Improved Food Inspection Model
Final Model
10. Transparency

The safety of food is important to all concerned, from producers to consumers; in fact, many players are responsible for contributing to food safety. Consumers' confidence in the safety and quality of their food supply depends in part on their perception of the effectiveness of food inspection system.

The consequences of consuming unsafe food can be significant and, if an organization is not sufficiently transparent and responsible, there is a lack of accountability, trust is damaged, and credibility is at risk. For these reasons, it is important that the CFIA operates as a more transparent organization by involving all those who have a stake in safe food.

One of the principle outputs from the CFIA's transparency initiative is to provide information to consumers that will enable them to make informed buying decisions. However, the value of transparency is more far-reaching in terms of the impact that it can have on influencing behaviours that promote compliance and mitigate risk. The potential value of transparency initiatives is realized when:

• behaviours of regulated parties are influenced and trends towards improvements in compliance levels are observed;
• continuous improvement becomes an objective of all regulated parties; and
• consumers are better informed and have confidence that the food they are eating is safe and compliant with regulatory requirements.

From an outcomes perspective, the CFIA envisions that improvements in transparency will help increase the public's understanding of the public health impact of the CFIA's activities and will promote confidence in the safety and quality of Canada's food supply.

The CFIA is committed to providing the public with useful and timely information about its programs and services, regulatory requirements, and the outcomes of its enforcement actions and decisions. In meeting this commitment, the CFIA is publishing information on its compliance and enforcement activities on its website. The information includes:

• food imports that have been ordered removed from Canada by the CFIA;
• regulated parties whose licences have been suspended, cancelled or reinstated following suspension or cancellation;
• notices of violations with warnings and penalties, including identification of repeat offenders of animal transport regulations; and
• an annual publication, Working for Canadians, that highlights some of the Agency's activities through profiles of stakeholders and employees.

Other transparency initiatives include:

1. Service delivery

   The CFIA has released a Statement of Rights and Services that provides stakeholders with information on their rights and what they can expect from their interactions with the CFIA. Six accompanying "guides to inspection" (for consumers, producers, processors, animal transporters, importers and exporters) have also been prepared and are available on the CFIA's website.

2. Complaints and reviews

   The CFIA's complaints mechanism provides stakeholders with a more transparent and accessible way to register complaints and request reviews. Data from this initiative can help to improve information distributed to regulated parties.

3. Information sharing

   The CFIA is examining opportunities for making the results of inspections, licence cancellations and licence suspensions available to the public to enable consumers to make informed buying choices.

In examining approaches used by other nations with strong food safety systems, the CFIA has observed that governments that are accountable for delivering on food safety are moving to:

• posting online listings of food businesses that are licensed, registered or subject to government oversight;
• posting online summaries of the most common inspection observations of objectionable conditions or practices that are made during inspections;
• posting results from targeted surveillance activities designed to establish baseline safety or compliance levels for food commodities;
• providing inspection result summaries online that include the name and address of the inspected establishment, the date(s) of inspection, type of regulated food commodities involved, and inspection findings; and
• alerting the public in a consistent manner about enforcement actions by making information available through news releases and social media outlets.

The CFIA is committed to making more science information and data available to Canadians as a way of demonstrating:

• the effectiveness of the inspection programs; and
• how well regulated parties are complying with regulations.

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