Thank you, honourable member, for the question.
As I indicated earlier, I don't think anybody should underestimate that the challenges encountered in 1997 with the initial feed ban are any less than the challenges we're facing today. The 1997 feed ban was in fact brought in against a backdrop where BSE had not been diagnosed in any domestic animals in Canada. There were concerns on both sides of the border about introducing costs that a number of the industry felt were inappropriate in the absence of an identified BSE risk.
In Canada's case, of course, we had identified BSE in an imported animal in 1993, which had been dealt with. Some felt we had overreacted by removing all the U.K. imports and all of the progeny and that the government had been overly aggressive in doing that. When those animals were tested and we could not find evidence of BSE, I believe there was significant resistance on the part of industry to go any further. Yet the conventional wisdom said we'd had one positive animal in the system and we needed to prepare ourselves to make sure that BSE could not become established and create a broader issue in North America.
We were also responding, in 1997, to a World Health Organization call for bans in all counties in order to protect the food supply. Those measures to gain the consensus to go forward were taken with significant difficulty--similar to what we've encountered in the current iteration of the feed ban. Having done that, I can assure you there was very little appetite on the part of industry or other sectors to go beyond 1997, until BSE was found in May 2003. With that finding it was demonstrated very capably to everybody that in fact there had been a degree of penetration to the system.
We felt that the proactive introduction of the 1997 feed ban had prevented a major epidemic from taking place, and it positioned us well to deal with this in a rational, responsible, and scientific way. Although there were severe economic consequences with the 2000 issue, which we still continue to work through, it is safe to say that in spite of recommendations from international panels, and in spite of efforts on a collective basis to get people to the table and recognize that it was part of our long-term strategy for full economic recovery, to get the consensus from producer to feed industries, to packers, to processors, to renderers, unanimity would never be found as to what needed to be done.
So efforts were put out to move this forward, with the consensus we see demonstrated around the table today. That did take time. As I indicated in my earlier comments, the reality was to do this in a way that would be environmentally sustainable, that would be effective at the end of the day, and not just be a regulation on paper that nobody respected.To give false confidence to consumers and false confidence to international markets is not the way we operate in Canada.
As a regulatory- and science-based agency, I think every effort has been expended--and I'm very proud of the efforts that have led us to where we are--towards implementation. There are challenges that remain, which have been well identified, but I sense no lack of commitment by anybody not to meet July 12. The commitment is there and it will be met.