Agriculture Committee on April 2nd, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I call the meeting to order.

As you know from your agenda, the meeting today is set up in two parts. First, we have our witnesses here from the federation of potato producers of Quebec. If you could keep your opening remarks to 10 minutes or less, we'll get into questioning right after that.

Welcome to both of you. Thank you very much for coming here.

Mr. Van Boom, go ahead.

[Ernie Van Boom, Owner, Northbank Potato Farms Ltd.]

Good morning, everybody.

First of all, I'd like to thank you all for allowing us to come here to speak and share our situation and our story. I would especially like to give thanks to honourable member Brian Storseth for making this possible for us.

Dear committee members, it's been almost a year and a half since a single deteriorated PCN egg sac was discovered allegedly in one of our fields by the CFIA. In the wake of that event, we can assure you that not one day has gone by without a PCN-CFIA discussion with either family, friends, or business associates.

Our farm has been located where it is and owned by this family for almost 50 years. For nearly 30 of those years, Cecil Goutbeck, I myself, and our families have laboured to make our farm what it is. It is more than 2,000 acres of unique, excellent soil for potatoes. It has numerous irrigation pivots, miles of underground water piping, and several fixed electrical pumping installations. Only recently, in the summer and fall of 2007, hundreds of thousands of our dollars were spent on new irrigation and infrastructure and a large addition to our potato loading area. We had a prosperous seed potato business, along with a successful grain and oilseed operation.

Our farm was a source of pride and a labour of love. In these years much time and energy was also invested in forging good working relationships with our neighbours with regards to renting and swapping lands in order to maintain a healthy potato rotation.

To put it simply, the events triggered by the activities of the CFIA in the fall of 2007 have all but destroyed the viability of our once wonderful farm. The fallout from CFIA's decisions has been immense and painful for us and our neighbours. Property value for our neighbours and us, whose lands are regulated, is virtually worthless given the conditions pertaining to the movement of vehicles and equipment in attempting to exit one's own property. As a result, our reputation and our credibility with respect to renting any more land have been absolutely ruined. Who would dare rent land to any potato farmer, especially Northbank Potato Farms?

Without going into detail, it can be stated that alternative solutions suggested by the CFIA and other government agencies illustrated their lack of understanding and insight regarding the operations of a seed potato, grain, and oilseed farm in central Alberta.

In an effort to provide you with a view into our situation, we would like to highlight some of the activities and occurrences that have transpired since the supposed positive find on our farm in the fall of 2007. We will present these to you in point form as follows:

- the dumping of almost 8,000 tonnes of the beautiful 2007 crop into the snow;

- spending countless hours washing machinery and facilities to the extent that we were unable to farm a significant amount of our 2008 grain acres due to onerous CFIA land exiting requirements; also, subsequently spraying hundreds of these aforementioned unfarmed acres for weed control;

- farming a fraction of our historical potato acreage in 2008 on far distant, unirrigated, lower-quality lands, all the while hoping our new landlords had heard nothing of potato growers and nematodes;

- warning the CFIA this past summer on more than one occasion that the soil testing was being done too slowly to have it completed in time for the 2008-09 marketing season;

- disappointing our very loyal and valued customers in Florida and California again this past fall due to a closed border as a result of the aforementioned uncompleted soil testing. Almost 1,000 tonnes of potato sales were lost on our farm alone.

- receiving Dear John letters from unhappy landowners.

Maybe some of you wonder what a Dear John letter is. I'm going to read one for you right now:

Dear Mr. Van Boom

As you are aware, Fort Hills Energy...currently holds a land base of 6,000 acres within the Municipality of Sturgeon County. Over the past two years, FHEC has rented available...land to individuals within the community for agricultural purposes. In September 2007, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency...discovered a Potato Cyst Nematode...on a portion of the lands owned by FHEC, which resulted in 320 acres being placed under a “Notice of Prohibition or Restriction of An Activity”. As a result of the PCN discovery, FHEC determined that it was in the best interest of the proposed Sturgeon Upgrader and the local area to review the current procedures and practices regarding the farming of FHEC owned lands.

