that clarity which includes a better understanding of consumers’ views and needs to allow them to make more informed food choices.”

According to the National Research Council Canada, total protein demand worldwide is expected to double to 943.5 million tonnes in 2054, but alternative proteins, including plant-based proteins, are expected to grow up to a third of that market, at rates of up to 14 per cent annually by 2024.

Worldwide, the NRC said, the plant-based protein market alone is expected to reach US$10.8 billion by 2022. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The new clause would, in theory, checkmate a move made last summer by some Democrat members of the U.S. House of Representatives to have a new North American free trade pact revive the COOL meat-labeling program the Obama administration halted in 2015.

The three countries signed off on revisions made to the 2018 CUSMA pact at a Dec. 10, 2019 ceremony in Mexico City. The House of Representatives on Dec. 19 passed the revised version of CUSMA by a 385-41 vote. The deal is now before the U.S. Senate for consideration.

The revised CUSMA, as passed in the House, does include several other changes that had been sought by the House’s Democrat majority in the year since the Trump administration reopened and secured changes to the 36-year-old NAFTA pact.

Mexico’s Senate has already approved the revised pact, which still must also pass Canada’s Parliament.

In a statement via email on Dec. 19, an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada spokesperson said Ottawa “will continue to defend Canadian agricultural producers against any discriminatory labelling requirements that may contravene international trade obligations.”

That said, the AAFC spokesperson also noted the new CUSMA pact as approved by the House of Representatives “contains language that prohibits discriminatory labelling requirements.”

The revised pact’s text requires each party to the CUSMA deal to ensure regulations on labels “accord treatment no less favourable than that accorded to like goods of national origin.”

Any rules on labeling that the CUSMA nations impose in the future also must “not create unnecessary obstacles to trade between the parties.”

The revised CUSMA pact specifies that the language on labeling is included “in order to avoid disrupting North American trade” and is in keeping with the three countries’ obligations on technical barriers to trade (TBT).

The chance of a COOL law turning up in CUSMA appeared last summer when a group of House Democrats — among them high-profile rookie members such as Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib , Conor Lamb and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — wrote jointly to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer about CUSMA in June.

Their letter sought COOL’s revival as part of CUSMA, along with other changes to the pact’s labour, environment and pharmaceutical provisions.

Lost sales

COOL wasn’t part of the original NAFTA but was developed during the Clinton administration, passed near the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2008 and implemented during the Obama administration in 2009.

COOL imposed mandatory origin labels for beef, pork, lamb, chicken and goat meat and certain other perishable commodities where sold at retail in the U.S.

Canada and Mexico challenged COOL through U.S. courts and the World Trade Organization, because its rules, strictly applied, called for U.S. processors of meat from imported animals to provide labels that detailed where the specific animals involved were born, raised and slaughtered.

The costs involved in segregating animals and production lines to follow the label law prompted some U.S. packers and processors to restrict or halt their imports or cut the prices they paid for Canadian cattle and hogs.

Some estimates pegged Canadian cattle and hog producers’ losses to reduced prices and lost sales at over $8 billion.

After the WTO ruled in 2015 that COOL violated the United States’ international trade obligations, the Obama administration opted to repeal the label rules on beef and pork rather than face retaliatory tariffs from Canada and Mexico on U.S. goods. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Monday announced public consultations and a public comment period, to run until June 23, on proposed new rules for such claims.

Current federal guidelines that govern processors’ voluntary use of “Product of Canada” and “Made in Canada” claims have been in place since late 2008.

Since then, CFIA said, it’s been found the guidelines “make it difficult for consumers to identify products with Canadian content” and don’t line up with related guidelines used in some provinces. Quebec and Manitoba require 85 per cent provincial content; Ontario requires 80 to 100 per cent, depending on the commodity.

Also, the agency said, Canadian food processors haven’t been able to use these claims on their food products if the ingredients they need aren’t always available or can’t be grown in Canada, such as some fruits or vegetables or other products such as spices or cane sugar.

CFIA, in its consultations with industry stakeholders, also found requirements for making claims on Canadian products exported to other countries are “much less strict than making claims on Canadian products sold in Canada.”

