Skip to content

The importance of World Food Safety Day

World Food Safety Day raises awareness of the importance of food safety and mobilizes action to prevent, detect and manage foodborne risks and improve human health. Each year’s theme for this global day draws attention to the importance of access to safe, nutritious food to ensure health and wellbeing for all humans.

Whether you grow, process, transport, store, sell, buy, prepare or serve food, you play an important role in bringing people together. Access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food is key to maintaining good health. Organizations like Egg Farmers of Canada help play a role by ensuring high standards and collaboration between governments, retailers and consumers when it comes to food safety. Working together, we can all achieve safer food for better health.

Here are a few ways Egg Farmers of Canada supports healthier access to fresh, nutritious food for all Canadians:

Start Clean-Stay Clean® program 

The Start Clean-Stay Clean® program ensures that Canadian eggs are produced according to rigorous standards for safety and quality.

It consists of five key parts: 

  1. On-farm inspections to ensure every farm meets the critical requirements. 
  2. Monitoring and meeting or exceeding standards for egg collection and storage, facility hygiene, biosecurity, feed and more. 
  3. Keeping accurate and up-to-date records of how farmers are adhering to the program. 
  4. Following science-based research to evolve to new standards for continuous improvement. 
  5. Working together with the local farmers that make Canada’s superior egg production possible. 

Every egg farmer in Canada follows the Start Clean-Stay Clean® program and needs to pass the program as well as meet certain requirements to maintain their Egg Quality Assurance™ certification (EQA®).

Egg Quality Assurance™ (EQA®) program 

The EQA® program is a national certification program making it easier to identify made-in-Canada eggs. An EQA® certification means that no matter the eggs you choose, they’ve met the rigorous standards outlined by Egg Farmers of Canada’s Start Clean-Stay Clean® and national Animal Care Program, and are fresh, local, high-quality eggs produced by Canadian farmers.

The EQA® program consists of five quality principles: 

  1. Scientifically informed standards for animal care and food safety.
  2. Accurate and up-to-date records.
  3. Third-party auditing to ensure farms meet all standards.
  4. Continuous improvement thanks to regularly reviewed standards that are updated as new research and scientific data becomes available.
  5. Commitment from egg farmers coast to coast to coast.

Trained field inspectors 

Field inspectors and third-party auditors conduct thorough onsite audits of Canadian egg farms, verifying control points and confirming necessary food safety measures are in place. They review barn exteriors and interiors, inspect the hens themselves and review all records.

As global populations soar and climates around the world change and evolve, the importance of access to safe and nutritious food is more important than ever. We’re proud to celebrate World Food Safety Day and share how we’re helping to bring safe and nutritious eggs to Canadians.