Finance committee  Good morning. My name is Jim Laws. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Meat Council here in Ottawa. We represent Canada's federally registered meat processors in Canada. We have three recommendations for you today. First, Canada’s federally inspected meat processors are,

Agriculture committee  Just to add to that, we're very pleased that the government has hired Fred Gorrell to head up that agriculture market access secretariat. We worked with Fred down in Washington while he was there for the last three years, or whatever. He has been back for about a year now. He's a

Agriculture committee  No, not specifically. But from what I recall, didn't the production out of that plant maybe represent about 16% of the total Atlantic consumption? I would think they should be able to do a really good marketing campaign and succeed, but again, that's just my personal comment.

Agriculture committee  My name is Jim Laws, and I'm an executive director of the Canadian Meat Council. I'm very fortunate that both Brian Nilsson and Brian Read are here with me today, both past presidents of the Canadian Meat Council and both running real beef operations in Canada. As you know, we'

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I understand your question. I think that after the events of last December it became very obvious that many Canadians were not aware of the recommendations on the Health Canada website, on the Centers for Disease Control websites in the United States, that yes, for sliced deli

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Well, I don't think it would be right for me to comment on how much time they spend doing one thing versus the other, but we certainly know that their job is a combination of both. You cannot stop walking the floor, inspecting equipment, etc. But the meat industry today is not wh

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Well, I think if you look to other countries, for instance, if you're looking at the entire system, they do set up a section that looks at the risks involved and asks where the risks are. As an example, when we were growing up, we all had meat in a can, and when I grew up, we al

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  So if there was some expert group that would re-evaluate what the new risks are.... That's why we proposed in recommendation number 2 that since we do so much trade between Canada and the United States--it's such a major partner and a major customer of ours; it doesn't make sense

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I will answer that question. That might very well have been the case, but the fact is that Health Canada does not have the capacity to approve antimicrobials, or a long list of veterinary medications that the Food and Drug Administration allows Americans to use. As an organizati

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  We have not been told why Health Canada made that decision, but we are very pleased that they did.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  That's a very good question. Amongst federally inspected meat establishments, they're not all large. We have plenty of small ones as well. One that comes to mind has only 15 employees, for instance, so it's certainly not only because they're federally inspected that they would ha

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I don't think it would be right for us to speculate on what that answer is.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Well, I can say that I think we've been very happy with the government's actions lately on the H1N1 flu virus. That's the type of response we'd like to see in the future for other food safety events like this one. We believe it should be the Public Health Agency of Canada and/or

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Good evening, and thank you for inviting us to speak to you today on food safety in the meat sector. My name is Jim Laws and I'm the executive director of the Canadian Meat Council in Ottawa. With me today is Martin Michaud, vice-president of technical services at Olymel, one of

International Trade committee  One other thing that's important to remember is that they started this particular country-of-origin labelling rule at least five years ago. It has been in the works for five years. Then, recently when we had the contaminated pet food with melamine coming in from China, that added