Two CFIA items landed in the same week, and on the surface they have nothing to do with each other. One is a chapter of AIRS being republished for cereals. The other is Canada recognising disease free zoning in Finland for African swine fever. Underneath, they are the same problem: the admissibility answer turns on a fact that is not in the goods, not in the invoice description, and not in the HS code. It is in something your client has to tell you, or a certificate somebody has to sign.
If you guess it, you have misdeclared. That is the whole post, but the detail is where the money is.
What AIRS actually keys on
CBSA Memorandum D19-1-1, Food, Plants, Animals and Related Products (date modified August 31, 2024) describes AIRS at paragraph 14 as "an automated reference tool that uses a question and answer approach to guide the user" through the product details: the HS code, the origin, and the end use. Three inputs. Change any one of them and you can get a different requirement out the other end.
Two things about that are easy to get wrong.
First, paragraph 15 of the same memorandum says the CFIA may impose new requirements or restrictions that supersede the instructions in AIRS. AIRS is the baseline, not the last word. An answer you screenshotted in June is evidence of what AIRS said in June and nothing more.
Second, the end use is not a formality at the bottom of the screen. It is one of the three things the answer is computed from. D19-1-1 paragraph 76 gives the obvious example: AIRS carries an end use for "show or exhibition," which is how goods going to a trade fair get a different answer from the identical goods going to a customer.
The Chapter 10 change, and why cereals are a good illustration
CSCB reported on August 20, 2026 that AIRS Chapter 10 was republished to add a release recommendation to a set of wheat codes carrying the end uses "Educational use," "Industrial use (i.e. is not commercial use)," "Scientific use (Research)" and "Show or exhibition." The codes listed included durum wheat seed and grain and other wheat seed and grain, in both conventional and organic forms, running from 10.01.11.0081 through the 10.01.99 series.
Be careful how you use that list. Those are AIRS commodity codes, written in the dotted format AIRS uses, not the ten digit Canadian tariff item you put on the accounting document. The tariff item still comes from the Customs Tariff, Chapter 10. Do not copy an AIRS string into a classification field and expect it to validate.
And be careful about the source. AIRS is a query tool with no public change log at a fixed address, so we could not re-read the chapter change itself against a CFIA page on August 21, 2026. The change above is reported by CSCB, not something we verified at source. What we can point at is the durable rule underneath it, which D19-1-1 paragraph 14 does state: the answer is keyed on the end use, so a wheat shipment for a university research programme and the same wheat for a mill are two different questions.
Do this today
Look at your intake form. If "end use" is not a field on it, add one, and make it a question rather than a dropdown defaulted to "commercial." Every time somebody picks the default because it is the default, you have created a declaration nobody actually made.
Finland, African swine fever, and a date on a certificate
Now the harder one, and the one where the deciding fact is a slaughter date.
Here is what we could confirm at source on August 21, 2026, and where the confirmation stops.
Confirmed. CFIA's page listing countries Canada recognises as free from African swine fever (date modified July 30, 2026) lists Finland among EU member states with affected zones, and carries a restriction date of June 24, 2026. Its footnote says shipments of raw, fresh, frozen or cured edible pork products from EU member states where an ASF outbreak has occurred require an animal health import permit, and that documentation dated before the restriction date may enter without one.
Confirmed. An order made on August 4, 2026 added Finland to Schedule 1 of the ASF conditions order, which is the schedule of countries where the CFIA recognises regionalisation and some regions may be recognised as free of ASF. Product from a recognised free area needs an import permit accompanied by a zoosanitary export certificate endorsed by an official veterinarian. That is on the CFIA background and summary of orders page, date modified August 7, 2026.
Reported, not confirmed. CSCB's August 20 item states that product slaughtered anywhere in Finland between June 24, 2026 and August 11, 2026 is not eligible, which would put the zoning recognition into effect for slaughter from August 12 onward. We could not find that window on a CFIA page, and CFIA's own country freedom page had not been updated past July 30 when we read it. Treat the August 11 boundary as a thing to confirm with the CFIA before you commit a shipment, not as a rule to file against.
Say that out loud to a client and it sounds like hedging. It is not. It is the difference between a broker who knows which of their facts are read and which are heard, and one who finds out at the border.