CFIA, in its consultation document, offered up the example of a jar of Canadian-grown pickles, pickled and jarred by Canadian workers in Canada — but not eligible to be a “Product of Canada” on its label because its vinegar was imported. That’s because the regulations today call for “all or virtually all” of a product’s ingredients — in practice, 98 per cent or more — to be Canadian before such a label is allowed.

The proposed new guidelines would lower the “all or virtually all” threshold to 85 per cent, allowing the jar of pickles in question to carry the “Product of Canada” label.

“Lowering the threshold would enable more companies to use the claim while ensuring that Canadian labour, manufacturing and ingredients are used,” the agency said.

For another example, the current guidelines require fruit juice made in Canada with imported fruits to include a qualifying statement such as “Made in Canada from domestic and imported ingredients” or “Made in Canada from imported ingredients.”

CFIA said it heard from industry that the current qualifying statement for products combining domestic and imported ingredients is “too long” and having to call out imported ingredients “detracts from featuring Canadian content.” The new guidelines, CFIA said, would allow the juice to carry a simple “Made in Canada” claim.

Under the proposed new guidelines, a product could also carry an optional statement to “highlight the origin of specific ingredients” such as “Made in Canada with 100 per cent Canadian wheat.”

Current guidelines already allow other qualified claims to be made for products that don’t fall into the “Product of Canada” or “Made in Canada” guidelines — such as “Roasted and blended in Canada” for coffee.

CFIA has set up an online survey for its consultations and will also accept comments by email (with “Product of Canada consultation” in the subject line). — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Consumers have been pushing for years for greater transparency over what is in their food, fighting pushback from farmers who fear the labeling would curb demand for genetically engineered ingredients and food companies which said the label changes would be costly and confusing.

The long-awaited details released on Thursday by USDA came more than two years after lawmakers agreed on the requirements. The agency has been reviewing feedback from farmers, food companies and consumers who filed comments earlier this year.

“This ensures clear information and labeling consistency for consumers about the ingredients in their food,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement. “The standard also avoids a patchwork state-by-state system that could be confusing to consumers.”

GMO crops have had their genes altered using biotechnology.

The new requirements will provide some consistency and a clear plan for food companies that now need to overhaul their labels.

But consumer groups criticized USDA for saying companies need to use the term “bioengineered” rather than the more commonly used terms “genetically engineered” or “GMO.”

“The USDA has betrayed the public trust by denying Americans the right to know how their food is produced,” said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director at the Center for Food Safety.

USDA also excluded some highly processed ingredients such as sugar from beet and soyoil from mandatory labeling. That is a win for farmers of some crops, including sugar beet, who feared being labeled as GMO would reduce consumer demand for their products.

“We believe that it allows transparency for consumers while following the intent of Congress that only food that contains modified genetic material be required to be labeled bioengineered under the law, with food companies having the option of providing additional information if they choose,” said Davie Stephens, a soybean grower from Kentucky and president of the American Soybean Association.

— Reporting for Reuters by Chris Prentice.

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The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said March 12 it will require processors to identify salmonella as a hazard likely to occur in these products — and to “implement changes in order to produce an end product that reduces salmonella to below a detectable amount.”

The industry gets a 12-month “implementation period” to work with the CFIA to make such changes, starting immediately, the agency said.

Products covered under the requirement include any frozen raw breaded chicken products such as chicken nuggets, chicken fingers, chicken strips, popcorn chicken and chicken burgers that appear “ready to eat” and are packaged for retail sale. Turkey, duck and quail products aren’t included.

Frozen raw breaded “stuffed” chicken products won’t be included under the requirement “at this time,” the agency said, adding it plans to work with industry “to ensure a common understanding of which products are affected and which are not.”

The new requirements follow “extensive efforts” by food safety officials and industry to boost consumer awareness that the products in question need to be fully cooked before consumption, CFIA said. It also noted “significant attempts by the industry to improve labelling and cooking instructions on packages.”

Despite those moves, the agency said, “frozen raw breaded chicken products continue to be identified as a source of salmonella infection in Canada.”

