In Manitoba we have a weanling industry that sells 4 million weanlings into the U.S. to feeder operations. This whole system is like a just-in-time delivery system. Trade disputes, trade actions, and so on are very disruptive. Our basic problem is if we can't ship pigs, after three to four days we are in the business of slaughtering probably 10,000 pigs a day, little pigs, and it will mount very rapidly if we can't ship into the United States.
We've talked this over with Iowa and Minnesota and their government officials. What we're looking at is whether there's some way we can have an agreement between the core states and ourselves Manitoba, per se—as to how we can keep that business going and resolve our trade issues outside the production process. In other words, we don't put barriers in place so that trucks can't drive across the border; if there's a dispute about prices, drugs, health status, or market-distorting things like countervailing, antidumping, and all those sorts of things, the business carries on. We don't stop that; we resolve these disputes afterwards. In other words, you don't slap duties on right away. We wait until the thing has been resolved one way or the other.
If we look at the auto pact agreement, somehow the car companies have been able to maintain production on both sides of the border without a lot of distortion. How can we do something like that in the livestock industry? Our problem is we're dealing with a biological product; you can't just park them in a lot, and these animals will be dead if we can't move them into the feeder barns.