Service
CFIA Export Certification Support
Your buyer needs a certificate, and which one is decided by their country rather than by you. CFIA issues it, but only if your plant already meets the conditions that country sets. That is a timing problem. The requirement comes from overseas, the work happens in your plant, and most exporters find the gap between them only after a buyer is already waiting.
What’s included
- Identification of which CFIA export certificates the destination requires for your product
- Assessment of whether your establishment currently meets the conditions for those certificates
- A gap list where it does not, with what has to change and in what order
- Preparation and coordination of the certificate application
- Guidance on the export documentation set the destination expects alongside the certificate
- Where an establishment listing is required, what that involves
What you actually receive
A worked example, free to download and nothing to fill in first. The company in it is invented and says so on its own cover. The costs and requirements are real ones for real markets, so what you see is what this service produces for a product of your own.
PDF · 3 pages · illustrative
Which certificates Vietnam requires, across four seafood lines
Your buyer asks for "the health certificate", which is a reasonable thing to say and not a thing that exists. Four lines, four different certificate combinations, decided by species, by the water the fish came from and by where the product goes after Vietnam. Includes the re-export condition that cannot be corrected after certification, and which of your sites actually needs a listing.
Download the sample
Who else you will need
These sit next to this engagement and we do not do them. They are licensed or credentialed work, and we would do them worse than the people who do them all day.
We will introduce you, and coordinate across them so nothing falls in a gap.
- Signing the export certificate
- CFIA. The certificate is a government instrument, issued against conditions your establishment either meets or does not.
- Plant-level food safety systems work
- A food safety consultant or your certification body, where the gap list calls for changes to HACCP, sanitation or traceability.
Commercial terms
- Fee range
- Scoped per engagement
- Typical timeline
- Confirmed at scoping
Questions
- Our buyer sent us a certificate name we do not recognise. Is that normal?
- Very. Buyers often relay the name their own customs broker uses, which may not map cleanly to a CFIA certificate. Part of this work is translating what the destination is actually asking for into what CFIA actually issues.
- Do you issue the certificate?
- No. CFIA issues export certificates. We identify which one applies, prepare your establishment and the application, and coordinate it, but the issuing authority is CFIA and the conditions are theirs.
- We have never exported before. Where does this start?
- With your SFCR licence and your preventive control plan, because the certificate conditions build on them. If the licence scope does not cover what you intend to export, that is the first thing to fix, and it is better found now than after a buyer commits.
- Does the certificate travel with the shipment?
- The document set that accompanies a consignment varies by destination and by product. We set out what that set is for your route as part of the work, so the shipment is not held for a document nobody mentioned.
Read before you brief us
The reasoning behind this work, written out in full and free to read. You will brief us better for having read it, and you may decide you do not need us for part of it.
- Opportunities for Canadian lobster in Southeast Asian hospitality
Vietnam charges 27 per cent on frozen lobster at the general rate and nothing under CPTPP. That single line is worth more than most Canadian seafood exporters spend on an entire market entry, and it is decided by paperwork rather than by the agreement existing.
- Five hotel products that can be sourced from Canada
Food service buys differently from retail: to a plate cost, a specification and a season, with no shelf to win. Five Canadian lines fit that channel in Southeast Asia, and the tariff position separates them sharply by market.
- Establishment approval: the gate that opens before the sale
Four of the six markets vet the Canadian plant before they will look at the product. What each one asks for, which of them audits on site, and why this belongs at the start of a commercial conversation rather than the end.
- What a CFIA export certificate proves, and what it does not
The certificate is the last document in the chain, not the first. What has to be true before the CFIA will issue one, what the certificate actually attests, and the four ways exporters lose a shipment after holding one.
- Halal meat from Canada: two approvals, two lists, one certificate
For meat, halal splits into two separate approvals that people treat as one. A body that may certify your product is not necessarily a body that may authorise the slaughter, and Canada publishes a list of the second that most exporters have never opened.
- Honey is the exception: Canadian labelling rules that follow the export
Most Canadian consumer labelling stops at the border. Honey does not. The grade name is required on the label of all honey that is exported, and the origin marking rules are written in the regulations rather than left to the marketing department.
- The carton is a labelled item, and it is the one the inspector sees first
Every hour of label review goes on the retail pack, which an official may never open. The shipping container carries its own requirements, is printed by a different process, and is where destination markings that have no consumer equivalent actually land.
- Seafood export from Canada: the approvals nobody mentions until they stop you
Seafood is Canada’s most export-ready food category and the one where the requirements are least discussed. Four things gate a consignment, they are held by four different parties, and none of them is the thing most first-time exporters worry about.
- Meat export approvals: the register your buyer checks before they answer
Canada publishes which establishments each destination has approved, by number, and buyers read it. An exporter who does not know what those lists say about their own plant is negotiating without the document the other side already has.
Some of this is already published
This page describes work we would do for you. Part of the answer is written already, read off the regulator and dated, and it costs nothing to check it before you decide whether you need us.
- Vietnam: What Vietnam Requires of Canadian Food, by Category Last reviewed 2026-09-19.
- Thailand: What Thailand Requires of Canadian Food, by Category Last reviewed 2026-09-19.
- Philippines: What the Philippines Requires of Canadian Food, by Category Last reviewed 2026-09-19.
- Singapore: What Singapore Requires of Canadian Food, by Category Last reviewed 2026-09-19.