I thank my colleagues for their indulgence.
Thanks for being here today, Mr. Groves and Ms. Anderson.
I want to talk a bit about the BSE issue and make an observation. There seems to be a gross disconnect between the impact of the decision to close the border and the actual level of the risk. This is true not just in the United States, but also in other countries.
With regard to the actual BSE risk to people, I expect that if you were to walk two blocks to a steakhouse, the odds of being run over by a car are much greater than the odds of catching something from eating that beef. There is a lack of proportionality between what actually happened to Canadian farmers as a consequence of this decision and the actual risk presented by the handful of animals that were found.
My riding is in eastern Ontario, about halfway between here and Toronto. It contains some prime agricultural land, but also lots of rolling farmland that's good for pasture. I had a significant number of small cow-calf operations in that area, full- and part-time. Most of them had their equity wiped out through this process, so there was a big social and economic displacement in the community.
I have lots of dairy producers in my area. Because of the supply management system in Canada for dairy, farmers don't try to maximize their milk output. They try to maximize the efficiency of producing a certain amount of milk. This has caused a lot of dairy farmers to spend time on developing high-quality genetics that are exported around the world as breeding stock. I have a significant number of dairy farmers who have been impacted by the closure of the border. This is a less obvious impact, but they have lost this secondary revenue stream derived from exporting high-quality, live dairy animals into the United States and elsewhere.
A third group that was affected were sheep farmers. I have some sheep farmers in my area, one in particular who is very well known. He also developed high-quality genetics and was on the verge of starting to export significant numbers of sheep into the United States and Mexico, which, forgive the understatement, also got sideswiped in the border closure.
There is obviously a connection between BSE and beef cattle. I guess you could make an argument that there's a connection between BSE and dairy cattle, if at some point down the line they entered the food chain. But there's no connection with a sheep farmer.
As someone who is experienced in these matters, do you have any ideas or observations on what needs to change so that when something arises like a case of BSE, we don't use a sledgehammer to kill a fly? The collateral damage is unbelievable. Can you tell us, as someone who has been around this business for a long time, whether there are lessons we can learn from what has happened in the last three years that would allow us to protect food safety without causing unnecessary and widespread damage in other parts of the agricultural community?