Annex 2: Joint Action Plan initiatives under the Beyond the Border (BTB) and the Regulatory Co-operation Council (RCC) (where the CFIA is leading the initiative)

BTB Initiatives:

  • Better protect Canada and the United States from offshore food-safety, animal and plant health risks by conducting joint assessments and audits for plant, animal, and food-safety systems in third countries.

RCC Initiatives:

  • Develop common approaches to food safety, in light of food safety modernization efforts in both countries, to jointly enhance the safety of the Canada-U.S. food supply and minimize the need for routine food safety surveillance inspection activities in each other's country (applies to products within the mandates of both the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the U.S. Food and drug Administration).
  • Enhance equivalence agreements for meat safety systems to streamline, simplify, and, where possible, reduce import and administrative procedures, while maintaining public health outcomes.
  • Establish mutual reliance on jointly acceptable food safety laboratory recognition criteria, test results and methodologies to ensure that food safety laboratory testing conducted in one country is acceptable to regulators in both countries and facilitate cross-utilization of laboratory results by industry and regulators (applies to products within the mandates of both the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the U.S. Food and drug Administration).
  • Streamline the certification requirements for meat and poultry, including, where possible, the reduction or elimination of redundant certification, data elements and administrative procedures for shipments flowing between Canada and the U.S.
  • Develop a perimeter approach to plant protection with a view to leverage each country's efforts to mutual advantage and, where possible, streamline certification requirements for cross-border shipments.
  • Work towards a common approach to zoning of foreign animal diseases.
  • Create a common meat cut nomenclature system and regulatory alignment tool to jointly maintain the system.

For additional information on initiatives: