The Russians and a number of countries--Mexico, Cuba--and the Chinese have all expressed interest in live animals as well as boxed beef. They're very impressed by the genetics we've developed.
Of course, our cattle and hog producers are some of the most innovative in the world. In Alberta we have a producer who has developed a hog that is circovirus immune, so they're very interested in those types of things.
Out of the University of Alberta and with some work at the University of Saskatchewan, we have developed vaccines that make animals less susceptible to E. coli. Even as you grind the hamburger and carry on down through, I won't call it a preservative, but that immunity is there. So there is tremendous opportunity to market those types of innovative situations around the world.
In light of food safety--of course, we've seen the media stories on this--we were already starting to do some work ahead of that. We have 10,000 food importers in this country, and a lot of different product comes in that does not have the same scrutiny applied to it as to our own domestic product. That has to start to change.
We're looking at programming whereby that would be done at point of exit, not after it gets into the country. Certainly that would make us much more proactive than we are now.
We are trading more and more. I know there's the food sovereignty movement out of Quebec, but it's very hard to have food sovereignty when.... I think it was Bernard Landry who said we don't grow pineapples here. And I take his point, but there are things we can and should be doing.
I'm very concerned with what constitutes “product of Canada” as opposed to “made in Canada”. We are starting to look at a regulatory regime that would correct some of those anomalies. It's a concern.
There is work under way with the Minister of Health, the Minister of Industry, and me to address some of these labelling challenges and some of these food safety challenges we're facing.