Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Minister.
Thank you for being here today.
That's the extent of my French today.
Thank you also to the department officials for being here.
Minister, you touched on it, but it would be worth expanding on because BSE, known as mad cow disease, is a progressive, fatal disease of the central nervous system of cattle. May 20, 2003, marked the beginning of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis in Canada. Markets around the world immediately closed their borders to live cattle and beef exports from Canada, including Canada's largest customers—the U.S., Mexico and Japan.
The Canadian cattle industry is extremely export-dependent, and the loss of almost all major export markets has had a devastating impact. We all witnessed the economic hardships of these beef producers due to the BSE crisis, and in July 2020, as mentioned, Canada submitted its application to the World Organisation for Animal Health, the OIE to be recognized as a negligible risk country for bovine spongiform encephalopathy. It brought the industry to a new chapter.
Can you expand on what you said earlier and give us an update on the application?