Thank you very much.
It's important to note that this technology really allows the ingredient list to be backed off. In other words, you don't necessarily need to put the preservatives into your ingredient list that you would if you didn't use this technology. This is a benefit and is really the primary reason Piller looked into this a few years back.
Also, as Jim mentioned, the testing protocol that we have to undergo from CFIA is the same for any product, even for a product that goes through this technology. As a matter of fact, this is pretty new technology. There is nothing in the regulations that dictates how we deal with this. We may be able to lower one category in testing, but honestly, the product is pasteurized in its package. Really, there is no risk to this product once it passes through the system. It passes through the system only in one way. If there are any faults or errors, the system shuts down and doesn't open. It has to be recovered, and we go through the system properly, maintaining and reaching that 87,000 psi, so there is really no way for anything to go through that isn't treated. It's a very safe, very accurate technology that gives us tremendous results.
As I said, it's definitely something that's going to be at the forefront; however, it's extremely expensive. It adds cost to the product, very minimal, but it's something that we feel in our organization is a very proactive approach to providing our customers with peace of mind on the food safety aspect of our products.
I'm not sure if everybody can do it, but certainly we made the investment before any of the listeria outbreak last summer and so forth. This was already in the works a year before that, so I think you will definitely see an increase in the use of this.
It was originally started to treat vegetables, I believe, and the units were very small, or much smaller. It has now been adapted for larger types of processing. You can treat hundreds of kilograms at a time in one cycle of this unit. The way the technology has improved over the years shows in how large a batch this technology can process. This unit is fully 20 feet high and 50 feet long. It's a big piece of equipment and weighs in excess of 200,000 pounds. It's a very robust piece of equipment that needs to be that size if you're going to be containing that much pressure. But we feel that's definitely part of the way of the future for food safety.