Good news are coming from Canada for Italian food manufacturers in the processed meat sector. The CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) has eliminated the minimum limit on curing time for meat products to be exported to the country.
The process, which started in the autumn of 2014 at the request of Assica (Associazione Industriali delle Carni e dei Salumi (Industry association of meats and cured products) and the Italian Ministry for Health working with the support of the European Commission, was aimed to both eliminating the thirty day minimum curing time for products to be exported from Italy and the consequent opening of the Canadian market to fresh pork products.
Concerning the production of cured pork products, the Canadian Authorities had until now always deemed it necessary to apply the so-called “extra measures” as set out by the EU-Canada agreement and to introduce further guarantees related to the raw material.
The new conditions for the export of pork and pork-based products proposed on behalf of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency do not require a minimum curing time for products coming from those regions in Italy which are deemed free from swine vesicular disease (SVD) under the European Commission Decision 2005/779.
This extremely important result, strongly pursued by Assica, has been made possible by the commitment made in recent months by the Ministry for Health and the European Commission in calling the CFIA to fully recognize the equivalence between the laws applicable to meat and the repeal of any further ‘extra measure’. In this way, Italy has reached the objective of exporting our meat products, overcoming obstacles which are the result of the permanent presence of the vesicular disease in some parts of our territory.
This completes the range of products that can be exported to North America and in particular to the strategic market of Canada, where Italian meat products are already known and appreciated. It is a market, which in the last five years (2008-2013), thanks to its initial opening to products with a curing time of more than 90 days and subsequently to those with a curing time of at least 30 days, has registered a 60.8% increase in quantity at 791 tons and a 63.6% increase in value at 8.4 million euros. This is a result that has been further strengthened in 2014. In fact, with respect to the first 10 months of 2013, the same period of 2014 registered a further 17% increase in volume and a 16.1% increase in value.