Chantelle Donahue from Cargill took a real lead in terms of developing this. This came out, from Calgary, on building public trust. It got presented to federal, provincial, and territorial ministers. It is taking a value-chain-centric approach to public trust. Right now, we are trying to fund a hub and a coordinator. Chicken Farmers of Canada just approved its funding for that, going forward.
You get science-based here, on one side. Where we're going to get public trust is where consumer acceptability and science-based meet. That's where we have to get to, and it is our point.
It doesn't matter; we can tell them “science, science, science”, but if they don't buy our product.... We can be dead right in terms of the science. At the same time, it is an education on our part, so that we're not downloaded costs that are consumer acceptance-based and have no basis in fact.
If that's the case, then you're just adding cost to our industry. The consumer is just adding cost to themselves in terms of what they're going to have to pay for, and we're uncompetitive exporting. That's why we have to have a real conversation here. We think we have this kind of hub convenor model that we're working on with the agriculture ministers and we hope we'll have it in place later this year, as the start.