Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  A general animal health strategy was designed by CFIA, and the farm animal health side of the business has been dealing with this, I would say, for a couple of years. The assistant deputy ministers--federal, provincial, territorial--have decided to pick it up and try to work with the industry to come up with better coordination faster.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  In the farm animal health strategy we use the Animal Health Coalition, which groups most of the farm livestock industry. So we have the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, the Dairy Farmers of Canada, the Canadian Pork Council, the poultry sectors, the smaller industries like the goat, sheep, and equine that also participate--pretty much all the farm animal commodities.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  It's not just the industry.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Yes.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Slightly over 13,000. I think we're at 13,400 right now.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  There are different steps. It's a fairly elaborate program where you need to have people go on the farm and check everything. You have to fill in all the forms, and then you have a validator who goes in. Before you're totally registered, it's a fairly.... Right now 10% have been registered, but 96% of all producers, of that 13,400, have been trained on the program and have done at least the first steps.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I think it varies. As I said, the hardest part in selling a program like that.... The farmers generally have supported this; otherwise it wouldn't be there. We're run by farmers, so obviously there was a will and a willingness to do it. When you go into the field and try to sell it, as I think I was explaining to Mr.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  We're paying for it. That's the difference.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  We're talking about auditors, basically. We'll go on the farms, visit the farms, and make sure that all the practices that are part of the program have been followed by the producers. So they will re-inspect. These are not CFIA inspectors. These are people who are on the program, they're employees under the program, who have been trained under a program that CFIA has approved.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  They'd be certified under the CFIA program, yes.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Maybe history. Milk has been safe for a long time and continues to be safe. As I said before, it's still the most tested product. Pasteurization has a lot to do with it, because you're talking about liquid milk. In this country, we pasteurize all the milk that is sold to consumers, and in my view, that is very key as well.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Actually, yes. To be frank, absolutely. But it's not necessarily an indication that the farmers do not put a lot of emphasis on how safe the product is. It's because the farmers themselves feel how safe the product is, because they consume it. They produce the milk and they consume it on the farm, and therefore they're convinced of how good a job they do.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I would just like to correct one point. To my knowledge, there are no inspectors in plants all the time. There are provincial and federal inspection procedures. However, the inspectors do not work in the same way as those in slaughterhouses; the situation is somewhat different.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Yes, indeed. The problem is, the way the mechanism works, you have to make a complaint. You have to find them and then report them to CFIA. That's all you hear about it, so you never know what follow-up has taken place. You have to keep trying to see if those products are still coming in.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  It is an issue of protecting the consumers from being misled. This is important. To build on what Robert was talking about, we haven't quite addressed the prior approval issue. Every week we find products improperly labelled and in the marketplace. This occurs for all kinds of reasons: lack of bilingualism, lack of information on nutrition, misinformation with regard to the product quality, and misuse of dairy terminology.