After reviewing the current procedures and practices, FHEC would like to take this opportunity to advise that the production of Seed Potatoes will no longer be permitted on FHEC owned lands.

That's what a Dear John letter sounds like. Those are the people we rent land from.

I'll continue with some more points:

- finding out after the completion of intensive soil testing, involving thousands upon thousands of samples, that CFIA was unable to replicate a positive reading, thereby creating a mountain of scientific evidence calling into question the validity of the original find; CFIA stood alone in its dismissive stance with respect to the possibility of human error;

- being stonewalled by CFIA via the Access to Information Act regarding our questions about testing and protocol;

- finding out that, using the criteria required by our trading partner, APHIS, our farm is not positive for PCN;

- feeling the frustration of constantly being lumped together with the situation in Quebec, when speaking to the disaster assessment people;

- and finally, wondering what the future holds for us and our young sons, who had planned to carry on in the family business.

Even to this day, we have many more questions than answers: How could test results be interpreted as conclusively positive based on such flimsy evidence? Why would they negotiate a trade agreement that permits the destruction of businesses and the disrepute of an entire export group based on a single, unreplicated lab test? Why was seed allowed to be shipped before testing was completed, resulting in the border closure? Did CFIA have a clear understanding of the ramifications of its own guideline agreement with APHIS?

It's possible we may never receive the answers to all these questions. Meanwhile, we wait to be released from this trap and to be given back our farm and our livelihood.

Along with the huge financial blow, there has been a human cost: a feeling of purposelessness and dullness that results from being in a fog of uncertainty, combined with a loss of hope. We are not the kind of people who aspire to become wards of the state. But that is what this is making us.

Last fall, the CFIA admitted to having had us and our neighbours under surveillance--an act that, in our eyes, seems to rob us of our last bit of dignity and respect.

Nevertheless, despite our situation, we try to remain hopeful and realize that we have many blessings we can count. Numbered among our hopes is a new agreement between CFIA and APHIS that would lift existing restrictions on our land, along with the additional hope of fair and just treatment with respect to our financial losses.

In conclusion, our ultimate hope in this situation is to resume our role as good corporate citizens, growing and exporting seed potatoes, contributing to the needs of society around us, and finding fulfillment in that.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much, Mr. Van Boom.

And now we'll hear from Mr. Adrien Gemme and Mr. Bernard Belzile, from the federation of potato producers of Quebec.

Thank you, gentlemen, for coming. Please take ten minutes or less.

[Adrien Gemme, Administrator, Board of Director, Fédération des producteurs de pommes de terre du Québec]

Good morning, gentlemen. My name is Adrien Gemme. With me today are Bernard Belzile, Denis Bilodeau of the UPA, and Philippe Gemme of AMA-Terre.

I will read two paragraphs and then turn things over to Mr. Belzile.

Our president could not be here today because of the annual general meetings of both the Fédération and the Plan conjoint des producteurs de pommes de terre du Québec. Given the nature of the ongoing potato cyst crisis, we could not ask that this meeting be rescheduled.

The Fédération des producteurs de pommes de terre du Québec would like to thank the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food for having agreed to listen to a message from our president, which will be delivered by Mr. Belzile.

[Bernard Belzile, Consultant, Fédération des producteurs de pommes de terre du Québec]

Good morning.

The Fédération des producteurs de pommes de terre is affiliated with the Union des producteurs agricoles, which represents 351 potato producers in Quebec. It administers the Plan conjoint des producteurs de pommes de terre.

On October 24, 2006, the federation came here to meet with the committee. That meeting was fruitful, producing tangible results with respect to compensation for short-term losses related to the destruction of the 2006 harvest inventory.

Two and a half years later, we have good reason to believe that your recommendations will result in compensation that will help affected businesses recover, compensation that goes beyond the government's February 5 offer of a three-year recovery plan that leaves out certain elements that we consider essential. Philippe Gemme's presentation later on will touch on that.

The golden nematode is a regulated pest subject to quarantine. In 2006, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency established a regulated area to reopen borders to international trade. That action limited losses to producers and exporters located outside of the regulated area.

