John may want to add something to this, as he attends numerous meetings throughout the U.S. regularly. He was in our embassy in the U.S. before he came to work for us. So I'll make a few brief comments and then ask John to comment.
I guess on the last point on whether we should we put in different country-of-origin labelling in Canada than our “Product of Canada” labels, I will remind everyone that the estimated cost of what they're trying to do down there is about $3.9 billion, with negligible consumer benefits. So I don't think adopting bad policy to address bad policy is ever good policy.
I think we want to continue to make sure that the standards are based around the sound principles of substantial transformation. When you process an animal, that is a substantial transformation, which is what we're hoping to pursue long term. Even going back to the decision to suspend the case, we made it clear that we wanted to fully maintain all our legal rights.
Creating more flexibility only partially fixes the problem. There's still a significant issue with the way country-of-origin labelling.... But bear in mind that the WTO case is a long, slow process. Whether it's at NAFTA or WTO, you're usually talking about years to get to a resolution. We have talked to the minister about this, and in a press release we issued in the last couple of days we called on the government to take all actions possible to address this. By this, we mean that intervention at the most senior level of government is going to be crucial right now. We have been assured there is going to be contact at that level by the government with the U.S. to try to address this directly.
We believe that the efforts of Secretary Vilsack.... As you pointed out, the timing of his decision was extraordinary, and what he has proposed is worse than what was previously in place. We believe there needs to be a strong message that it's unacceptable.
It is hard to bring a case forward until the rule actually comes into full effect, because we're dealing with the new final rule—although there's a de facto rule that becomes an argument, and you can build a case on that under WTO. We are gathering evidence as we speak to support the case, so when we hit that date.... Whether we will start to see the U.S. industry follow the voluntary guidelines is the $60 million question.
The word from the National Meat Association to their members is that it will be impractical to do that, and they're not going to follow those new guidelines. The AMI has just said that they'll teach customers to decide what they're going to do.
We're going to be monitoring this over the next four weeks very closely. Unfortunately, one of the things they can do to meet the final rules and new guidelines is simply to handle U.S. product alone and not handle any imported product. That's another thing you have to watch for when monitoring this, to see if companies that would have handled Canadian product are not handling Canadian product.
We're going to push for the strongest possible response. We are told that there is going to be senior intervention, but we'll be watching this closely as well. We appreciate the fact that you're taking a special interest in this.
John, did you want to say something?