Thank you very much. I'm certainly happy to be here to speak to you about some of these issues.
Again, the trade part is something that I am quite concerned about. We have so many non-tariff trade barriers that we have seen, whether in China with our canola or some of the grains that we sell into Europe, and we understand the reasons that happens. We also have a lot of interprovincial barriers as well.
It was just mentioned earlier about the abattoirs and so on, as far as meat is concerned. I think that's one of the other barriers that we need to address, because we try to trade around the world, and then we have all of these other problems because we can't trade here within the country. Of course, there are more and more issues that are cropping up here about how Canadians are able to work with each other.
CFIA was really involved with the TB issue that had taken place in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and we know how many animals were in trouble. We also know how many were destroyed. Are we working on possibilities with new technology to look at DNA, facial recognition of animals, and all these types of things that we know are out there, so that we can satisfy the consumer who has our product and we can also make sure that we are just attacking those animals that are causing a problem?
We've seen it with BSE. Everybody thinks mad cow is the one that was in Europe where they were flopping around, because that's what CBC showed all the time, but that is not what happened in Canada. Yet we made a special point of making sure that it was done properly. Is the technology keeping up with that?