Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm proud to be the son of pig farmers and the son-in-law of dairy farmers, and I simply cannot let the statement stand that there's some kind of systemic abuse of animals on Canadian farms. That's simply not the case.
I'm very proud of the 5,600 farmers in my riding. We have more than half a million pigs, more than 50,000 cattle. They are not being abused. They are not subject to undue abuse by farmers. I'm proud of our Canadian farm families. I'm proud of the work they do. I think it's a slap in the face to the hard-working farm families to imply, even make an implicit statement, that there's abuse going on in these farms and in the standards. It's simply not happening. I think that's a slap in the face of so many farm families.
My question is to Dr. Cockram. In your comments you mentioned that loading and unloading increases the stress and the opportunity for harm and pain to animals, yet you're at the same time advocating a decrease in the amount of time that an animal can be on this truck, thereby increasing the number of times that an animal is going to be unloaded and reloaded.
How do you justify that statement, where on the one hand you're saying it increases the risk, and on the other hand you're saying we should have more loading and unloading?