Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, honourable member, for the question.
I think it's important to recognize that the 1997 version of the feed ban did not prohibit a rendering plant from handling ruminant material. The regulation was designed to ensure that what was processed did not find its way back into the feed system. So again, as with any regulation, it requires everybody at all levels of the system to be doing their part. To say that the rendering plant was somehow non-compliant by having rendered animals is not the issue.
The issue then becomes, how were products derived from that rendering and how were they segregated and separated? And then further down the system, in fact, at the commercial feed mill level, were they dedicated to separating those materials? Trucking, transportation, contamination, and storage issues, all of these factors, have obviously contributed--not just in Canada, but also globally, as Dr. Gravel has indicated--to why every country with BSE cases and with appropriate surveillance has shown animals born after feed bans and has moved to enhance measure.
But having said that, as a result of the investigations—and obviously we're very early in the investigation of the most current animal and we've not had the opportunity to look at the feed records of the producer and trace them back to source. What I think is very important in doing the investigation, as in previous investigations, is that if non-compliance is found, we have the tools to deal with it. There can be administrative monetary penalties and there can be prosecutions. There is a suite of enforcement tools that have been brought to bear in the past and that will continue to be brought to bear in the future.