The following is provided by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).
This is an important message to help food importers of manufactured foods use the Automated Import Reference System (AIRS) when they are prompted to select an end use for their imported commodity.
On July 15, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) began updating AIRS’ harmonized system (HS) codes for Manufactured Food Sector (MFS) foods as part of the implementation of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SFCR). There are a large number of updates and CFIA is implementing them on a staged basis to ensure an orderly changeover.
As a result of these changes, some end uses that importers and brokers selected previously in AIRS now require a Safe Food for Canadians (SFC) licence.
Important: If you’re an importer or broker and you encounter the SFC licence requirement in AIRS, you can continue to select the end use that you used previously until a more suitable end use option becomes available in AIRS updates.
During this transition, when selecting an end use where registration type #893 is required, importers and brokers must declare this registration type and can either leave the Registration Number field blank or indicate “No†in the Registration Number field to prevent issues with your transaction.
Reminder: On April 7, 2020, the CFIA announced that importers of manufactured food will generally not encounter delays or disruptions in their imports due to not having an SFC licence.
The CFIA encourages importers to follow the instructions outlined above, as this will help with our efforts to avoid delays or disruptions of imported manufactured foods.
e appreciate your cooperation as we implement the SFCR and update AIRS.  If you have questions, fill out our online form.