Shippers of livestock and embryos from Canada can expect their export certification fees to stay the same for about the next two years.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Thursday it will continue to cap its user fees at $75 until September 2013 for a specific list of livestock and embryo industries.
Between now and then, the CFIA said it plans to work with those industries to “modernize the user fee structure.”
The user fee cap is specific to export certification fees that are now charged on a per-unit basis with no upper limit, CFIA said. The cap applies to certain swine, cattle, flightless birds, poultry, hatching eggs, horses, sheep and goats, plus the embryo export sector.
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The decision to extend the cap on user fees is expected to save livestock producers up to $2.7 million, the government said Thursday.
The agency hasn’t increased its fees or instituted new ones since CFIA was created in 1997, the government said.
The fee schedule is to be modernized as it hasn’t kept pace with technological advances, the government added.
Furthermore, “shipments of live animals and embryos are now much larger than were originally anticipated.”
Until the fees can be reworked, however, the continued fee cap will have “no impact on the level of inspection or the health of animals,” the government said.
