Thank you.
I'm going to be fairly brief, since I provided a document. I will speak in French, but I will respond in English to questions that are asked in English.
In my brief, I mentioned three points. I will add a fourth. When there is intrusion into facilities, there are risks to animal welfare. We don't always know what the consequences of intrusion will be, depending on the species, but some animals can get injured and stressed to the point where their immune systems are affected and then they have more infections or infection-related problems.
For example, a person who doesn't know how to move around a poultry facility may very well kill some of them, because the poultry might crowd into corners and panic. We see this and we see it in swine production as well, where sows can get upset and crush their young.
Infectious diseases are one of the risks, among others. Contrary to what I heard a few minutes ago, you don't have to be near an infected animal to infect others. I can talk about this later.
Every visit carries a risk, including reportable diseases such as African swine fever and avian influenza, which is highly pathogenic. This is well documented. Obviously, diseases are not brought in every time there is an intrusion.
The risk is also well documented for endemic diseases, such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, or PRRS. In addition, infectious bronchitis and laryngotracheitis, for example, are other diseases that can have an impact.
There is also a risk to the people themselves. People who enter the premises of a farm and don't know what they're doing can become contaminated with bacteria, such as salmonella, or campylobacteriosis or Q fever. There are different situations where they can even injure themselves.
The fourth point I would like to make is based on my experience as a professor at North Carolina State University, in the U.S. On September 11, 2001, when the Department of Homeland Security was created, I was approached by a member of congress who told me that while the towers were falling in New York City, two farms in the Midwest were victims of bioterrorism. It was not al-Qaeda that did it, it was people who purposely contaminated two farms because they were angry at a farmer. So there is that possibility as well.
We often think of people who act to further animal rights, want to protect them or free them, but there are also people who are willing to go quite far in the opposite direction.
Let me give you the example of the former sister-in-law of a rancher in North Carolina, who decided one night when it was 40o C in July to turn off the water because she was angry at the producer. Thousands of birds then died within hours.
So there can be consequences due to the transmission of infectious pathogens, but there can also be other problems that are not necessarily infectious and can also be caused by people who don't belong on the farm premises.
I would also like to make a comment. We read the text of a Quebec veterinarian who, by the way, lacks veterinary ethics. In fact, he has been singled out for this, because he is not shy about stating that veterinarians who work in animal production lack ethics. He is a militant antispeciesist vegan activist.
You may be a bona fide veterinarian, but you have to be careful. He is an extremist whom I denounce.
I will stop now to give others time to speak.
Thank you for your attention.