Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our witnesses.
I'm going to take a kick at the CFIA can as well, but from a little different angle. My opposition colleagues have a real problem with the system working. When the system works, the system works. That's the reason the outbreak of E. coli was caught. It's unfortunate that it ever got out of the plant, but the system not only worked to detect it to prevent an increase in exports, but also to recall what was put out in Canada.
What I want to make clear is that hundreds of thousands of cuts of beef were not contaminated. They found 10 or 11 incidents of E. coli affecting consumers. Although there's no question that does take a hit on the industry, let's not make that something worse than it is.
I'll give you the comparison. A couple of years ago we started the negotiations with the European Union. We were told in no uncertain terms that we were going to have to come up to the European standards. I've been through slaughterhouses in Europe and endless fish plants. I can tell you that the European standards are good, but they are not any better than our standards. As a matter of fact, in many instances they're not as good as our standards.
I think it needs to be said that we have the best food safety standards in the world. We put out a very good product that can compete with those anywhere in the world. Anything that impugns that hurts industry. You folks have to live with that. There is a lot of peer pressure from individual companies. There's a lot of pressure on government to maintain the CFIA, and we've done that as a government. We've got more inspectors on the ground.
For your individual companies, I appreciate the fact that, in your own words, Mr. Price, we have both ends of the spectrum here. At the end of the day, you can look your Japanese buyers in the eye and say to them that we had a problem in the industry in Canada, the problem was contained, and the system is working as it should.