Thanks, Grant.
Another issue related to that is reducing antibiotic use. We should not be using antibiotics in the Canadian food production system for non-therapeutic use. As a farmer, most of the vials of antibiotics on my farm expire before they are ever opened. We use very little. The non-therapeutic use of drugs is, in many medical practitioners' view, reducing the availability of effective drugs to treat human bacterial illness.
We need to develop markets for grass-fed beef. There is a market, but the structure in the packing industries is so concentrated now that we cannot service it.
We should embrace country-of-origin labelling and be proud of it. I believe that if a consumer wants to buy my product, which I'm proud of, they have a right to know who produced it, where it was produced, and how it was produced. I believe we can develop markets with that Canadian label on. It might say “Product of Manitoba”, “Alberta Beef”, “Product of Ontario”, right down to the county or farm for that matter. But whatever it takes to access consumer confidence, we will take it.
We also need a better focus on local food. In Manitoba, only 14% of the beef consumed there is processed in Manitoba; the rest of it is moved someplace else at my expense and is hauled back at consumer expense. There are more effective ways of serving consumer needs.
And there should be a better balance between production and consumption. When a BSE cow was found, we were 34% above the domestic consumption level, and it was 34% of cattle that caught us in the bind that bankrupted us. If our herd had been anywhere near domestic consumption levels, there would have been some disruption until we reoriented movement east and west, but we would not have suffered the multi-millions of dollars of losses and the demand on the public treasury that we will not recover from in another decade.
There needs to be immediate aid to farmers—and the Saskatchewan government did something like that the other day. I see a news release from the federal Minister of Agriculture really questioning that and saying that we may be countervailed. If you're in a situation where you can't help people in the most dire economic conditions of their lives because doing so might be a trade irritant, you should be looking at trade as the problem, I think.
And farmers should be given a choice among cattle organizations. When groups come before this committee, ask what they do. Are you a cow-calf producer? Are you a facilitator who supplies a service to the captive supply side of the cattle industry? Each of us can legitimately speak on our own behalf.
Also, use policy tools to support the appropriate size and scale of production. If you look in a recent issue of The Manitoba Co-Operator, you will see that out of this governance system, a producer in Manitoba received $1,460 per day for seven days a week for a full year as assistance for what was considered to be the most efficient farm in Manitoba. One could only wonder what one could have done with $100 a day to 14 farms, or $50 a day to 28 farms. One could only imagine. If you have a social purpose and a goal to retain rural communities, then you would redirect that money in a different direction.
I would also remind some of the members present, who see rural Manitoba and rural Canada as their power base, to be careful about weakening the power base of the constituency that keeps you in office.
Thank you. That's the end of our presentation.