It could possibly be looked at. The one thing we have to understand is that there's a market for every lobster and we have to look at economic viability as well as sustainability.
When we talk about economic viability, if I'm a fisherman and I have a 10-week or a 12-week season and that's the timeframe I have to support myself, my family, and my crew for the year, then I have to take what I can catch. As long as I don't impact the sustainability of the stocks, okay? If I catch a jumbo lobster and he's a male and a ten-pounder and not really any good for conservation measures, he may be worth less in the marketplace, but on economic viability, I've already set my traps and it's good for me to bring that lobster in, unless it's a big conservation effort to put that lobster back.
So when we're looking at quality control, I think a big thing that has hurt our markets is that a lot of our buyers, like I said, have dropped the ball. There was a lot of money in the industry. They're dealing with a large volume of lobsters now and they're not doing the quality control that they used to.
When Jim and I were buyers here in Alma, if I didn't look after my lobster, that dead loss was mine. I couldn't download that on anybody. Now we see buyers that are having large amounts of dead loss, and that's simply because they're not looking after the product. When you buy a lobster, sure, you're going to get some soft-shells or you're going to get this or that, and they have to be culled out and sent to the processor. You might make your dollar markup on them, or 50¢, or you might make 25¢, but you return that value to your fisherman.
As far as quality control on what goes out of this country is concerned, yes, we should ensure that it's the best quality, whether that's a live lobster or a canned lobster, but I don't know whether the industry can afford the cost right now to do that certification, because certainly some of that will be downloaded on industry. Where we are right now, we can't.