—say okay, that's enough. We'll use that case, if it's the right one. There's no problem with that.
I think beef and pork farmers and other farmers that will be impacted by COOL really agree with that. They are following this very closely. I have a conference call tomorrow afternoon with the Mexican and Canadian cattlemen and pork producers, those on either side of the U.S. The Mexican farmers are really in the same place that we are on that subject. We shared that in March in a common meeting we had.
I think it's about time we brought people back to their real lives, especially in pork with what we are in now. I'm still a hog and beef farmer. These are bad times.
We have to do something to improve the situation. I'm very nervous about what will happen in both livestock commodities, pork and beef, in this country. If we do nothing, I will not be surprised if they decline a lot.
We have to do something very quickly in both cases. We never recovered from BSE in beef. We are in a worse situation now than we were six or seven years ago, in 2003. We export more livestock to the U.S. without killing, processing, and value-adding here in Canada. In pork, it's worse.
We have to do something. We have to build a plan to work on those very bad periods. If not, we will lose farmers; we will lose a large part of the industry; we will lose competitiveness on the world scene, and we will become a very small player.
We must never forget that in pork we are a small country, but overall we are probably the second- or third-largest traders. We are the country most dependent on export, because we export 50% or 60% of our production. No other country has that great a share of their overall production in exports.
We are very sensitive to any movement, such as what we have experienced in the last couple of days with countries closing their borders. We have to watch that very closely.