However, in Saint-Amable and on a farm located in Montérégie, producers worked and cooperated to make the CFIA's job easier. In all, 21 farms were affected by the restrictions. Unfortunately, these businesses, which specialized in potato production, lost buyers they had spent years securing. Potato production in that area will resume only gradually, and on limited acreage, with new golden nematode-resistant varieties and under close CFIA supervision because the area has been there for decades.

We are therefore in urgent need of a modified recovery plan. The federation fully supports the producers involved, most of whom are represented by AMA-Terre. In 2003, the Government of Canada implemented an agricultural business risk management policy for Canadian producers with its AgriInvest, AgriStability, AgriInsurance and AgriRecovery programs.

The federation believes that producers' losses should not have to fit into the kind of framework set up by a program like AgriRecovery. Rather, the program should meet the needs of producers.

With respect to recovery, we do not believe that a three-year program as set out in AgriRecovery will save businesses in regions affected by the golden nematode. In 2008, an independent consulting firm, ÉcoRessources, submitted a fact-finding report financed by the Conseil pour le développement de l’agriculture du Québec. The report distinguished between crises with short-term impacts and those with long-term impacts, such as the golden nematode crisis.

The report recommended using the partial budget method to establish the net costs of transitioning into a new agricultural activity and took into account different types of losses resulting from a crisis. The main advantage of this method is that it isolates revenue losses due to the crisis even if the agricultural business is mixed, that is, if it produces things not affected by the crisis. This method makes it easier to evaluate revenue losses and the costs involved in various recovery strategies. The ÉcoRessources report also mentioned another important thing. It concluded that 10 years was a more realistic timeline for business recovery.

In 2006, the hon. Chuck Strahl, then minister of Agriculture and Agri-food, issued a ministerial order under the Plant Protection Act. The order established a regulated zone of about 4,500 hectares, 1,300 of which were in potatoes, along with restrictions and prohibitions on the movement of certain items, in order to fight the golden nematode infestation in Quebec.

In 2008, the ÉcoRessources report recommended strategies to enable businesses to emerge from the crisis and recover with the help of governments. Rather than forget about this report, we believe that governments should consider it a valuable reference.

In 2009—this is the most important part—the current minister must be persuaded not to forget about producers affected by the golden nematode. Instead, the minister should offer the kind of help that will put an end to this crisis, which has been going on for over 30 months.

I rushed my presentation a little to give Mr. Bilodeau a chance to relay the UPA's message.

[Denis Bilodeau, Vice-President, Union des producteurs agricoles]

Good morning, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for inviting us to speak this morning.

This is a really important step for us. We came here in 2006 for the same reasons. That was when the crisis began. Now it is 2009, and we are back with the same problem. We have not yet found a solution that would enable these producers to start their businesses up again and make them viable.

To date, the proposals in the AgriRecovery program, including compensation over three years, do not really meet the needs or take into account the secifics of the catastrophe we are discussing. In a normal recovery situation, a program spread out over three years would, in most cases, allow businesses in crisis to recover and start over. Following that, their economic situations would probably be similar to what prevailed before the catastrophe. However, in this situation, businesses will experience long-term after-effects over a period of decades. It could take 10, 20, 30 or 40 years—nobody knows. Businesses will have to reposition by producing other crops.

The land itself—the acreage dedicated to production and producers' property—means that they cannot rebuild a viable agricultural enterprise in just three short years. This program needs to be re-evaluated and changed to address the specifics of this situation. This situation is unlike any other. Government assistance must be spread out over a minimum period of 10 years so that these businesses can gradually become economically viable.

Cash amounts were decided on by a committee we were involved in for two years. Representatives from Quebec's ministry of agriculture, fisheries and food and Agriculture and Agri-food Canada also participated. The amounts we established are in line with reality, unlike the $5 million proposed in early February. That amount is completely out of touch with reality and is not nearly enough to deal with the situation. That amount will not help these producers get back on their feet.

I would not like to introduce Philippe Gemme, a producer who is involved in this process.

[Philippe Gemme, President and Farmer, AMA-Terre]

Thank you.

I was nervous when I came here in 2006, and I am still nervous today. It is not easy to speak in front of a group of people. I am a farmer, so I am not used to speaking in public, but I will do my best.

