Hursh Consulting & Communications Inc.

Within five years, Canada’s seed industry should not expect CFIA involvement in the field inspections of seed crops. That was the message from CFIA officials at last week’s annual meeting of the Canadian Seed Growers Association. Predictably, seed growers are not happy. They point out that since 1928, it has been through Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and more recently the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that independent, third party inspections of Canada’s seed crop have been performed or authorized. The CFIA move seems to be all about cost cutting, but there doesn’t seem to have been any analysis of what this could cost Canada’s seed crops and the whole field crop industry in general. Canadian Seed Growers Association members passed two resolutions at their meeting opposing the CFIA action. They feel the service reductions would put the competitiveness of Canadian crop production at risk. Furthermore, the association wants to maintain a national program, uniformly delivered across all crop kinds and all regions of the country.  I’m Kevin Hursh.