In effect, most of the fees were based on an activity base, not necessarily the time base.
When the initial negotiations took place with industry back in 1996 and 1997, at the time of the creation of the agency, there was an attempt to look at the relative investment the agency was making on a per sector basis: our overhead costs for surveillance; what we were currently doing in export certification in the beef sector; the level of inspection and overtime we were doing in slaughter plants to meet the commercial demand. At that time, there were sectoral tables that sat down and said, “Well, if this is our relative percentage of your operating cost, then we will figure out as an industry how those fees could be achieved, or how that target could be achieved.”
In actual fact, it was an inclusive process with industry, where industry helped to define how they felt they could best manage to deliver those fees.