Mr. Chairman, as I said earlier, we were very interested in the announcement of a NISA-type program. We didn't make many commitments beyond that.
We certainly have experience with NISA. When we had the NISA program before we felt it was trade friendly, and I think it could continue to be trade friendly. So we're supportive of that.
I think the NISA program was not a real benefit to hog producers in the old days because there wasn't enough money there. NISA was based on eligible net sales. At the end we were starting to look at some other kind of trigger that would be a little more useful for livestock.
The easy answer is that it would be great if there's enough money in the program. I think that's the case here.
We think NISA would work well for crops, because eligible net sales is a much larger percentage of their total sale, whereas in our case you start to deduct some of the other commodities you buy and your eligible net sales become a smaller percentage.
If we do go to that type of a program, we would probably like to look at some other kind of mechanism other than eligible net sales—something more like a gross margin or some kind of a net value-added trigger. If that was the case, I think we would certainly be willing to look at it. We have been saying for some time that we would like to have more information on how that would impact producers. I understood from the minister last week that there has been some work done. We've asked to see the work that has been done and how that would impact pork producers.