Agriculture committee  Just as a reality check, one of the big dilemmas is that while countries like Europe and the U.S. still have border protection that can implement supply management, developing countries have very little border protections or controls of any sort. The WTO forced them not to increase any one....

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for the invitation to appear. I will try to be brief. You have a presentation. I will just highlight some of the key slides. I want to start by saying I've titled this, “To be profitable is to be competitive”. I know that Larry Martin has appeared in front of this committee, and he defined the potential to have profitable gain as being a measurement of competitiveness.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Well, I'm not as familiar with the meat antibiotic detection, but I know that in milk you test every truck before it's unloaded. You will have a test, and if you've found any positive tests on any source—so there are no false positives or negatives—it's going to be retested and confirmed, and then each of the samples of the farmers will be retested, and not only will the truck be destroyed but the farmers will be charged with the destruction of that milk.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I guess it's similarity of the animals more than anything else. You know, biosecurity exists on dairy farms, and most dairy farmers.... I was listening to Monsieur Bellavance speak about dressing properly and protecting yourself. Most dairy farms now, if they have visitors, are going to take the proper measures before allowing visitors to the farm.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I would add to this, because I agree with you. The key issue is this, and our consumer survey is exactly showing this, and it's going back to what Mr. Bellavance was saying. If you lose the confidence of the consumers, whether it's on the label, whether it's on the inspection system, whether it's on anything, if you lose that confidence that the product they buy is safe, that it is exactly what it says it is, then they can decide whether they want to pay for it or not.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I will try to be more succinct than I was last time. First of all, I agree with you. I think there is room for improvement in any system, and we are working on that. When we look at consumers' priorities, and their concerns about food, food safety is always at the top of the list.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Absolutely. Take ice cream. A year ago, we saw another product coming in called frozen dessert. It was on the same shelves and had the same look. It's called frozen dessert, in light blue over dark blue. As you pack the ice cream cartons on top of each other, the cap of the one below hides the name.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Right now we have a national committee where we bring together the provincial regulators and the federal regulators. We try to work on standards, so that we have more uniformity and we apply the same standards on quality. We've been working at this for quite a number of years.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  In our industry, we have worked very hard at developing our national dairy code, which established national standards asking the provinces that are signatories to that code to basically try to make sure that their provincial regulations are actually met. There are differences still, but you have to understand that in our case, when the milk is collected, it goes in the truck.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  All right. I'll have a go first, and Réjean will correct me. Again, there's a bit of a slight difference. Agri-Traçabilité in Quebec is probably one of the best-renowned traceability systems in Canada. Fortunately, we have other good systems. They differ a little bit, but basically they're doing the same thing.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Can I add to this very briefly? Mr. Easter will appreciate that in the case of a supply-managed industry, where the system allows the producer to recover their costs from the marketplace, you can recover these costs if you charge it to the farmers. If the ability of the farmers to recover their costs from the market had to stop, then just like the United States, you would have to have the government picking up and covering some of these costs.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  The CQM itself is really a national system. It primarily involves Agriculture Canada and CFIA for that particular program. There is on-farm inspection at the provincial level in most provinces, and that continues. There is federal inspection as well, with regard to feed and other issues.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  So the actual standard is the same.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I'll let Réjean respond to that one.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Oh, it's more designed to do the job here in Canada for us. Part of the issue on the national farm animal health strategy is that we have all the elements. We have traceability, we have all the tests, and we have all the things we need. But because of the nature of this country, where we have some jurisdictions that are provincial, some regional, three systems of traceability, of identification of animals, what this strategy is designed to do—and we're in the process of discussing it with all the other cattle industries and livestock industries—is to try to get coordination of all this, because everybody goes their own way.