| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 20, 2009
TORONTO – As the June 2009 deadline for the food industry to voluntarily reduce trans fat approaches, the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association (CRFA) is renewing its call for national regulations.
“As Health Canada’s trans fat data monitoring program shows, the food industry has made significant progress over the past 18 months, but we need to do even more,” says Ron Reaman, CRFA’s Vice President, Federal. “It’s going to take a coordinated effort by the entire food chain and strong leadership at the federal level to achieve our common goal.”
CRFA has urged the federal government to regulate trans fat limits as recommended by a federal task force, or risk an ineffective, patchwork approach at the municipal and provincial levels.
Recent regulations in British Columbia, for example, will do little to improve public health because they focus solely on the foodservice sector. CRFA supports a limit on trans fat in the food supply, but it will take the entire food supply chain to achieve this goal – farmers, processors, manufacturers, grocery retailers and restaurateurs.
“Given the lion’s share of food products are purchased by grocery retailers, the average restaurant simply doesn’t have the volume and clout to force manufacturers to reformulate their products to achieve a shift in the Canadian food supply,” says Reaman. “Until trans fat is regulated out of the food supply chain at source, it’s unrealistic to expect it to disappear from restaurants.”
CRFA applauds the recent move by Alberta Health Minister Ron Liepert to call for federal regulation of trans fat in the Canadian food supply. This decision recognizes the futility of pursuing a local approach to a national food supply issue.
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