Thank you.
Thanks for being with us today.
If I could just take a moment to position this meeting in our larger study, the committee is doing a study on the supply chain, and we're looking at it from the farm gate right through to the consumer and perhaps beyond, which would include such things as waste. We've studied things like the red meat sector, and we've done grains and oilseeds and the beverage sector. Now we're trying to focus on the distribution system and the retail system, which could also include contact with consumers, because consumers are plugging in at the retail system.
This conversation is focusing in on waste. We were hoping to have some distributors come in today to talk to us about their operations and how food products move through their institutions and where they go. For example, is there waste especially on time-sensitive types of food items?
But as I think about waste and some of the comments you've made, my inherent guess is that at every step of the way—at the farm gate, in the retail sector, in the distributor sector, and even in the consumer sector—they want to reduce waste, because it's a loss of money. I'm a father and I have five children, and I don't want to throw food out, right? I want us to eat our food. I think it's the same at every step of the way. If food has to be discarded or disposed of, it's lost revenue. It's a loss of revenue for whatever step in the chain that is, so I wanted to ask perhaps a few questions about that.
I'd like to ask, for example, about food safety. I think people are more food safety conscious. I think governments are more food safety conscious, as are the food processors. Everyone in the system is. You mentioned an expiry date, but people also have a sense.... When things come out of their original packaging and go into other packaging in the consumer's fridge, there might not be a date on them anymore, but you can tell when something should not be eaten or is starting to go, in a sense, certainly at the family level. I wanted to ask you for your impression on waste versus food safety concerns, both within the food chain and at the consumer level, because there are two different things going on there.