Incidence of salmonella illness in Canada has “steadily increased” over the last 10 years, the agency said, driven by salmonella enteritidis (SE), which is the most common strain in the food supply and often associated with poultry.

The most recent such outbreak under federal and provincial investigation so far involves 30 people sickened with SE between May 2017 and last month across four provinces, including 17 in Ontario. Of the 30, four were hospitalized.

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, investigation findings so far point to exposure to poultry, including frozen raw breaded chicken products, as a source of the illness.

While frozen raw breaded chicken products often look like they’re “pre-cooked” or “ready-to-eat,” CFIA said, they still contain raw chicken and are meant to be handled the same way as other raw poultry.

Frozen raw breaded chicken products and raw poultry pieces must be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 74 C (165 F) to ensure they’re safe to eat, according to PHAC.

Messaging

The new requirement announced March 12 “focuses the responsibility on the poultry industry and represents a fundamental change to existing requirements for frozen raw breaded chicken products,” CFIA said.

The industry in 2015 already voluntarily added labelling on frozen raw breaded chicken products with more “prominent and consistent messaging,” CFIA said, using wording such as “raw,” “uncooked” or “must be cooked.”

The new labeling, CFIA said, had also included “explicit” instructions not to microwave the product. The industry also voluntarily added cooking instructions on the products’ inner-packaging bags.

“The poultry industry’s objective is to provide consumers with affordable, safe poultry products, every day,” Robin Horel, CEO of the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council, said March 12 in CFIA’s release. “We will continue to work with CFIA to ensure consumers have access to safe frozen raw breaded chicken products.” — AGCanada.com Network

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Italian Agriculture Minister Maurizio Martina said on Twitter on Monday that Italy had sent a decree to Brussels spelling out proposals to label pasta and rice to show the origin of the raw materials. Rome had send a draft decree of its intent in December, but had not taken the formal step until now.

Italy is proposing that pasta packaging show where the wheat was grown and milled.

Canadian exporters and farmers fear the move would depress prices in Canada, the biggest global durum exporter, as it would require Italian pasta makers to segregate supplies by country. Italy’s move comes as a Canada-Europe free trade deal moves to final stages of approval.

“It’s something that causes us significant concern because it will increase the cost of moving durum into Italy,” Cam Dahl, president of industry group Cereals Canada, whose members include Cargill and Louis Dreyfus, said Tuesday.

Italy is Canada’s second-biggest foreign buyer of durum so far in the 2016-17 crop year, purchasing 522,000 tonnes from August through March, according to Canadian government data.

Annual Canadian sales to Italy are worth an estimated $248 million, based on average export volumes and International Grains Council price data.

The European Commission said it had not yet received official notification from Italy and that it would then have three months to make observations. If there are none, Italy would be free to proceed with its plans.

European lawmakers have shown an increasing appetite for labeling due to consumer demands for information about food. Italy has also said labeling would help its pasta industry compete with foreign competition.

Canadian Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay said in a statement Wednesday he was assessing the potential impact of the measure, and has raised concerns with members of the European Commission.

Canadian durum farmers last year grew their biggest-ever crop but are expected to sow less durum this spring after disease downgraded quality.

Representatives of Cereals Canada will visit Italy later this month to meet with pasta groups and Brussels to meet with European Union officials.

Canada and Mexico won a similar fight over U.S. beef and pork labels in late 2015.

India and Thailand are the biggest global rice exporters.

— Reporting for Reuters by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Isla Binnie in Rome. Additional reporting for Reuters by Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels.

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Food fraud “comes back to trust,” according to Renata McGuire of NSF Consulting and Technical Services. “Do I trust this brand?”

McGuire, along with Sylvain Charlebois, dean of the school of management at Dalhousie University and Dana McCauley, CEO of Blue Unicorn Innovations, was part of a panel on issues in the food industry at the recent SIAL food show in Toronto.

NSF, which does crisis management around food safety, recently conducted a survey of the food industry to gauge its concerns.

Food safety and food fraud were the top two anticipated influences on the food system.

