CanadaGAP: A Trusted Food Safety Standard Rooted in Canadian Produce

By Amelia Balsillie 

The CanadaGAP Program is a food safety standard rooted deeply in the agricultural industry. It has grown and been maintained through partnerships with governmental and international organizations and is currently implemented by many fruit and vegetable operations in both Canada and the United States. 

The History of CanadaGAP

CanadaGAP was born out of the needs of Canadian growers. In the early 1990s, growers began receiving requests from their buyers to demonstrate their commitment to food safety. They took their request for an easy-to-use, ready-to-implement food safety standard to what is now called the Fruit and Vegetables Growers of Canada. These savvy growers used the available, hierarchical structure in Canada to escalate their request through the provincial associations and up to the national level, resulting in a program that could be used throughout the entire fruit and vegetable industry in Canada. 

CanadaGAP’s full government recognition ensures ongoing alignment with the highest food safety standards, benefiting both Canadian and U.S. markets.

 

Next, working groups for each crop group were created, and they used the HACCP approach to create the requirements and lay the foundation for the manuals. These commodity-specific working groups were designed to integrate hands-on experience and expertise, resulting in practical food safety requirements for the industry. These manuals and models were then submitted to representatives from the federal and provincial governments for a rigorous review process. Once the reviews were complete, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) provided a letter recognizing the technical soundness of the program on behalf of the federal and provincial governments.  

CanadaGAP is Recognized

The CanadaGAP program achieved full government recognition in 2017. This full recognition status requires ongoing effort, and continued approval from CFIA occurs for all technical and management system changes. CFIA regularly reviews the program to verify that it continues to strengthen food safety.  

Full government recognition also ensures alignment with 100 percent of the food safety requirements of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SFCR). This means that CanadaGAP is considered as a ‘model system.’ Furthermore, the alignment with SFCR allows program participants to benefit from the mutual recognition of the Canadian and U.S. food safety systems under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). 

Further food safety rigor and buyer recognition were achieved when the standard was benchmarked to the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). CanadaGAP first obtained recognition in 2010 and continues to undergo GFSI benchmarking to ensure that program participants can access the markets and buyers that they choose. 

How CanadaGAP has Adapted to Food Industry Challenges  

Like all good standards, CanadaGAP continues to grow and evolve as required by its partners. In 2013, the Canadian Produce Marketing Association’s (CPMA) repacking and wholesaling module was successfully integrated into the CanadaGAP Program to offer seamless vertically integrated food safety to companies with a broader scope of activities. Certification to this expanded scope became available in April 2014.

Likewise, brokerage was added to the standard in 2016, to further strengthen the food safety chain.  

Since its inception, the program has been offered bilingually in English and French. Beginning in 2017, CanadaGAP expanded its offerings to include the standard (first the manuals and in 2023, the audit checklist) in Spanish as a reference for Spanish-speaking operations and employees. 

The Impact of CanadaGAP on Food Safety  

The Canadian government estimates that 1 in 8 people – approximately 4 million – are sickened by contaminated food each year. Since produce is one of the most common foods to be consumed raw, the importance of keeping fruits and vegetables as safe as possible cannot be overstated. Though consumers also have a role to play in maintaining the safety of their produce after purchasing and before serving it to their loved ones, CanadaGAP noted in 2023 that program participants earned their highest average audit score – 96.38 percent – since the program began. Indeed, average audit scores have continued to rise year over year since 2019, demonstrating the commitment to continuous improvement and food safety by certified operations. When that impressive average is coupled with the growth of the CanadaGAP Program to nearly 3,000 program participants in the same reporting period, that can be construed only as a positive for food safety. 

The Future of CanadaGAP 

Additional updates to the scope of the CanadaGAP program are still to come. In fact, CanadaGAP recently announced that a new Pollinator Health addendum will be made available to program participants in 2025. The program’s core focus, though, has been, and always will be, to ensure that operations have access to a food safety standard designed with their needs in mind and ready to help them reach their customers.  

If program participants, standards owners, and governing bodies alike continue to strive for the common goal of fresh produce safety, we can work together every day to implement and deliver credible good agricultural practices that benefit all consumers. 

About the Author 
Amelia Balsillie has been with CanadaGAP since 2015 and serves as Technical Support Coordinator for the program. She holds both a B.Sc. and B.A. and grew up on her family’s fruit farm on the shores of Lake Erie.