What has happened since 2006? Quite simply, our sector was wiped out. In fact, 80% of our market connections and contracts have been lost because the public has lost confidence. People heard that a little worm was attacking potatoes. Try as we might to explain that that was not true, and that the worm attacked the plant, not the potato itself, a myth developed about how potatoes from Saint-Amable were not good to eat. But that is not true. That myth caused the loss of 80% of our contracts for grocery chains like Loblaws, IGA and Métro.

Before the crisis, a Saint-Amable farm could pack six days a week. Now that is down to one day a week. These farms are now making little or no money. Producers are being asked to insure 15% of their profitability, whereas before, it was 100%. That means that before the crisis, it was $10 million or $12 million, and now, people are planting corn, because that was the quickest way to change our practices. Only two of our 21 farms have purchased a thresher or made a drying plan.

All of the warehouses are empty now. Boxes are empty, machinery is in storage, totally useless. There are 3,200 acres in Saint-Amable. For large-scale production, there might be room for two producers, not 21. That is the tragedy Saint-Amable is going through. Asking a farmer with 60 acres or 20 hectares to go into large-scale production is a joke.

In 2006, we were asked to collaborate with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. That is what people in Saint-Amable did. Even though the potatoes were very good for eating and processing, we were told that if we did not throw them out, we would not be paid. We did not like being threatened like that. My storage rooms were full. We were told to throw away all of the potatoes because of a Canada-U.S. agreement, so we threw them out. Now, two and a half years later, we are being told that we got the money, but we could have sold those potatoes because they were fine to eat. We were told to throw them out and that we would be paid anyway. Now we are still fighting for the $1 million for the 2006 harvest.

Then we were told that an independent organization called ÉcoRessources Consultants was going to put out a report, a report that the federal and provincial governments would pay attention to. We were told that the government could not give us any money or make any promises until the report came out. We continued to wait patiently. The report was published, and it said that we should be compensated for our losses, including machinery and storage.

Recovery does not take three years. It takes 10 years. I am not the one saying this, the guys from Saint-Amable are not the ones saying this; this is an independent firm. The amount is not important—it is somewhere between $28 million and $32 million. Governments offered $5 million. That is about what a farm in Saint-Amable is worth. We were told to start growing other crops within three years. I am not sure if anyone here could up and change jobs at 45, at 20 or at 55, never mind in three years. That is practically impossible. That would be like asking me to change jobs, to start growing carrots and shove aside someone who is already growing carrots. I would have to learn how to produce carrots. Then I would have to find a market. There are already plenty of carrots on the market.

In closing, I want to say that we cannot change without your help. Earlier, people talked about Alberta. The crisis it is going through now is the same one we went through two and a half years ago. I feel for those farmers.

We need your help. The AgriRecovery program is not good enough.

In 2006, we said that there should be an ad hoc program, a special program for things like this. If there was a storm with six inches of rain this spring, AgriRecovery would probably be fine, but it is not good enough for this kind of crisis. In 20 years, you will still be talking about Saint-Amable and the zone that was subject to the ministerial order, and we have to live with that. AgriRecovery is fine up to a point, but we need a special ad hoc program because of the ministerial order. Guys in Saint-Amable are ready for recovery, whether they are in the nursery business or the potato business. We have a plan, but we need a helping hand from the federal and provincial governments.

Everyone is talking about the auto industry crisis, and everything is going badly, but agriculture is just as important as water.

Thank you for listening to me. If you have questions, do not hesitate to ask.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your presentations.

If it's okay with everyone, because our witnesses are here just until 12 o'clock and then we're going to go to the CFIA, I'd suggest five-minute rounds, and that includes questions and answers.

Mr. Eyking, we'll have your five minutes first.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to thank the presenters here today.

As we can sense here, what your industry is going through is very frustrating. We've often seen over the years that when a disease hits any commodity, whether it's in the poultry sector or whatever, CFIA acts quickly, for various reasons, and they act quickly because of our international standards and what not. But often, as we're hearing today, the costs and the work fall on the farmers, in how they deal with it and how they get through it.

