Thank you for the question.
There's an initiative under way right now out of Saskatchewan, a co-operative that wants to pool lambs together to create a central distribution of lambs that would primarily go through federal slaughter so they'd be available for wider distribution across provincial lines, etc. There is a consolidation, I think, that's happening within the industry as far as production goes. Certainly, in western Canada right now, the feedlot industry is growing in the number of feedlots as well as the size of those feedlots. We're not talking about huge numbers here; certainly, it is a small industry, for sure. So we have primary producers who are producing lambs that are then being fed into a feedlot system, and that's making it easier for those animals to make it into the rest of the supply chain.
Through the sheep value chain round table, we've identified two specific issues—one being expansion of the industry, and two being access to medications.
Regarding the first, expansion of the industry, that working group is comprised of much of the value chain. We're working at getting some processors at that working group to make sure the whole value chain is able to participate. They're just at the very beginning of identifying some of the challenges with expansion. Access to good quality genetics is certainly one. There are good quality genetics, it's just that the volume of those genetics available to domestic producers is a challenge right now, considering the demand we have for our final product.
On the access to medications, we have a disadvantage against some of our competitors because of access to medications or vaccines that they may have in other countries. So the access to medications working group is looking at the efficacy of some of these products from other countries, and how applicable they would be to be used in this country. Many of those that come to mind are specifically around vaccines, so it's preventative medicine, rather than reactionary medicine, on the production side of things.