Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and honourable members.
My name is Jacob Middelkamp. I'm a chicken producer from Alberta and I represent Canadian Poultry Research Council along with our executive director, Bruce Roberts.
On behalf of the Canadian Poultry Research Council and its member organizations, we would like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.
The Canadian Poultry Research Council was established in November 2001 to provide funding and coordination for national research activities for its members, which include the Canadian Hatching Egg Producers, Canadian Poultry and Egg Processing Council, Chicken Farmers of Canada, Egg Farmers of Canada, and Turkey Farmers of Canada.
CPRC's mission is to address its members' needs through dynamic leadership in the creation and implementation of programs for poultry research in Canada, which may also include social concerns. Our organization began funding research in 2003 and members have since approved nearly $3 million in research funding through the CPRC. Those funds have helped support in excess of $11 million for Canadian poultry research.
In addition to funding, CPRC activities include acting as the project manager for the poultry research cluster program—funded by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada under the Canadian agri-science cluster initiative section of the Growing Forward program—and communicating research results and issues to industry, researchers, government, and other stakeholders. We are also coordinating development of a national poultry research strategy that will be an important tool for future research direction. CPRC recently relocated from Guelph to Ottawa and established a full-time executive director position to support improved coordination and administration of the industry' s national research activities.
Statistics Canada's farm financial survey reported that poultry farmers controlled almost $15 billion of farm assets in 2009. Almost all of those assets are located in rural Canada and make up an important part of the rural economic base. Statistics Canada also reported that poultry farmers generated over $3 billion of farm cash receipts from the sales of poultry products in 2010, with over 7% of total cash receipts from the sale of farm products. Processing adds a significant amount of economic value, and much of this activity helps support our rural economy. The Farm Products Council of Canada estimated the socio-economic benefits of the poultry sector to the Canadian economy to be more than $11 billion.
Poultry production and processing must continually improve productivity and efficiency in an ongoing search for cost control measures and innovative products. Canadian poultry research has achieved significant success in developing new, targeted approaches. One of the best examples of Canadian research success was the development of the omega-3 egg, a functional food with significant health benefits and a commercialized opportunity for our egg farmers.
Poultry farmers and processors are also challenged to continually seek to improve animal welfare and their relationship with the environment. These challenges continue at a time of increasing consumer awareness of, and interest in, the food we consume and how it is produced and processed.
Now I would like to pass this over to Bruce.