I'll comment on the issue around COOL, because in my case I do ship weaner pigs down to the States. We actually maintain ownership down there and then sell the pigs to the slaughter plant. We had a four-year contract with the slaughter plant.
When the new administration came in and the new agriculture secretary said, “Thou shall abide by the rules, and in fact we want you to go further than that, or else we'll change the law”, many of the plants just didn't know what to do. So the slaughter plant that I sell to said to us, “Look, you guys, I'm sorry, but we're not sure we can kill your pigs, so you go find somewhere else.” Do you know what that does?
All the people in that region who used to love to buy Canadian hogs because they're better, they're healthier, and have good genetic material, and who could buy them in large quantities and fill barns all in and all out, said, “We just can't risk it. If we buy a load of weaner pigs now and fill the barn, six months down the road we might not have a market for them.” So those producers just say, “Look, sorry, guys, I know you have a long-term contract, but you'd better find somewhere else for your pigs.”
For a while last year, we had guys in Manitoba who couldn't give pigs away for zero dollars, or crazy prizes. So we have producers who've found that they have to go out of business—and it's directly related to COOL, which created so much uncertainty that it destroyed the markets for all of those animals. They just quit buying them. What do the producers do? If you're a hog farmer, it's devastating. Talk about inhumane: people put their life and soul into these farms and they just have to quit. But it's directly related to COOL.