Thanks very much, Chair.
Thank you for being here, and thank you for your presentations. They were excellent. It's clear to me that you put a lot of time into basically condensing your points into manageable bits and pieces. I appreciate the time you put into presenting us with your thoughts.
To follow up on the BSE issue, it's true that we have a fairly high standard, but I do want to say that we use that high standard. Back in 2003, Canada really suffered in the eyes of the world with respect to BSE. There was a real onus on us to open foreign markets, and one of the ways we do it is with the sound science argument. So the procedures and protocols we have in place for SRM are used to great effect by, for example, Minister Ritz when he goes international, to basically gently force open or more forcefully force open export markets. He's had tremendous success that I think in the long term will benefit our cattle industry.
It's one of the things he leans on when he goes to Korea. He says, “Listen, you have no argument to keep your borders closed to our beef, and they've been closed since 2003.” When they say, “Well, we're worried”, he says, “Worried about what? We do this. We have this. We do this. We have all of these procedures in place.”
The idea is to use those procedures to basically force other countries to open their borders. As I say, it has been successful.