I appreciate that. If you've followed the media in recent months, there has been a wave of announcements from retailers and food service operators in Canada and the United States stating their commitment to stop sourcing pork from any operator that does not adopt open housing systems in their production.
This issue has captured a lot of attention. There has been a lot of activist pressure on it. It's been recognized for some time in Canada, but it's hugely expensive. There's still debate about the pros and cons of different housing systems for sows, but the market has spoken at this point. As Maple Leaf Foods, we have made a commitment to convert all of our sow barns by 2017. That's in terms of what we produce in Manitoba. We procure 80% from non-Maple Leaf systems, so we're still dependent on the production from the industry as a whole.
It has been estimated that if all sow barn places in Canada were converted in the next couple of years, it would cost half a billion dollars. It's an enormous capital expense to redo foundations and rebuild these systems.
We're facing an enormous potential risk at this point in terms of market access, customer acceptance. We talked about getting into the market environment in Canada. It's one thing to be cost competitive, but now we're facing even more challenges in meeting these new standards. Obviously food safety is critical, but now it's animal welfare standards.
We think there's every reason to think about this strategically as an industry, with government. How can we help to offset this and get Canada into a lead position, which ultimately is going to be critical for global market access? For example, the European Union has some of the highest animal welfare expectations, both regulated and commercial, in the world. We're about to conclude a trade agreement with Europe. How are we going to get our pork in there if we can't comply with expectations on animal welfare?
The sow crate issue is the key one, and we can share some thoughts with the committee on what such a program could look like.