by Terrence Sauvé, Chair of CASSO\SNSAC

On December 23^rd, 2022, ASABE finally received their accreditation by Standards Council of Canada to become the 9^th Standard Development Organization in Canada!

(URL: https://www.scc.ca/en/accreditation/sdo-accreditation/american-society-agricultural-and-biological-engineers-asabe )

For over 35 years, CSA hosted the committee responsible for this development, the Agricultural Machinery Technical Committee (AMTC) with membership from farmers, manufacturers, regulators and trade associations.

In the Fall of 2020, CSA disbanded the AMTC and in December 2020, ASABE inaugurated the Canadian Agricultural Systems Standards Oversight (CASSO) / Surveillance des normes des systèmes agricoles canadiens (SNSAC) to resume Canadian standards development.

ASABE embarked on a 2 year long journey to become the next provider of standards for farm machinery in Canada.

In the fall of 2020, CSBE provided you this update on the journey by ASABE staff in order to get recognized in Canada:  https://csbe-scgab.ca/perspectives-newsletter-fall-2020/creation-of-the-canadian-agricultural-systems-standards-oversight-casso-surveillance-des-normes-des-systemes-agricoles-canadiens-snsac-committee

CASSO/SNSAC has partnered with the following organizations in pursuing Canadian standards development:

1. Agricultural Manufactures of Canada (AMC)
2. Canadian Agricultural Safety Association / Association canadienne de sécurité agricole (CASA/ACSA)
3. Canadian Society for Bioengineering / La Société Canadienne de Génie Agroalimentaire et de Bioingénierie (CSBE/SCGAB)
4. Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI)

While our committee just received our accreditation in December 2022, we are now preparing our Work Plan to embark in this new journey with the help of the ASABE Standards’ staff and using the new Engage web platform to contact and exchange with our committee members. We are already growing our list of Recognized standards, and initiated the discussion with committee members at our March 14^th meeting future plans for national adoptions of standards.

For more information about joining or getting involved in Canadian farm machinery standards, please consult our public webpage here: https://www.asabe.org/Publications-Standards/Standards-Development/Canadian-Standards-Development

We thank everyone that were involved in the support of this new project. All the best to everyone for 2023!

Terrence Sauvé, Chair of CASSO\SNSAC
Farmstead Optimization and Safety Engineer / Ingénieur, spécialiste de la santé et sécurité et de la planification d'exploitations agricoles (bilingue)
Environmental Management Branch / Direction de la gestion environnementale
Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs / Ministère de l'agriculture, de l'alimentation et des affaires rurales de l'Ontario
Kemptville, ON