Agriculture committee  Thank you for inviting us to this forum today. I think many of you know who we are at CPI. We are the export market development agency of the Canadian pork industry. We were established in 1991, about the same time as Groupe Export, and it is a joint initiative of the Canadian Pork Council and the Canadian Meat Council.

International Trade committee  We do and we're very pleased with the way it's going. We are consulted on even the small details.

International Trade committee  If we want to have the EU in the top five, it means we would need to have in excess of over 100,000 tonnes per year. That's a figure--

International Trade committee  Oh, we produce two million tonnes per year--

International Trade committee  --so that's not an issue. The point is that the EU is by far the best market in the world for legs. They give a premium, especially for the quality of product we produce in Canada. They are aware of it, so it's to get that access. It would really help to lift the overall carcass price in Canada if we could get that access.

International Trade committee  The Europeans are like the Americans. When they develop their own regulations, they don't think of their trade partners. They develop the agreement for their own purposes. There aren't too many who export to Canada, and they do have to meet Canadian requirements.

International Trade committee  Yes, but the problem has to do with—I'll give you a couple of examples. The Europeans require plastic pallets. Our plants are using wooden pallets. They require a wall between the packing line and the boxes. That's what we're talking about—structural changes. At the end of the day, they all meet the same safety standards.

International Trade committee  The non-tariff barriers.... The third-country directive, which has to do with the agreement on the plants, is the major one. For some others, we decided that we will live with them, such as the issue with Paylean or ractopamine. We'll never be able to convince the European public or the European authorities to drop their ban on those products.

International Trade committee  Yes, and it would be for each cut. It would be not only pork or beef, but each line in the tariff line.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  We know exactly where they're at. We were warned from the very beginning that pork would be one of the very last items to be negotiated with the EU, because it's very sensitive. Therefore, right now we will be working in the next couple of weeks with our negotiators to develop a position, line by line, in terms of duties and in terms of quotas.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  After the Uruguay Round, everybody was talking about giving 5% access to their markets. Because they were net importers of beef, horse meat, and others, the Europeans put all the meats together, and the share that was left of the total 5% was only 36,000 tonnes for pork. That's how they did it, because there were no rules on how to define the 5% access at that time.

International Trade committee  It will be $300 million in sales per year. The duties are between 22% and 25%, and the Americans and Europeans have managed to get the duties eliminated within two or three years. So we will be at a 22% to 25% price disadvantage.

International Trade committee  That's within two years.