Agriculture committee  Trying to have one national beef standard certainly has been discussed for many years. It's a little strange, and it's difficult to explain to people that it's okay to move a product made in Ottawa to Kenora, Ontario, but you can't move it into Manitoba if it has been inspected o

Agriculture committee  That's a very good question. I think some of the changes that were made, for instance, to the meat inspection regulations recently did allow for more flexibility in terms of there being no prescribed bathroom sizes, for instance. The definition of “pavement” was changed so that i

Agriculture committee  It's a good question. I won't answer it directly, but what I can say is that companies that end up being very successful are those that now have a very strong food safety culture which means that they are continually training their employees, that upper management is committed. T

Agriculture committee  Certainly. It surrounds the fact that if you look at the frequency of inspection at meat plants, it's a daily presence with veterinarians there at all times; whereas in other sectors, for instance, at a fish plant, it's my understanding there might be an inspector there only once

Agriculture committee  I believe that was one of the amendments made at the Senate.

Agriculture committee  Oh, not an outside audit.... Well, I would agree with Karen. I don't think our members would object to it. I guess that determining who would be appropriate as outside auditor would be a good question.

Agriculture committee  I personally believe it's a good idea for a couple of reasons. One is that it gives the inspector the opportunity to see what's happening in other sectors. One of the messages we always give is that when some food safety event happens, we want to learn what happened. We also lo

Agriculture committee  From the Canadian Meat Council's standpoint, we support and have supported full traceability from the farm to the meat processing plant. Beyond that, there are some facilities that are able to track and trace a particular piece of meat right back to the farm. That can be quite

Agriculture committee  We are, but we realize at the same that there are challenges when you do that. For instance, this past summer I visited five of the provincial plants on the federal pilot project, plants in line to become federally inspected: one in Alberta, one in Saskatchewan, and three in Onta

Agriculture committee  Certainly, it is a twenty-fold increase in the maximum fine that could be imposed, so it is very serious and we certainly don't oppose that in principle. We do want Canadians to know that we support the bill. This is a very serious situation, no doubt, if one is convicted to the

Agriculture committee  I would add that it would not be illogical to do as you're suggesting. There was a review done of the compliance verification system, and it was a very good review. We had been pointing out for many years that there were inconsistencies in the different regions across Canada in h

Agriculture committee  Thank you. Mr. Chair, I am going to make my comments in French. Good morning, everyone. My name is James Laws and I am the Executive Director of the Canadian Meat Council. Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today about Bill S-11, the Safe Food for Canadians Act. The C