Thank you very much, Mr. Lunney.
We have one more witness whom I want to hear from on our side. Mr. Stoffer, you just arrived. Perhaps you could speak directly to a couple of issues: the issue of the Independent Veterinarians' Working Group—I think we've dealt with the issue of skinning seals alive—and the issue of processing and food safety standards, if you could.
Perhaps I'll add one point before Mr.Stoffer begins, and I want you to think seriously of this. It's been said several times, but we have a change in population on the planet. It's gone from rural to urban. Canada is a huge nation, and we have 50% of our population in three major cities, so we are in the same condition.
I respect the member from Portugal; I have a farming background as well. People today think that food comes from a grocery store, that milk comes from a box, that meat comes wrapped up in the grocery store. They have no concept of harvesting or slaughtering practices. That's a great difficulty for us, with a very open and humane hunt.
A question was asked about the humanness of the hunt, and I'll ask Mr. Stoffer to enlarge on this, but the International Veterinarians' Working Group has said time and time again that this is the most humane hunt on the planet. I'll give you some instances.
Six million seals are harvested, and in 2005 there were 50 charges laid for violations in the seal hunt. Those 50 charges wouldn't all involve humane killing. Some of them could be that the individual on the front in Newfoundland, for instance, was using a .222 calibre instead of a .223, which we've asked them to change to because it's more powerful; for some of them, it could have been that they were there a day early or a day late, or that they had 50 carcasses on board when they were supposed to have 40. There's a whole myriad of issues that could be there.
On the issue of skinning alive, I want you to think about something. If you take an animal that weighs 40 pounds, which is a small dog, to 80 pounds—that's a large dog—and that has a mouthful of teeth, would you like to skin that animal alive? If you were so inclined.... It's ludicrous to think that any reasonable individual for any purpose would skin an animal alive. It's misleading by NGOs, who really aren't qualified to judge the hunt, because they're not licensed veterinarians and they don't understand it.
Mr. Stoffer, please.