I'll add what I can here, fellows. In particular, the Nova Scotia beef industry still suffers from various bans that were implemented as a response to the appearance of BSE in western Canada back in May of 2003. Most of the Canadian beef industry experienced a sharp drop in price as well as the collapse of the equity in cowherds. Nova Scotia beef producers—in fact, all maritime beef producers—experienced that drop in price, the collapse in equity, and more. The Maritimes became the place to get rid of embargoed supplies of beef, embargoed because they couldn't move into the U.S. market.
That has changed, but profitability still hasn't come back to our marketplace. An industry already struggling to survive the brutal combination of economic forces--discounted cattle prices and increasing costs of production--found prices for cattle driven further down as we began the race to the bottom. How difficult it has been to stand by and watch producers contract and then abandon production in response to the ravages of the post-BSE era.
Cattle numbers in Nova Scotia have dropped from more than 30,000 in the late 1990s to around 23,000 today. That's a drop of one-third. Clearly, the beef industry is in crisis. As Henry has suggested, the pork industry may simply be the first red meat to collapse, and beef is not all that far behind. All the economic multipliers and economic advantages are being lost to our local economy.
Yet the industry struggles to find a way forward—something consistent with our values and reflective of the Maritimes' streak of stubborn determination. For more than a year, the Nova Scotia beef industry has been working to reposition itself and to find a way forward within our history and among our producers and partners, a plan or strategy that will again create profitability and sustainability that were the essence of agriculture in Nova Scotia and the Maritimes not that long ago.
Who would ever have imagined Nova Scotia, P.E.I., or New Brunswick without a pork and beef industry? That is the reality facing our producers every day. Without change, assistance, and direction from our government, a centuries-old agricultural way of life will evolve into irrelevance and disappear.