There are a lot of other complications. To go to what Ms. Bliss said, and I agree, there's really no difference in the meat process in an Ontario abattoir versus one that meets federal inspection. However, the difficulty is that the standards you have to meet to be export compatible with other countries puts the costs of those local abattoirs so high you'll drive them out of business. We have to understand those complications. We would think it's dumb things, and sometimes I think it is, but it might have a nine or a ten-foot ceiling, or it might be no moisture allowed on the ceilings. And because we're so export oriented, that's why we run into some of those difficulties.
So I worry. We've got a lot of little local abattoirs in P.E.I. that are extremely important for custom kill. They don't do a lot of animals a week, but they're there, their meat is safe, and the meat isn't going into export. I just want to lay that out, that this is one of the difficulties. If we ever force everybody to go to one national standard on abattoirs, we won't have the little local abattoirs. We're seeing slaughter plants close all across this country. One just closed in Ontario, we lost one in P.E.I., and that's because the regulatory regime is so high in them. So we need to factor that in.
The question I had is to you, Ms. Hillard. You said, I think in your answer, “51% of the value of the food content”. We're in basic agreement on this committee that there definitely needs to be a change, that “Product of Canada” means “Product of Canada”, what's in the package. I think our viewpoint in general is, it has nothing to do with the value of that product in there, because we all know the value of that product around this table; the farmer's share is minimal. It should be a heck of a lot higher, but it isn't. So should we be looking at the value or the actual content, where it comes from?
