Mr. Chair, on behalf of the Canadian Poultry Research Council and its member organizations, I 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, or CPRC, was established in November 2001 to provide funding and coordination for national research activities for its members. Those members include the Canadian Hatching Egg Producers, the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council, Chicken Farmers of Canada, Egg Farmers of Canada, and Turkey Farmers of Canada.
Poultry production and processing must continually improve productivity and efficiency in an ongoing search for cost control measures and innovative products. That's what keeps the price down. 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 commercial opportunity for egg farmers, even though the university that developed it did not see any point to it and didn't take possession of the IP, intellectual property, which we've always found quite interesting.
Research and innovation are important to competitiveness; however, the concept of competitiveness is not always fully understood. Competitive markets grow but they also maintain their existing customer base. For many industries this means constantly offering new and improved products and services, with customer focus being on a product, and less frequently on the circumstances under which it is designed or produced. It isn't quite that way with agriculture lately.
The agriculture industry faces some relatively unique issues because of its nature by working with plants and animals. Consumers question how agricultural products are produced, as well as their attributes, more than in the past. Acceptable and often recommended past practices are now being questioned or changed.
The poultry industry has reacted to changes in consumer expectations in several ways, including a shift in our research emphasis toward poultry welfare and behaviour, alternatives to antibiotics, and the environment. The emphasis on these issues is designed to both expand the Canadian poultry sector and maintain the Canadian consumer's confidence in Canadian-produced poultry and egg products.
The federal government is an important partner in the research innovation value chain; however, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, AAFC, no longer has dedicated poultry researchers as they do in many other agricultural sectors. Some AAFC researchers conduct poultry-related research as part of their mandate, but those resources are few and narrow in scope.
CPRC has begun early discussions with AAFC to determine if existing government researchers working in other fields or other commodities can direct some of their research efforts to the poultry industry through the collaborative research and development program under which industry shares research costs with AAFC. This would provide the opportunity to expand our access to specialized research knowledge presently within AAFC for collaborative research projects in cooperation with universities and industry. We have followed this approach in our new poultry cluster. A strong partnership among AAFC, Canadian universities, and the poultry sector will continue to benefit the Canadian economy and society in general.
I thank you again for the opportunity to provide input to this committee in its deliberations.