Could US and Canada alignment weaken current food safety system?

Some in the US are warning against greater regulatory cooperation

By Wayne Labs, Senior Contributing Technical Editor

As the US and Canada negotiate an alignment of the two nations’ regulatory processes, food safety advocates in Congress are urging the Obama administration to resist weakening America’s tougher food safety standards.

“Just this past September, Canada initiated what would become the largest beef recall in its history,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) wrote in a letter to US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “Any attempt to achieve greater alignment with the regulatory approaches of the two systems would have the potential to weaken public health protections in the United States and impede USDA’s ability to prevent foodborne illness.”

The US and Canada created the US–Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC) in early 2011 as a first step toward increased regulatory cooperation between the two nations.

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Wayne Labs has more than 30 years of editorial experience in industrial automation. He served as senior technical editor for I&CS/Control Solutions magazine for 18 years where he covered software, control system hardware and sensors/transmitters. Labs ran his own consulting business and contributed feature articles to Electronic Design, Control, Control Design, Industrial Networking and Food Engineering magazines. Before joining Food Engineering, he served as a senior technical editor for Omega Engineering Inc. Labs also worked in wireless systems and served as a field engineer for GE’s Mobile Communications Division and as a systems engineer for Bucks County Emergency Services. In addition to writing technical feature articles, Wayne covers FE’s Engineering R&D section.