Agriculture committee  It is for the farmers who aren't getting depopulated but happen to be next door to the guy who is getting depopulated. If they can't restock because they're within the zone, they are the guys who don't get compensated under the Health of Animals Act, and they can't restock.

Agriculture committee  Our point is that we're better off not being in AgriStability. AgriRecovery is the key issue. You've heard the other comment here. Having some predictability with respect to what events will trigger AgriRecovery is the important aspect for us. It is having something knowable in advance so that you can say, okay, we have access to that program.

Health committee  With respect to ceftiofur, it is not used willy-nilly. Ceftiofur is used in ova to prevent a sickness in day-old chicks that come from a susceptible breeder flock. It's not used across the country. It's not used all the time. It is used when there is a specific issue. It's used once in the egg, and that's it.

Health committee  I think we have good strong regulations on farming in this country. One of the issues regulation-wise is the availability of alternatives. We've heard “Just stop doing it, and do that”. Some countries have approvals in for vaccines or other alternatives. If we don't have any of those, we're just going to cause a disaster if we say “Stop using it, and that's it”.

Health committee  Thank you for your questions, Mr. Malo. We have invested $5.1 million in the poultry industry, with all of this money going to research into antibiotic resistance and alternative solutions. Real discussions are underway. I'm going to switch to the other language, because this is too technical.

Health committee  That's right.

Health committee  That's fair to say, correct.

Health committee  That's correct, and this is one of the things that comes out in the study. It isn't just by antibiotic use that you develop resistance. That resistance is endemic out there. It comes in the environment. That's why from a management perspective, for example, for all of our flocks we clean out all the litter, take it down, clean, and disinfect the barn, because we're trying to make sure the environment is good and we don't get resistance building up from one flock to the next flock.

Health committee  It is very similar in the chicken industry. We put in place our on-farm program back in 1998, but it has been updated. It's the biosecurity part that is really doing it. In fact, we found that the biggest transmission and cause of bacteria entering is from other service industries within our industry, not people from the city who come and have none of that connection.

Health committee  This is where we think we need to understand for ourselves. Our farmers need to understand what that connection is. This is where we're talking about the CIPARS on-farm study. Where is that resistance coming from? We want to do the testing when those chicks arrive in the barn and then at 30 days and see if there's a difference that happened in the barn.

Health committee  Dr. Rosengren might add a couple of things, but I think there are a couple of points here. It isn't just the environment we're in, and that's a key part, but it's also the regulatory environment and what is approved. There are vaccines that are approved in some countries that are not allowed in others.

Health committee  I think our point is we're working closely with CIPARS. CIPARS knows there's a gap in the data and CIPARS has a very rigorous testing process. That is the type of study that needs to be done, and we're getting there. One of the recommendations we would have before the committee is Chicken Farmers of Canada has developed the CIPARS protocol with CIPARS on-farm testing.

Health committee  With regard to CIPARS, I want to make it clear: Chicken Farmers of Canada has worked closely with CIPARS, and CIPARS itself wouldn't come to the same conclusions that Mr. Smith has. We've gone through this and this connection on ceftiofur in Quebec. CIPARS will admit it has done research at a human level, a retail level, and at a processing level, but to date there has not been any surveillance done on-farm in poultry.

Health committee  Yes. I think this is the key part. We keep talking about healthy birds and sick birds. When you have an incident in a barn and you have sick animals, you need to treat those animals. We have animal welfare regulations in this country that say you must treat that flock. Generally when you get an outbreak in a disease you have to use a more powerful antibiotic, and you have to use one that is more important for human medicine.

Health committee  We make sure that we have healthy birds. We have an on-farm food safety program that makes sure that we stop the introduction of bacteria. We try to reduce the load there. We have a different production system from what they have in the U.S. In our system, you clean out those barns after every single flock.