One of the things I mentioned in my remarks was having it outcome-based. We used to put a lot of emphasis on standards for building materials and the like, but the modern thinking in inspection is to have it outcome-based. As was mentioned before, we don't want to make people sick, we want product to leave the plant without the hazards in it.
A lot of times, I think, for the smaller plants--because they know their employees, it's easier to do training--once they see the results of their program, they can produce a better product. It's a lot easier for them to do it. Everybody speaks the same language, for example. Often there are family members working together.
In the larger plants, language can become a problem if you are hiring different ethnic groups. To train them you have to go to quite an extensive program and make sure it's in all the languages so they'll understand.
I guess we maybe have to put some parameters around “bigger” and “smaller”. They often refer to them as SMEs, which are small to medium enterprises, as opposed to the larger plants. But it seems that in Canada we're getting a consolidation of our meat plants, not only the slaughter plants, which are becoming fewer and fewer, but also some of the processing plants.
I've heard some of you mention that you go to the farmers market. There's often very good product there. Now, whether they follow the food safety standards, we don't always know, because they're not federally inspected. It was mentioned before that this should apply to all plants, but don't forget that CFIA deals only with federally registered plants, they don't deal with the provincial plants. What they do doesn't necessarily affect the provincial plants. I did mention that if a province develops a program, like they did in Ontario--the HACCP advantage program--and it is equivalent to CFIA's FSEP, there should be some recognition of that for the provinces.