About 30 per cent of respondents to the survey had a plan in place to manage food fraud.

“If 30 per cent have a plan, I’d like to see it,” said Charlebois. “We are just starting a collective conversation about food fraud. If you go out there on the street and ask people, ‘Are you concerned about food fraud?’ they go, ‘What?'”

However, Charlebois said, as he travels the country speaking about food issues, including food fraud, he inevitably is approached by someone after the event with a food fraud story.

“When I speak onstage about food fraud, people look at me funny. It can’t be happening in Canada,” he said.

As she deals with startup companies, labelling is an early point of confusion, McCauley said. People are often tricked in the grocery store by labels. It’s not food fraud, she said, but a lack of clarity.

An example is the Made in Canada label which can include ingredients from outside of the country, she said. Her examples illustrate the fuzzy nature of food fraud.

No one really understands the amount of food fraud out there, said Charlebois. It can come from any place in the complex food chain, from farmers, to wholesalers, to processors, and retailers.

One of the challenges is that food fraud perpetrators in the supply chain can toss issues from one company to another.

A manufacturer may receive some raw material from a distributor that isn’t what it is claimed to be. They might reject it, but then the distributor could resell it to another buyer.

“They just resell it and purchasing says ‘Wow, I’ve got a great deal here.'”

“In the industry, most people know it is a problem, but they don’t want to talk about it. It needs to be encouraged,” said Charlebois.

Whistle blowing has potential, he said, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has a bureau for consumers to report when they have experienced food that is not what they expected it to be.

Charlebois said he was once asked by a TV host if food fraud is a victimless crime. “I said absolutely not. The food system is the victim.”

Consumer trust is important to the economic health of the food system, he said.

Companies, such as many of those exhibiting at SIAL, are trying to add value to basic foodstuffs, for greater share of the consumer dollar and more profit, and building trust that what is in the food can be trusted is integral.

The NSF survey of food companies also found:

• 40 per cent says there is little or no impact, or they are unsure of the impact of corporate social responsibility on their brand
• 72 per cent are not planning any changes due to the ‘Trump effect’ threatening companies who manufacture outside of the U.S.
• 66 per cent are not sure about the impact of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA); and
• 57 per cent said the industry should monitor the safety of new food innovations and technology.

— John Greig is a field editor for Glacier FarmMedia based at Ailsa Craig, Ont. Follow him at @jgreig on Twitter.

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Rome sent a draft decree to the European Commission in December, seeking approval for labels on pasta sold in Italy that would identify where the durum wheat was grown and milled into semolina for pasta-making.

Canadian exporters and farmers fear the move would depress prices in Canada, the biggest durum exporter, as it would require Italian pasta makers to segregate supplies by country.

The European Union and Canada secured clearance earlier on Wednesday for their contentious free trade deal.

“We’re working back and forth with our officials. Anything that would hurt the farmers, we don’t want,” Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay told Reuters in Winnipeg, in what were the Canadian government’s first comments on Italy’s plan.

He said the impact on Canada would depend on how broadly Italy applies the plan, but the minister’s spokesman confirmed later that Canada has “initial concerns.”

European lawmakers have shown an increasing appetite for labeling due to consumer demands for information about food, and Italy has also said labeling would help its pasta industry better compete with foreign competition. Such labeling might, however, be considered disruptive to the single market, which EU authorities are charged with safeguarding.

The “protectionist measure” would create extra cost for Italian pasta makers using Canadian supplies, resulting in lower prices for Canadian farmers, said Cam Dahl, president of Cereals Canada, an industry group whose members include farmers and crop exporters Richardson International and Cargill.

Canadian durum farmers last year grew their biggest-ever crop. Italy is Canada’s biggest foreign durum buyer so far in 2016-17, as of December.

“More bad news stories just put more pressure on the entire agriculture industry in Canada,” said Morgan Nunweiler, whose durum crop near Rosetown, Sask., was devalued by disease last year.

It is too early for the European Commission to comment, since it has up to three months to express observations after receiving the decree in December, a Commission spokesman said.