My question deals with the assistance. I need a clearer picture of what financial assistance came forth after things happened to you, with some numbers per pound or per acreage. What assistance came through with the available programs like AgriRecovery? Also, what programs should have been there, I guess, instead of the programs that are in place right now?

It doesn't matter who answers the question. I know you're from different parts of the country, but it doesn't matter. Maybe each one of you can answer that question.

[Ernie Van Boom]

I can answer for our situation. For the 8,000 tonnes that we threw out in 2007, we were well compensated. It was very unsure, though, even right after the incident, so it was kind of a gut-wrenching sequence of events before we finally did get the compensation. We had to spend a lot of time in negotiations with the provincial and federal governments to get a number that made sense.

Having said that, as I said, we were well compensated, but it's kind of like getting a really good severance cheque. There's no foresight to do with anything in the future from this point on. Even as I speak right now, there's nothing in place for going forward, and of course, we're still out of business.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

So the ruling came to you on what needed to be done with your 8,000 tonnes of potatoes. They had to be destroyed, I take it, as you said, so how much did you get per tonne? You didn't really know up front what you were going to get when you were starting to destroy those potatoes.

[Ernie Van Boom]

No, we didn't. As I said, we were well compensated per tonne. On average, I think we got around $300 a tonne.

Even to destroy the potatoes, that's another story all by itself. We knew we had to destroy these potatoes, and an efficient way to keep the costs down when you're destroying the potatoes is to do what we ended up doing, which was to throw them out in the snow, but it was very much at our own urging to tell CFIA, “Look, we have to do something with these potatoes.” It took a lot of talking to get them to say, “Okay, now go and throw them out in the snow.”

We had this feeling that the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing over there. We got permission from a lower-ranking CFIA guy to do it. We didn't do it right away because we were a little unsure about his permission. We spoke to another guy a week later who said no, not to move those potatoes at all. You can imagine that if we had moved those potatoes without permission, we'd be on the hook for something else.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

So “confusion” is definitely an understatement.

[Ernie Van Boom]

Yes, absolutely.

[Bernard Belzile]

The 21 Saint-Amable farms affected by the crisis were compensated only for the 2006 harvest with existing programs through AgriStability, a program to stabilize farm businesses. The CAIS program was replaced by AgriStability and AgriInvestment. Also, other ad hoc programs have enabled farmers to achieve production levels per hectare, to compensate for the destruction of potatoes, and to cover unexpected costs. However, most of the money came from CAIS, which was not fair to all farmers, who obtained different levels of compensation depending on their background, but did not receive compensation for potatoes that had to be destroyed.

In all, producers received some $6.5 million in compensation under different programs for 1,360 hectares of potatoes farmed by 21 businesses. These programs did not provide fair treatment with respect to what governments announced. We are still $1 million short for the 2006 harvest.

After 2006, there were no measures other than CAIS or AgriStability catastrophe measures. There were no structural adjustments in 2007. The AgriStability mechanism is such that compensation decreases substantially the second year after a crisis.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you. Your time has expired, Mr. Eyking.

Mr. Malo, five minutes.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Gemme, you have already stated publicly that when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency came to your land, to your farms, it asked you to cooperate, provided unrestricted access, and not worry about anything, that the money would be coming and that it would support you throughout the process until you were satisfied with the compensation you received.

Can you tell that to the committee and explain the context in which the agency made that promise?

[Philippe Gemme]

With the CFIA, it was a matter of time. We were promised certain things, whether by Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, the Fédération des producteurs de pommes de terre, the gardeners. Every possible committee was there that day. It was all about business. All of the stakeholders said that millions of dollars were being lost every day in Quebec because of the American embargo. When I heard my Alberta colleagues talk about nematodes, I got upset because I figured they would probably go through the same horrible thing I did.

We were told that we had to act as quickly as possible to lift the embargo. We agreed: business was business, and if we had to destroy the potatoes, we would, but we wanted to know who would be paying for it. We were told not to worry, that they would pay.

My colleagues here said that it took time. We said that some of the potatoes were still edible, and we wanted to process them, but we had to throw them all out so as not to get the Americans mad. That is really what happened. The potatoes were good. I saw some farmers cry. It would not have been so bad if the crops were bad, but they were really nice and perfectly edible, and it broke our hearts to have to throw them out.

