Chief Food Safety Officer and Chief Veterinary Officer for Canada

The new role of Chief Food Safety Officer (CFSO) brings to the CFIA a more holistic approach to achieving the Agency’s food safety objectives. With a view to ensuring integration and excellence across the CFIA’s three business lines, the CFSO will reach out to a broader domestic and international stakeholder community to define an integrated strategy that clearly reflects the interdependence of public health, food safety, animals, and plants.

• Strategic priorities

The Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) is responsible for responding to emerging and future animal and zoonotic disease occurrences. The role was created in 2004 in recognition of the social, political, animal health, public health and economic consequences associated with those occurrences.

• Responsibilities

About the Chief Food Safety Officer / Chief Veterinary Officer

Dr. Brian
Evans

Dr. Brian Evans has been the Chief Veterinary Officer of Canada since the inception of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in 1997 and the delegate of the Government of Canada to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) since 1999. For the past three years, Dr. Evans served as Executive Vice President of the Agency. Effective June 28, 2010, Dr. Evans was appointed Canada’s first Chief Food Safety Officer.

Dr. Evans has a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, with a major in animal science and minor in genetics, from the Ontario Agriculture College at the University of Guelph. He also has a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from the Ontario Veterinary College of the University in Guelph.

Before the creation of the CFIA, Dr. Brian Evans held senior-level positions within Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and spent several years in private practice, focussing on reproductive herd health.