Farmscape for May 6, 2025

The Research Lead with Agrifood Economic Systems warns changes to the U.S. regulatory system, fueled by the Trump Administration's cuts on spending could negatively impact Canada.
An Independent Agri-Food Policy Note, released by Agrifood Economic Systems, examines the impact on Canada of U.S. policy shifts, involving deportations, tax policy changes, government cuts and tariffs.
Dr. Al Mussell, research lead with Agrifood Economic Systems and a Senior Research Fellow with the Canadian Agri-food Policy Institute, says tax cuts and reduced regulation seem to be the center piece but these regulatory cuts could create problems for the United States and in turn for Canada.

Clip-Dr. Al Mussell-Agrifood Economic Systems:
It's been reported in media that the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. would like to get out of food inspection, so that would include meat inspection, and put that responsibility onto states or even municipalities in the U.S.
I think we need to be concerned about the capacity of states both from a budget and expertise perspective to be able to carry that out the way the way that the FDA would have and, if that's perceived as not performing well, then you worry that some countries will be reticent to import certain foods from the U.S. and then in turn when that happens the U.S. may say if you're not going to buy ours we're not going to buy yours and that causes a big problem.
The American may say we cut our regulations, you need to do the same otherwise you're imposing a cost burden on us that's unfair or unjustified.
Or conversely, particularly if the U.S. actually gets to the point that they're confronted by food safety concerns, we may reach a point that we don't want to accept some of the imports that come from this revised food inspection system and that could cause other types of disputes.
It's worrisome because the food inspection system that we've grown up with the United States is very credible and we haven’t had to worry about this.
We treat theirs largely the same as ours and  they treat ours largely the same as theirs.
It looks like that's changing.

The Independent Agri-Food Policy Note can be accessed at www.agrifoodecon.ca.
For more visit Farmscape.Ca.
Bruce Cochrane.

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