Inspection Services

Manitoba Agriculture and Resource Development (ARD) health officers play an important role in ensuring the safety of all food that is processed and distributed from provincially registered facilities within Manitoba.
 
Health officers inspect facilities to determine if practices required by provincial legislation are being followed with respect to general food handling, storage temperature, sanitation, employee hygiene, equipment maintenance and environmental controls. They also assess formulations and processing methods to ensure that the food produced will be safe, conduct building assessments for new facilities and respond to public complaints.
 
A health officer will issue a permit to a facility once an inspection shows that acceptable practices are being followed. The facility must continue to meet these requirements to maintain their permit.

If you have a food safety concern please e-mail foodsafety@gov.mb.ca.

Risk-Based Inspection

 
Facilities are categorized according to the type of product manufactured and a risk assessment is conducted to determine the routine inspection frequency. The picture below shows what is considered when determining risk.

 

Routine Inspection Frequencies 

Routine inspections are unannounced and are conducted at a pre-determined frequency as described in the table below. Follow-up inspections or re-inspections are conducted when violations are found by a health officer.  The follow-up date is determined based on the severity of the violation.

Inspection Statistics

Total number of inspections (routine, re-inspections, and responses to complaints)

The top five non-compliances were (January 1 to March 31, 2022):

• Non-food contact surfaces are not clean and may pose a food safety hazard.
• Effective preventative pest control measures are not taken in both the interior or exterior of the establishment
• Establishment interior is not maintained in an organized manner to permit safe food production, cleaning and inspection.
• Foods, ingredients and packaging materials are not properly stored and protected.
• Interior rooms, coolers/freezers (floors, walls, and ceilings), structures and fittings  are not maintained for the operations taking place within.

Escalating Enforcement

 
In the case where there are serious or repeat violations a health officer may write a warning letter, issue a ticket, seize and destroy product and/or close a facility. A facility is often referred to a food safety specialist who can help determine an acceptable way to address the issue.

Enforcement activity (January 1 to March 31, 2022):