FeedAssure®

Health Canada updated the Guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality in March 2025. FeedAssure® certified facilities that use water, steam or ice in contact with feed or feed contact surfaces must ensure the water meets recognized (local, national or international) safety and potability standards, including these updated guidelines. 

Crisis management is a key part of a facility’s feed safety program. To meet FeedAssure® requirements, each facility must conduct an on-site crisis management drill at least once per year, focusing on emergencies that could affect feed safety.

Traceability and mock recalls are sometimes confused, but they serve different purposes in your feed safety system.

ANAC is providing facilities the option for on-site FeedAssure® training in either English or French. A trainer could come to your facility and deliver one or both of the FeedAssure® courses to a group of up to 20 people.

Registration is now open for this year’s first offerings of ANAC’s highly requested FeedAssure® training courses.

In FeedAssure® facilities where water (including steam) comes into direct contact with feed, feed ingredients or feed contact surfaces, maintaining proof of water potability is required even if the water comes from a municipal source.

The FeedAssure® Program requires ongoing commitment to both personnel training and evaluation:
• Training ensures that employees understand feed safety procedures from the start of their employment and can apply them effectively in their daily work.
• Evaluation assesses whether employees are applying their training correctly and adhering to feed safety procedures.

The FeedAssure® program aims to assure the integrity of incoming feed ingredients/products and raw materials, making supplier approval a critical requirement to prevent biosecurity concerns and feed fraud. While most facilities already have processes in place to ensure they are working with trusted suppliers, FeedAssure® v.4 necessitates a documented supplier approval procedure based on risk, which means the depth of review applied to each supplier will depend on their associated risks.

In response to growing demand, ANAC is pleased to announce the launch of the FeedAssure® Warehouse program. With the standard FeedAssure® program being designed for manufacturing facilities, this new version of the program has been streamlined to address the specific needs and differences of warehouses within the feed value chain that do not engage in any manufacturing, bulk or repackaging activities.

The second phase of requirements under the Feeds Regulations, 2024 will come into force in just over four months. Importantly, most of these elements apply to all feed businesses throughout the value chain including manufacturers, distributors and retail outlets of mixed feeds and feed ingredients.