16 GERMINATION.CA JULY 2017 PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE | PART 1 | CANADIAN SEED INSTITUTE PODCAST ALERT! Listen to interviews with Roy van Wyk and Jim McCullagh at germination.ca/csi-where-its-been-and-its-role-today/ CHRISTMAS EVE OF 1998 was a stress- ful one for Jim McCullagh. It was that day he met with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to sign a formal agreement that would officially allow the Canadian Seed Institute (CSI) to deliver accreditation and monitoring programs on the federal government’s behalf for the Canadian seed industry. CSI had been founded the year prior. “It was fairly nerve-wracking. You had to turn around and set up an organization that was going to stand up on its own two feet,” says McCullagh, who was CSI executive director at the time. CSI is known today as a corner- stone of the Canadian seed industry, but it would not have become that had the federal government not been flexible on how oversight of seed accreditation and monitoring activities could be delivered. In the mid-1990s, the CFIA under- took the broad initiative of reviewing its programs, looking for opportunities for cost reduction and cost recovery, and looking to update its user fees. The delegation of oversight of the registered seed establishments and accredited seed labs in the seed indus- try was one of the outcomes of that initiative. “It was a costly and time-con- suming role the government simply didn’t want to take on anymore,” says current CSI executive director Roy van Wyk. “Seed growers and the seed trade had many concerns with this outcome, one of their biggest being the fact that they didn’t want a group that didn’t understand the seed indus- try to begin to deliver that oversight activity. So they quickly began work- ing together considering ideas about how the seed industry could assume this newly delegated responsibility.” Today, CSI has five major industry members — the CSGA, Canadian Seed Trade Association, Commercial Seed Analysts Association of Canada, Alberta Seed Processors and Quebec Conditioners. It has hundreds of clients, and is the single point of contact for all seed establishments, seed laboratories, operators and graders seeking registration, licensing or accreditation. Currently, CSI moni- tors approximately 1,000 Canadian seed establishments, authorized importers and accredited seed testing laboratories. The CSI head office is located in Ottawa and has two branch offices, one in Eastern Canada and one in CSIA‘VERYRELEVANT’MODEL FORTHEINDUSTRY Western Canada. You can’t be an accredited seed testing lab, an authorized importer, an approved conditioner or an accredited bulk storage facility in Canada without being audited by CSI. It’s a big responsibility, especially in the modern seed era. “We make sure these facilities maintain the integrity of certified seed as it is cleaned, processed, packaged and labelled with one of CFIA’s official certified seed tags. It’s the ultimate identification preserva- tion program,” van Wyk says. “Our goal is to help the registered seed establishments be successful, meeting the requirements of the Seeds Act and Seeds Regulations, and ensure (seed) is handled, graded and labelled appropriately. We help the industry The Canadian Seed Institute’s story is one of pragmatism and forward thinking. Jim McCullagh was the Canadian Seed Institute’s first executive director. Roy van Wyk is executive director of the Canadian Seed Institute.