Our largest limitation is that our major retail grocery stores, despite having a product that is processed within the same province as those stores, are still reluctant, if not completely resistant, to selling provincially inspected product, based largely on the fact that their distribution centres require interprovincial movements and they don't wish to rely on having to sort products by province.
There is an adamant request for federally inspected product. In some sectors where a large number of animals are processed, and where the federal inspection abattoirs can justify the cost of gaining federal accreditation under the current system, that's not a limitation. For the sheep sector, we of course don't process the same number of animals and not every facility can process every sort of livestock. Sheep processing facilities can be very specific to processing sheep, but they have a lower capacity. Oftentimes they can't endure the cost of both becoming federally accredited and maintaining that accreditation.
Not that I have an exact, prescribed answer for a solution is, but in generalized terms for our sector, we need to find a way of facilitating a less onerous federal inspection system that allows small processing facilities to still generate an income on processing a smaller number of animals than, let's say, Maple Leaf would process beef cattle.
We know anecdotally that oftentimes the only difference between a provincial and federal level of inspection can be an extra bathroom and a paved driveway. That is superfluous red tape. It has precious little impact on food safety. It should not drive the value of the product whether or not an inspector has his own bathroom in the facility, but oftentimes that's the only difference.
That's a very long-winded way of my saying that we need a less onerous, less prescriptive, more outcome-based federal inspection system.