Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The member has hit upon a very important issue in terms of the future of food and drug regulation around the world. As you know, Vioxx was a global issue, and the action that was taken was global. We work closely with the FDA, in particular; one of our closest working relationships is with the Americans. But we also work closely with the Europeans.
We feel that we need to advance in something similar to the kind of system you describe. The term we use is work sharing. So we, as a regulatory agency, could do some of the work, the FDA could do another part, and the Europeans could do another part; we could split up the work, because all regulators around the world are having difficulty keeping up with the volume and the complexity of products coming through the front door. That's where we'd like to go. It would be very important, though, that each country retain the right to make its own final regulatory decision. Different countries have different tolerances for risk, for different cultural and historical reasons. So we feel a lot of the science work can be done in common, but countries will want to protect the right to make their own final regulatory decision.