The Atlantic Beef Products plant in Borden, after two or three years of negotiations, finally obtained their ACOA money, so there is some new equipment and some value-added equipment going in there. They'll be getting into the grind of business here in the next month or so, so that should improve returns for the plant, and then hopefully get back to farmers.
Another thing is the SRMs. Currently at the plant in Borden, livestock producers are deducted 20¢ a pound for this cost. In Ontario, I hear it's as high as 40¢ a pound. We've had a dealer on P.E.I. start shipping to the U.S. with no deductions for cattle aged over 30 months. So there are unfair requirements in Canada in our cattle business and we're leaving money on the table. Personally, I had three OTMs last week that cost me nearly $700, and it's all with CFIA red tape, basically. If those were being shipped to the U.S., I wouldn't have had any deductions on them.
In conclusion, there is no silver bullet to address the problems in the beef industry on P.E.I. The reality is that we have to keep trying to do little things and bring things around. The government needs to continue to consult with the primary industries to ensure the supplies of primary products, because we've gone from 700 producers in P.E.I. to under 400 within two years. If they continue to decline, we won't have the infrastructure to keep our plant going. This has already happened to the hog industry.
Hopefully, we can work together to look after some of this red tape, we'll call it, to get some more profitability to the farm gate.