Thank you very much. I would echo that appreciation, my appreciation and our appreciation, in regard to being able to have this time with you today.
As you've heard from Ian and Janine, they have a real message of hope, and hope in devastated areas of the world is of particular interest to us. I'm not sure how you would connect that to egg farming, exactly, but I guess it's my job to explain why.
At the Egg Farmers of Canada, the thousand regulated egg-producing families or companies in Canada, which I represent, we have a long history of involvement in a lot of socially responsible activities, such as food banks and the Breakfast Club of Canada. We sponsor CIBC's Run for the Cure and have been involved in food banks and breakfast clubs for many years.
In effect, eggs are the perfect protein, or the perfect product for a hungry world. You have the high-quality protein and all of the other micronutrients all in one package. They can be hard-cooked and stored for extended periods of time.
Also, you have an incredibly efficient little biological unit in the hen. There's only one other form of animal protein production that is more efficient at converting a pound of feed into a pound of whatever the product is, and that would be fish. Next to that, you also have a very small animal. Also, a very few birds can feed a lot of people. It's a very scalable business. In other words, you can make it as big or as small as you need to. It's absolutely simple. The humble egg is an absolutely brilliant solution for malnutrition in countries such as Swaziland and, indeed, in countries around the world that are suffering from problems of malnutrition.
In addition to our partnership with Ian and Janine, we're founding members of an organization called the International Egg Foundation. Egg businesses and company owners from around the world are putting money into this foundation. They support Heart for Africa's Project Canaan, and they also support capacity development projects in eight other African nations, mostly in the south. What we're doing there is providing some technical expertise.
We also have farmers who go over there and meet with small farmers who are looking to build their capacity, learn modern agricultural practices, and do a better job of caring for and feeding the birds, housing them, and learning to look after them. Our farmers volunteer their time to transfer their knowledge and expertise.
That capacity-building project is completely unique to what Ian and Janine have described around the orphanage in regard to what we try to do as a foundation. Our chair is a gentleman named Bart Jan Krouwel, who was formerly the head of the Rabobank Foundation, I'm a trustee, and Carlos Saviani, a vice-president at the World Wildlife Fund, is also one of our trustees. It becomes a little bit of different horses for different courses, if you will, and we recognize a fantastic opportunity with Ian and Janine.
We're doing capacity-building. We're involved in Mozambique, where they identify small landholders and have designed a little production system, a little model. They bring them in, train them, and then help them get a microloan to start their own small-scale egg production.
We're looking at doing some work with a foundation in South Africa called the Hollard Foundation. They are looking at things on a somewhat grander scale. They want to connect different businesses with entrepreneurs. In other words, they are looking for somebody who isn't going to do it just on a subsistence level or for the local villagers, but who truly wants to try to build a sustainable egg-producing company. It's all rooted in the belief that the humble egg can play a role in providing protein and improving the efficacy of vaccines, even the efficacy of antiretroviral drugs for HIV and AIDS.
That's how eggs fit, and that's a bit of our broader vision for the role that Egg Farmers of Canada can play in the process.