Complying With Licensing Requirement and SFCR for Shipping Food To Canada

Food companies shipping food products into Canada are going to be required to obtain a license from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, CFIA.  It can be obtained by using the online portal.   Who needs a license:

"Generally speaking if you are doing any of these activities, you would need a licence: importing, manufacturing, processing, treating, preserving, grading, packaging, or labelling a food that will be exported or moved between provinces and slaughtering a food animal."

There are some exemptions - alcoholic beverages, food additives, among others (see 48)

Like the recently enacted FSMA regulations in the US, Canada has updated their food regulations - Safe Food for Canadians Regulations or SFCR.  CFIA has a webpage, Understanding the Proposed Safe Food for Canadians Regulations: A Handbook for Food Businesses, that provides more information on the regulation.

There are many similarities between FSMA and SFCR including the use of Preventive Controls in food manufacturing operations. This document states (19c):

Preventive control Measures: This Part would set key food safety controls that must be met by all food businesses. It would also outline the requirements for developing, implementing, and maintaining a written preventive control plan that documents how you meet food safety and marketplace fairness requirements (e.g. for labelling, packaging, standards of identity, grades, humane treatment and net quantity).

 While there are some differences the SFCR preventive controls from FSMA , especially in terms of market fairness requirements such as humane treatment, standards of identity, and net quantity (In the US, these are handled by regulations outside of FSMA), the two systems will be viewed as compatible.