Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks, gentlemen, for coming today.
Just recently we've had the spinach E. coli problem coming out of the States, specifically California. My understanding is that some Canadians got sick from it in the States; someone may even have died from it.
What we did, and correct me if I'm wrong, is pull the product off the shelves, but we didn't close the border to it. I've got a lot of beef producers in my riding, and they've mentioned it since this spinach outbreak. When the BSE happened no one got sick, no one died in North America or any other place because of any Canadian cattle, and the reason was that it was kept out of the marketplace, it was controlled, yet the border was closed. So they ask, what's the difference? How do you justify that? I'd like to hear some comments on that.
Also, related to the same issues, to deal with the border and what have you, is the nematode issue, which we just talked about. The border was closed there. It started, I believe, five or six years ago in P.E.I. I forget the potato disease, but it was closed there as well.
So it seems to me there are different rules here, and I'd like to hear some comments on that from you, if I could.