Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the member's question.
At the urging of this committee and others, CFIA now makes public the number of inspectors that we have in the agency. That report is available to committee members. The number of inspection staff overall is stable and often increasing year over year. That's at an aggregate level. That's everything from the people in the labs who are doing the tests that the inspectors.... It's overall. There is no shortage of work and those numbers are not decreasing. We happily, at the urging of this committee, make those public.
With respect to hog inspection, we are looking at how we can modernize the way we inspect those facilities. Science is changing, the line speeds are increasing, and we are looking to make sure that we can work with industry to do that in the most efficient way possible and to look at the interventions that are most relevant to the safety of that product. That's work that's ongoing.
Again, if there are ways to do that more efficiently and with fewer inspectors, we will not reduce the number of inspectors. There are other food safety issues to which they would be reassigned.