That was brevity, Ms. Patterson. Thank you.
I think many of us who have been here for a number of years have heard before many times of the different formats the issue of provincial abattoirs, federally regulated versus provincially regulated, and whether we can keep them local and open, and all kinds of issues back and forth.
You've given us a challenge, quite frankly. You obviously have been asked and have answered a number of times that you don't actually have the answer. It seems that it's a challenge for us to take forward, and we need to actually take a look at this.
Mr. Bonnett, you said that there was a pilot done, and perhaps we need to go back and look at the results of that. Perhaps that'll be in the report, hopefully, that we need to go back and look at that and see what it is, and see how we can take the suggestions about how we actually have a sector that meets the needs of the producers and the processors and a bunch of the consumers. I mean, how do we do that thing? I don't think it's an easy one. It's been a challenge for a lot of us in a lot of different ways.
The standard is being set at a certain level and, unfortunately—and I've said this before in this committee—the problem is that retailers have decided to set the standard, not us. If we set the standard, they'd just have to abide by what the standard is. They're setting a standard and saying, “You meet the standard or else you're not getting in the chain”. Unfortunately, what it means, in your industry at least, Ms. Patterson, is that a lot of your folks are getting cut out of that chain, no pun intended, which is really unfortunate.
I appreciate the input from both in that sense, and I think it's something we need to go back to. As I say, just to emphasize, Mr. Bonnett, I think we need to go back and look at that study and see what came out of it, and see if we can't get our heads around how we manage this. I think all of us actually are on this wavelength about how we manage it. We don't know how yet, it seems, and I think we need to do that.
I appreciate the input from both on that. By the way, I buy as much local sheep as I can find, and lamb products, but I agree it's not easy.