Ms. Crews, I share your concerns about the costs producers will have to pay to ensure food safety. Your organization represents several thousand farm producers who want to provide consumers with safe food. Ultimately, even if they are not the cause of the problem, their reputation will suffer.
Producers want to ensure that their products meet safety standards, and this costs money. Sometimes there is doubt as to whether or not governments realize how hard producers are trying in their work methods and financially to ensure that food is as safe as possible. In recent years, we have taken some steps to ensure that farm products are very safe.
The government does not seem too sensitive to this, and it is actually imposing measures that will be very expensive for producers. I am thinking particularly of specified risk materials, the SRMs. Our beef producers are now required to eliminate SRMs, even though our American trading partners are not required to do so. This results in unfair competition for our producers.
I am not saying they are opposed to the introduction of these measures. However, I am wondering why the government put them in place. Does it not realize that they are creating unfair competition? The government must help our producers pay these extra costs.
I have other examples of food safety crises. When I was first elected, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agrifood visited Manitoba producers whose cattle had had bovine tuberculosis. We saw one producer in tears when he thought about what happened years before, when he had lost everything. The compensation payments arrived late and were inadequate. The same was true of producers in British Columbia, who had had to cull millions of chickens because of avian flu.
In response, the government recently published in the Canada Gazette some changes in the compensation payments—they were decreased from $33 per chicken to $8, or something like that. I share this concern. There is an imbalance here.
I would like to hear your comments on this. You may have some other examples to give us as well.