Health Canada Fees 2025 Guide
Understand Health Canada’s 2025 fees for NHPs, drugs, medical devices, and cannabis. Stay compliant with Quality Smart Solutions.
... Read moreGet assistance from former Health Canada officials to obtain a License under the new Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SFCR) to import fish products containing meat ingredients to Canada.
Meat/seafood importing business in Canada requires proper planning and licenses. According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), a firm that imports fish product (including meat) must ensure that all the meat ingredients originate from a country with a meat inspection system is approved by CFIA under Part 7 of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SFCR) and issued an official document by the foreign competent authority. If you manufacture, process, preserve, treat, package, grade, label for inter-provincial trade or export fish products using a meat product as an ingredient must have an SFC license to conduct these activities or imported by an SFC license holder.
Registered foods contain whole foods including dairy, fish, seafood, meat and others. The process of obtaining a License under the new SFCR is applied to all those engaged in food activities including but not limited to:
CIFA governs the process of obtaining a license. Once you get the license, you must ensure to always have adequate preventative controls in place.
CFIA requires every food business that is engaged in the above activities to get a License under SFCR to legally operate their business. It helps CFIA to:
We will help you qualify for CFIA requirements.
We will assess your food safety performance and compliance history.
Our experts will assist you in submitting your application to CFIA.
Our officials will monitor your business to ensure if you have preventive controls in place.
Before you can import food into Canada, there are certain eligibility requirements that must be met. This includes having an establishment license in your home country and ensuring that all imported foods are labeled with accurate and consistent information. You will also be required to provide the Canadian Food Inspection Agency with product labels, product ingredients, and storage information. Additionally, food products may require a Health Canada certification or another type of approval before being able to enter the marketplace.
To be eligible to apply for a D-licence or B-licence from the CFIA, your business must have already obtained an establishment license in your home country. After this has been completed, you can begin by submitting an Establishment Licence Application Form with supporting documentation and payment via mail or online. This form will require an establishment address, contact information, and product information. Once the application has been approved, you may then apply for either a D-Licence or B-Licence depending on whether your products are separated into meat, egg, dairy, or fish and seafood categories and stored for sale in Canada.
When submitting your Establishment Licence Application Form, you must also submit a detailed business plan to the CFIA. The business plan should outline in detail what type of products you are importing, from which country they will be coming, who your intended buyers or distributors are, and what sales strategies or tactics you’ll use to promote your products in Canada. It is important to be as comprehensive as possible when drafting this document so that the CFIA can understand your objectives and plan for importing food into Canada properly.
In most cases, the CFIA will require you to submit an Establishment Licence Application Form and complete a number of additional required steps in order to obtain a food import license. This includes completing site evaluations work sheets that outline compliance with Canadian requirements, submitting food safety certificates or attestation of analyses documents, and meeting other applicable conditions such as antimicrobial residue testing requirements. It is important to understand all the various requirements that you must meet in order to receive your food import license.
The CFIA food import license application fee is determined by the specific type of food product you are importing. Fees can range from a minimum of $217.50 to a maximum of $8,700 or more, depending on the level of risk associated with your product and its associated application requirements. It’s important to take these fees into account when planning your budget for importing food products into Canada.
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Understand Health Canada’s 2025 fees for NHPs, drugs, medical devices, and cannabis. Stay compliant with Quality Smart Solutions.
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