In the context I tried to present at the beginning, most of the beef in Canada is Canadian beef, and most of it comes from cattle that are produced in Canada.
What we wanted to establish were two levels: “Product of Canada” and “Grown in Canada”. Each of these requires some trace-backs and some costs. That's why we think everything that comes out of a Canadian packing plant—and over 99.8% of it will be Canadian, all the way back—should be labelled “Product of Canada”. If somebody wants to go to the extra expense of identifying which animals were born in Canada and make that connection all the way back to the farm—the real trick, once you get into the packing plant, is identifying all the different pieces of the animal that go in different directions and down different production lines—we're certainly in favour of allowing that to be labelled “Grown in Canada”. But ultimately, as soon as you start making things mandatory, you lose the value. If there is a marketing advantage in the marketplace, you lose that value by making it mandatory.
The other thing we're cognizant of, which may be different from the dairy industry or the supply managed industries, is that we have to compete in an open market environment. We have to compete against imported products. We do export about 60% of our production, and we compete in the global marketplace. We accept that opportunity to compete, so we don't want to create mandatory regulations that add costs.
I think where most of the confusion comes in is in what things like.... I have a picture of the Canada inspection mark. Any meat that is processed in Canada has to have this mark on it to be sold. Basically it's just a circle with a crown and the word “Canada” in it. If meat comes from South America and is processed, it has to have that mark on it. So I think where we'd like to put a lot of effort is in communicating what this mark means, or maybe even looking at changing the mark itself so that what it means is a little clearer.