Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here, honourable members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food. Thank you for allowing us to present the EU food safety system to you. It's an honour for us.
My name is Jan Bloemendal. I'm indeed in the DG at the European Commission—the directorate-general for health and food safety—and my colleague Hans Joostens is in the DG for trade. We both are in areas focusing on international relations. We have an SPS background, so we will be happy to try to answer your questions afterwards, but we are not really experts in any particular area. We broadly cover the whole SPS field.
We are proud to present the food safety system to you. Thank you for asking us to do so.
We have a system that is applied throughout 28 member states and controlled in compliance with harmonized and uniform rules and procedures set by the European Commission and the authorities of the member states. There is in the EU one single system of rules and controls that applies throughout the whole EU.
We are really happy to be here now also in view of the provisional application of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement that entered provisionally into force in September last year, under which we will be further cementing the excellent relations already in place between Canada and the EU.
Can you hear me well? I'm not speaking too fast?