Image: Arielle Lewis (left), owner of Picky Pet Dog Treats waits to chat with Food Safety Regulatory Specialist Rick Kane of Perennia Agriculture and Food Inc. Kane is speaking with Sue Lanoe, owner of Mira Craft and Confectionary about the need to move into a commercial kitchen if she wishes to sell her product to retailers or export her product beyond Nova Scotia. Lewis wants to sell her locally-sourced dog treats to retailers. She wants to be able to reassure retailers that her products are tested and safe for pets but is struggling to find a facility to do the analysis on her products. Lanoe and Lewis are currently vendors at the Cape Breton Farmers Market open on Saturdays in Sydney, NS. They were among the 20 who attended Kane’s presentation “Scaling up your food production: Inter-provincial and export requirements for expanding into retail and wholesale” at the April 7 Cape Breton Farmers Market Conference in Baddeck. Photo by Carolyn Barber / The Victoria Standard.

~Carolyn Barber, The Victoria Standard


Every particular food product, no matter what it is, carries some risk. It’s Rick Kane’s job to help food sellers understand what the risks are and put controls in place to make sure that they mitigate that risk.

Kane has been analyzing food product formulations and processes for 30 years. He is now Perennia Agriculture and Food Inc.’s Food Safety Regulatory Specialist. Perennia is a government-owned not-for-profit that consults with farmers, fishers and food processors on matters of food safety, product development and commercialization.

At the Cape Breton Farmers’ Market Conference held April 7 in Baddeck, Kane talked to market vendors about scaling up their operations to the retail marketplace.

Many Nova Scotian food sellers start small, testing their products out at farmers’ markets, with aspirations of entering the retail marketplace and/or exporting across Canada and internationally.

“Every time you make that shift up, there’s a large change in production,” said Kane to the 20 people in attendance. “There’s a large change in what’s required to move forward.”

Most food producers can learn, for free, how to confidently make that leap into the retail marketplace. The Food Safe and Product Safe programs offered by Perennia are free to producers whose products fall within the Canadian Agricultural Partnership (CAP). Kane says 90% of the products he analyzes fall under CAP.

These programs coach emerging and small companies on everything they need to know to ensure their products are safe for the retail marketplace and export - things like product shelf life, appropriate packaging materials and ingredient traceability.

Recent changes to the Safe Food for Canadians regulations now call for all food sellers - from farmers’ market vendors to exporters - to ensure traceability for all ingredients going into the finished product. There are times when a particular ingredient is recalled. If the food seller does not keep track of which finished product contains that ingredient, then all product will be recalled and destroyed.

For food sellers looking to scale up their productions, Kane encourages them to do so incrementally, and with help.

Kane encourages anyone with questions to email him at [email protected].