I do not want to downplay crises going on in other provinces. Because of mad cow disease and bird flu, people have had to destroy their herds and start over. But in Saint-Amable, we have to go on living with the damned ministerial order we were saddled with. We cannot move on to other things. We are going to have to live with that every year.

As for compensation, up to now, Saint-Amable producers could have sold their harvest, but they were pretty much forbidden from doing so. The new amounts suggested are pretty much a provincial loan and just $5 million to the $32 million we need. That is the reality.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Can you tell me how these farmers are feeling? As we all know, behind every farm—especially in this case—there are families. There might be a grandfather, a father, brothers, children, nephews and nieces. Can you tell us what the farmers in Saint Amable are going through right now?

[Philippe Gemme]

It is like we said in 2006, except that now, it is even worse. You know, after a crisis like the one that happened in Saint-Amable in 2006 or the one in Alberta, people feel discouraged, then they began to wonder why they are doing it. We were all hoping that, a year later, governments—federal, provincial or whatever—would say there was a big problem that they wanted to fix as soon as possible. Promises were made.

As president of the group, I made promises to my members, and they have more or less called me a liar. I am a farmer, just like them. I tried to reassure them, but I do not have anything else to give them. The deadline keeps getting pushed back. A year and a half ago, I was told that they were waiting for the report and then they would fix the problem. The report came out, but nobody paid any attention to it. That is even more upsetting.

Now it is the spring of 2009, and with your support, we are ready to move forward and settle this matter once and for all, which could also help Alberta.

This is the first plant-related crisis we have had in a long time. The last time it happened was in British Columbia and Newfoundland. This is the first crisis in recent memory, aside from animal crises. If governments send the message that things are not quite resolved, do you think that if there is a similar crisis with carrots or some other plant crop, people will want to notify the government of disease in their fields? They will say that what happened five years ago in Saint-Amable is still not resolved, so why would they declare a disease subject to quarantine? Everyone will hide and put their heads in the sand. We cooperated willingly, and now, two and a half years later, here we are.

When the Concorde viaduct incident happened in Quebec, people died. Nobody asked the government if there was enough money in the treasury to bring machines in to remove the cement and get people out. In our situation, nobody died, but all of our businesses are dying. Bankers are asking us when things will be resolved. We are waiting on the governments. That is real life. The warehouse built in 2000 does not have a two-year mortgage. The mortgage is for 20 or 25 years. We are still paying for it even though there have not been any potatoes for two and a half years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you very much. Your time has expired.

Mr. Hoback.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Storseth, did you want to make a few comments first?

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hoback.

First of all, I want to thank Mr. Van Boom and Mr. Goutbeck for coming today, as well as the other people who have come to testify.

These are clearly two related but separate issues.

I don't want to take too much of your time, Mr. Hoback, but I want to thank you very much for coming and ask you if could talk to us a little about how this has affected your farming operations in the last couple of years and how it will affect you moving forward over the next several years.

[Ernie Van Boom]

We've lost most of our clients. In terms of being able to rent land around our farm, which has always been a big thing as we don't own a whole lot of our own land, it's going to be very, very difficult.

Those of you in the room who are farmers know something called “coffee shop talk”. Well, the potato farmers are blacklisted. It has affected other potato farmers around us as well. When a person owns land and all of a sudden this land has a bunch of caveats put on it by the CFIA, as I mentioned before, the land is worthless and it's very bad for potato growers.

We don't know when the restrictions will be lifted. In the event the restrictions are ever lifted, we would have to try to win back our clients, our buyers. Obviously there is a stigma attached to our farm and the other farm in our area that will make that difficult. The markets we sell into were hard-won, mature markets that took a lot of years to develop.

Using farm language again, we have a very tough row to hoe.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I'm just a little curious on the process that the CFIA used in your situation. If I understand right, they found just one nematode. Is that the case? They find one, and then all of a sudden you're shut right down. Or is there a process where they re-evaluate to make sure they're first test was correct and then they do a second test to confirm the first test? Is that how they made their decision? What was the process like?