Manitoba Agriculture has released a new guide that explains in clear language provincial regulations for producing, processing and selling food direct to consumers.
The eight-page guide Direct Marketing Your Food Product covers allowable production levels, grading requirements, and processing standards. Safe food-handling practices and labelling requirements are also explained.
The release of the document fulfills a recommendation of the Small Scale Food Report released in January 2015, calling for development of a ‘plain language guidebook’ to clarify what was otherwise being experienced as a confusing array of regulation available through too many government departments.
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The guide covers specifics around processing, handling and direct marketing fruit and vegetables, honey, meat and poultry, dairy, eggs, and meat and meat products.
It also includes a glossary explaining terms such as what a non-potentially hazardous food means and a frequently-asked-questions section covering matters such as requirements for nutritional labelling and selling uninspected chicken or ungraded eggs.
Direct marketing year round is on the uptick in Manitoba but gears up when summer arrives and many direct-to-consumers sales are made at farm gate, through deliveries at pre-arranged locations, community-supported agriculture ventures (CSAs), and at farmers’ markets.
The guide book can be downloaded from Manitoba Agriculture [PDF].