Do this today
For any Finnish pork or porcine by-product in your book, get the slaughter date in writing, in a document signed by an official veterinarian, before the container moves. The date is what decides the answer, and CFIA's footnote about documentation dated before the restriction date means the paperwork date does real work here. Then run the commodity through AIRS on the day of the shipment and get the import permit position confirmed rather than assumed.
Why "the system said so" is not a defence
Both of these changes reward the same habit and punish the same one.
The habit that works: treat the end use and the certificate date as inputs you collect, the way you already collect origin and value. Write them down. Keep the AIRS result with the date you ran it, because an AIRS answer is a point in time and paragraph 15 of D19-1-1 says the CFIA can supersede it.
The habit that fails: filling the field with the most likely answer. A classification you inferred is a classification you cannot defend, and the CFIA release recommendation attached to it inherits the same weakness. When the fork is real, the fix is to ask the client, not to pick better.
This is also why we will not let our own classifier close an end use fork on its own. If the answer depends on what the goods are for, somebody has to say what they are for. That is a question to surface, not a default to apply.
How the recommendation reaches you at the border
Worth knowing which channel your answer arrives on, because the two look nothing alike when something goes wrong. Per D19-1-1, on an electronic submission the importer or broker and the CBSA both receive an electronic notification of the CFIA's recommendation (paragraph 27). On paper, the documentation goes to the National Import Service Centre, which returns a stamped 5272 carrying the recommendation (paragraph 28).
If you are new to which agency owns which commodity, our partner government agency reference maps the programs and the permits, and the CBSA advance rulings library is worth a search before you commit to a classification that an end use is about to complicate. Pork sits in Chapter 2 of the Customs Tariff, which is a useful reminder that the tariff question and the CFIA question are answered separately and can disagree about how much detail they need.
Questions importers actually ask
Can I just run AIRS once and save the result for the season?
No. D19-1-1 paragraph 15 says the CFIA may impose requirements that supersede the instructions in AIRS, and AIRS chapters get republished without anything landing in your inbox. Run it per shipment and keep the result with the date you ran it, so that if the requirement changes you can show what the tool said when you filed.
What counts as the end use, the importer's use or the final customer's?
AIRS asks for the end use pertaining to the commodity, and D19-1-1 paragraph 76 uses show or exhibition as the worked example, which is a use rather than a buyer. If your client is a distributor and does not know what their customer will do with it, that is not a rounding error, it is a question that has to go down the chain before you file.
Is Finnish pork admissible again or not?
Partly, and the deciding fact is the slaughter date. CFIA's country freedom page carries a restriction date of June 24, 2026 for Finland and says documentation dated before the restriction date may enter without an animal health import permit. Finland was added on August 4, 2026 to the schedule of countries where the CFIA recognises regionalisation, so product from a recognised free area moves on an import permit with a zoosanitary export certificate endorsed by an official veterinarian. CSCB reports that product slaughtered between June 24 and August 11, 2026 is not eligible, which we could not confirm on a CFIA page. Confirm the specific window with the CFIA before you commit.
Are the AIRS codes in the CSCB notice the same as tariff items?
No. AIRS codes are written in AIRS's own dotted format and identify a commodity for admissibility purposes. The tariff item you declare comes from the Customs Tariff and has its own structure. They are related through the HS but they are not interchangeable, so do not paste one into a field expecting the other.
What do I ask a Finnish supplier for, exactly?
The slaughter date, in a document signed by an official veterinarian, and the zone the animals came from. If the zoning route applies, you also need the import permit and a zoosanitary export certificate endorsed by an official veterinarian. Ask before the container is booked, because none of these can be produced after the fact.
Where do the facts in this post come from?
The AIRS mechanics, the supersession rule, the show or exhibition example and the electronic and paper notification paths are from CBSA Memorandum D19-1-1, date modified August 31, 2024, cited by paragraph number. The Finland restriction date, the permit footnote and the schedule addition are from CFIA's country freedom page (date modified July 30, 2026) and its background and summary of orders page (date modified August 7, 2026), both read on August 21, 2026. The Chapter 10 republication and the June 24 to August 11 slaughter window are reported by CSCB on August 20, 2026 and are labelled as reported rather than confirmed, because we could not read them at source.