Respond to a CFIA Records Request
When CFIA asks for traceability records, produce the CFIA Electronic Sortable Spreadsheet (ESS). Use a quick download for a small window, or the queued portal for larger date ranges.
Inline export (quick)
- From the SFCR menu, open CFIA ESS Export.
- Choose a date range (defaults to the last 30 days; up to 2 years).
- The CFIA ESS CSV downloads immediately.
CFIA Export Portal (queued)
- Open CFIA Export Portal.
- Enter the date range and submit. The request is queued and processed in the background (typically within minutes).
- Watch export history for status. When Completed, click Download CSV. Failed exports show Retry, which queues again with the same date range.
The CFIA ESS has 16 columns, including TLC code, product description, quantity, unit, CTE type, event date/time (UTC), location, from/to-party CFIA licence and name, reference document type and number, country of origin, and CFIA product category. Files use UTF-8 with BOM for clean Excel opening.
Only SFCR events are included — FDA/FSMA events never appear.
Records retention
- SFCR records are kept for 24 months.
- A daily retention scan raises an in-app warning when SFCR records approach the end of that window — it never deletes records automatically.
- Act on the alert (export or archive per your policy) before records age out.