The labeling plan has generated mixed reaction in Italy.

Italian farmers group Coldiretti supports the plan. But pasta makers, while in favour of transparency, are concerned the labels would confuse origin with quality, said Luigi Cristiano Laurenza, secretary general of the Association of Pasta Manufacturers of the European Union (UNAFPA).

The decree also contains provisions that are only valid for Italy and could distort competition within the EU, he said.

Canada and Mexico won a similar labeling fight in 2015 when the U.S. repealed country-of-origin labels on meat, after a World Trade Organization (WTO) panel ruled against the program.

MacAulay said he did not know if Ottawa was considering a similar complaint to the WTO, but said Canada’s aim is to “keep trade flowing as freely as we can.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Isla Binnie in Rome; additional reporting for Reuters by Philip Blenkinsop in Strasbourg.

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At the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Montreal on Monday, the federal health department launched a 45-day public consultation on changes to Canada’s Food Guide, noting it needs to “strengthen how we communicate our advice” to Canadians.

Said advice includes replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat, which it said is linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. It also noted a higher intake of sugar-sweetened beverages has been linked to an increased risk of obesity in children.

The department said its evidence review also shows about 30 per cent of calories Canadians consume come from foods high in fat, sugars and sodium. Certain nutrients, such as calcium and fibre, are also “widely under-consumed.”

The revisions, Health Canada said, will be made “to reflect the latest scientific evidence on diet and health, and to better support Canadians, including Indigenous peoples, in making healthy food choices.”

The public consultation will run online until December 8, “to determine how Health Canada can provide better dietary guidance that meets the needs of Canadians.”

The Food Guide, last updated in 2007, has served as Health Canada’s “all-in-one” policy and education tool used by health professionals, governments and other stakeholders to support individuals’ health, set guidelines and policies for settings such as schools and daycares, and develop nutrition education programming.

However, Health Canada, in its review, has found the Food Guide “is not meeting the needs of all audiences.” Most Canadians are aware of it, but health professionals report Canadians “find it hard to interpret and apply the advice in their daily lives.”

Furthermore, Health Canada said, it has found “an all-in-one tool doesn’t work for everyone. Some stakeholders want more detail, while others want only simple information.”

Health Canada’s upcoming revision of the Guide will also include updates to its version of the Food Guide for First Nations, Inuit and Metis, the government said.

Input from the consultation period will go to develop new “dietary guidance tools that better meet the needs of different audiences,” followed by testing of those new tools in 2017-18, and a rollout of “updated dietary guidance” in 2017-18 and 2018-19.

“Everyone can agree that eating well, staying active and living a healthy lifestyle are important to reducing the risk of chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes,” Health Minister Jane Philpott said in a release.

“Our government’s actions are aimed at ensuring positive and meaningful impacts on the overall health of Canadians for generations to come.”

The plans for Food Guide revisions are part of a larger federal “healthy living strategy,” which is also expected to include changes to federal nutrition labelling regulations, to be finalized by the end of this year.

The proposed nutrition label changes include new regulations on serving sizes, to make it easier to compare similar products; requirements that all food colours be identified by their common names; and allowing a new health claim that links a diet rich in fruits and vegetables with a lower risk of heart disease.

The department also proposes a new “front-of-package” labelling approach to simplify information about food products’ levels of sugars, sodium and saturated fat.

The department said Monday it also plans to engage with food industry stakeholders, starting in the spring, to establish “new targets” for sodium levels in processed and restaurant foods.

It said it also plans to engage the public and stakeholders “over the coming weeks” to seek input on a proposed approach to eliminate industrially-produced trans fat in foods available in Canada.

The department also noted it will hold “expert round tables” this fall on proposals to restrict the marketing of certain “unhealthy foods and beverages” to children.

“The healthy living strategy announced today will have a real impact on protecting the health of Canadian families,” Mary Lewis, vice-president for research, advocacy and health promotion with the Heart and Stroke Foundation, said Monday in a separate release.

“We are happy to see so many key public health priorities reflected in the strategy, including making the Food Guide more digestible for Canadians.” — AGCanada.com Network

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