From Tim Alamenciak in TheStar.ca
“Food produced and sold in Ontario now qualifies as “local,” thanks to updated rules from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which critics say was following outdated policies.
The federal agency’s original policy said food was only “local” if it was sold 50 kilometres from where it was produced or in the neighbouring municipality. This meant produce like blueberries from Thunder Bay wouldn’t qualify as local if sold in Toronto.
“When you use the term ‘local,’ people actually do think of their province and they think of the incredible diversity of products that are produced regionally across the province,” said Lauren Baker, co-ordinator of the Toronto Food Policy Council. “The switch in definition is about government language catching up to the way the public thinks about local.”…”
Related: CFIA threatens Alliston restaurant over local and natural claims
The Bovine 
I’ll still be weighing and measuring in terms of quality available . . . Quebec’s organic apples were delicious and available almost all winter in our local natural foods store with nary an apple on the trees during the growing season in the rural area where I live. Surely the CFIA should be assigned more serious issues to concern itself about and spare us the expense of ‘catching up’ the language of their endless definitions!
Now, will they leave the restaurant in Alliston alone and perhaps even apologize for the grief the CFIA put them through just recently. They just told the owners that Beer from Barrie etc was not local and they had to change their advertising for local. Sounds like the government run a mock to me!!!!!
We have to be patient and unravel one insanity at a time. I think the new premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, contributed positively to this no- nonsense result. Now that we know fast-tracked interim rulings are ,indeed, quite possible here is a million dollar idea . How about making raw dairy herdshares legal with an interim ruling til the politicians have time to get their house in order (pun intended) ? The idea that we have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars litigating forever and collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures on cold and snowy Canadian street corners just might be a smokescreen and stalling tactic after all is said and done. If the political will is there for rapid change (and this can work in a negative direction as well) then change will happen. There is a fascinating nexus between political change, science and media. If the political masters deem , all of a sudden, that raw milk is safe and should therefore be legal , all of a sudden the provincial medical and health officers will seemingly materialize the science, supporting such a decision, out of nowhere. Subsequently, the monthly “public service announcements” and press releases will go from being 100% pro-pasteurization and 100% raw milk-negative to a more plausible ratio like 99% supportive with 1-10% cautious about raw milk safety and handling concerns. Even if Public Health officials spent only 1% of their budget on raw milk safety as compared to other perishable foods that would still be disproportionately high given that , according to Dr.Ted Beals’s research, the risk of illness is only 1 in 35 000 per overall foodborne illness event in North America (as measured over a 10 year period ) .