Thank you again for the accommodation earlier, and thank you for the invitation to appear and present before the committee. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association is always willing to appear before members and provide information on various things that are going on in our industry.
I'm going to make a few brief comments, but since I'm not a scientist myself, to the extent that we can keep the subject matter today focused on science, our comments will come primarily from our science director, Dr. Reynold Bergen.
While I'm not a scientist, like members of Parliament, I spent a lot of my time trying to distill various pieces of technical information into good policy. I hope that is the spirit of what we're trying to do here today.
As we do that, I think we can all be assured that food safety is something that cattle producers take very seriously. We're keenly aware that consumers insist that the food they eat be safe. They're purchasing it to feed to their families, to their children, and they have every right to expect that it be safe.
Canadian cattle producers are committed to ensuring that the beef they produce is safe for all consumers, and indeed we are feeding our own families. I have a 14-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son of my own. You can believe that we eat our share of beef in our house. I have complete confidence in the safety of the beef that I put on my own dining room table.
It's also important to recognize that beef production in Canada operates in a competitive environment. Beef purchasers in both the Canadian and the export markets make buying decisions based on a number of factors. Our daily challenge is to ensure that those consumers have confidence that what we produce is safe and that we produce it at a competitive price.
Over-regulation is a disservice to both the consuming public and to the hard-working people who produce the food. Having the right policies and regulatory operating environment in place is the first step. Ensuring that cattle producers are well trained to follow those policies and adopt good practices is the next step. For that reason, we've developed an extensive on-farm food safety program. We call it verified beef production. Under that program we provide training to producers so that they have all the latest knowledge to produce wholesome and healthy beef.
I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Bergen to speak specifically to the anti-microbial issues, but I would also note that we have Ms. Terry Grajczyk in the room as well. Terry is our national manager for the verified beef production program that I mentioned.