Plant a seed but don’t allow the plant to grow. Encourage innovation but don’t provide the climate in which it can flourish.
Sounds perverse, doesn’t it?
Yet it is happening in Canada because of outdated regulations governing new livestock feed additives.
Ottawa-based life sciences company Avivagen finds itself in this very situation. It has developed a product that shows potential to replace at least some of the antibiotics that are now used in livestock feed to prevent illness and promote growth.
Invented in Canada, using taxpayers’ money, at least in part, the additive called OxC-beta is not registered in Canada. Avivagen president Cameron Groome is doubtful it ever will be under current Health Canada and Canadian Food Inspection Agency regulations.
There are global concerns about antibiotic resistant bacteria and the role that antimicrobial use in livestock production might play.
Countries, including Canada, are either taking or considering steps to limit antibiotic use in livestock.
So, this seems the ideal time to explore alternatives that will protect animal health, food production and Canadian livestock industry competitiveness.
Cattle, hog and poultry producers in Canada all acknowledge the challenge and are taking steps to address it. Most recently, the Beef Cattle Research Council announced a research strategy that, in part, focuses on finding “nutritional management strategies” to reduce the need for antibiotics.
However, while several Asian countries, having tested OxC-beta, are in the process of regulating it for livestock use, such is not the case in Canada.
Avivagen’s product is only one illustration of how innovation can be stymied even as it tries to address a pressing global trend. There are likely other products in a similar position, with and without the peer-reviewed studies and research that this one appears to have.
Without reasonable expectations of regulatory approval, innovators can’t be blamed for launching their products elsewhere, leaving Canadian producers without access.
We do not suggest that Canada should lower the bar when it comes to testing livestock feed products for safety and efficacy. This country has its reputation for safe food in large part because of its regulations.
However, there are excellent reasons to modernize the rules as times change and new scenarios present themselves. The feed regulations have seen various modifications over the years, but they haven’t been truly overhauled since the 1980s.
Fortunately, the CFIA has undertaken modernization of these regulations, a process that began in 2012 and may be ready for public consultation in winter 2017.
Among potential changes are greater flexibility to consider information from product registration in other countries and improvements to the registration application process.
Those changes could better and more swiftly recognize technological change and innovation within the livestock feed realm. Canadian livestock producers will hope so. In fact, they will demand it.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, Brian MacLeod and D’Arce McMillan collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
From: https://www.avivagen.com/media_coverage/the-western-producer-canada-must-better-meet-demand-for-health-products/