Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank the opposition for asking for this debate, more appropriately this information session. I had already spoken to our House leader saying that we needed to have an opportunity such as this to tell Canadians about the situation that we are in. Because of the press coverage that we have had this weekend and this past week, I am sure every Canadian already knows about it.
As hon. members who have already spoken have pointed out very clearly, and I thank them for that, this was one cow out of over 13 million in the Canadian herd and one cow out of 3.6 million that are slaughtered each year in Canada. The system worked because the cow was found and the cow did not go into the food chain.
As has already been said, I too want to congratulate the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the agriculture and agri-food people in the government for the quick work that they did. When we look back at the proactive actions that have been taken over the last number of years in order to be ready for this type of situation if, unfortunately, it did happen, it proves that being proactive is far more effective than being reactive.
And because of that, within a very short time of discovering this, the federal government was informed by the province a week ago last Friday that there was a possible positive case of BSE. We tested it in the Winnipeg lab. At the time, I was out of the country and scheduled to give a keynote address at an international conference on food production in London, England, on Monday morning at 9:30.
I was informed on Saturday morning, London time, that we might have a BSE case and that the sample was being retested. I was informed late Sunday night that, unfortunately, it was confirmed positive. This was one time that I wished that we had proven that some people read something wrong, but I am proud that they read it right.
However, I wish that they had not had the opportunity. I immediately made the decision that I would return home. Instead of speaking at 9:30 the next morning, I left for the airport at 8:30. When we had the final confirmation from the lab in England early Tuesday morning, I was with my provincial colleague in Edmonton at 11 o'clock Edmonton time, just about three hours after we received the final final confirmation.
We have an excellent system here. We have been able to trace that animal through a number of different approaches. We certainly know where the animal was in the last few years. It was not an eight year old animal. It was about a six year old animal. We traced where it was through most of its lifetime.
We are taking a couple of tracks and we are confident that one track is almost 100%. Just in case it is not, we are going in the other direction as well. We have traced the animals that have left that herd where that case cow was and gone forward. We have traced the meat meal that was made from the animal from the rendering plant out to the feed mills and to the farms, and all the places that it went.
Some people have had the concern that as there were more quarantine sites, it meant that the disease was spreading. The disease was not spreading, but the trace out system was. Certainly, we hope that as the science and the work is done that we will be able to remove some of those quarantines. Will we be putting some animals down? Yes, and we already have.
As has already been said, the only way to test for this disease is to test the brain. All of the case herd have been put down. They all tested negative and negative is good. We wanted a negative test for BSE. We have put other livestock down as well.
I know nobody likes to put animals down for this kind of reason. We will not put down more animals than is necessary, but we will put down as many animals as is necessary because safety is number one and we will base those decisions on science.
The question has been raised about the timeline of getting the U.S. border opened with our largest customer. Those who have been following this closely have seen and heard Secretary Ann Veneman. I have had numerous phone calls with her. Those who have spoken are right. She has said to me that she wanted the border opened as badly as I did and I said that I wanted it opened pretty badly. So, we both agreed.
The industry is integrated between Canada and the United States. There are over half a million Canadian cattle in American feedlots and breeding herds. It is an integrated market, not only within Canada but also within North America. We have a North American reputation to protect as well. She has recognized that it is one cow and she has highly recognized our system here.
For example, this morning I had a call from a minister in Uruguay telling me very clearly that our system is respected and that there is confidence in our system. The European Union has not banned our product. It says that it has full confidence in our system.
As we go forward over the next few days, and I certainly hope it is a few days, I will be unable to give a timeline of exactly when the border might be opened. We will move as quickly as we can. It does take a little bit of time to put the animals down and to test the samples of the brains.
For those who wonder about the compensation to producers, we have regulations in Canada for any of these types of situations. The producers are compensated for their animals. The compensation is based on the market for those animals for the last number of months, not the market just on that day. For producers who are not able to sell their stock now, there is also the proposed business risk management program.
I now have the authority from my Treasury Board to sign it. As soon as the province has signed it, the business risk management program will be available for producers. It is better than the programs that have been there in the past. That was verified by the third party review assessment group in the not too distant past.
We have tried to be, I hope successfully, as up front and out there as we possibly can giving everyone all the information as quickly as we get it. We have put in place toll free lines and we have received well over a thousand calls from people wanting more information. We have quarantined 17 different sites to date. The tracking and tracing system is working quite well. We have the best tracking and tracing system in the world. We can be proud of that and the work that has been done.
When it comes to food safety, the investment that the government made in food safety, the environment, different areas in research, and the announcement that the Prime Minister and I made last June showed the proactive approach. It is a proactive approach that we wanted to put in place, but certainly did not hope or expect that we would have to use it for this reason at this time. Nevertheless it is something that we certainly will continue to build upon and work with the industry as we planned by putting in place even more rapidly food safety plans on farms as well as all the way through the food chain.
That is there now, but what we have been doing, and will continue to do, is to look at this and if there are some changes we see that are necessary to make it even better we will certainly do that. It is the same with the tracking and tracing system.
Two and a half years ago we started working with the beef industry in an identification program for beef cattle in Canada. As of July 1, 2002, it became law. Any animal, whether it is a dairy animal that has finished its dairy production and is going on to slaughter, and any animal that leaves a farm in Canada must have an ear tag which is registered in the system so that we know where the animal came from and it can be tracked.
This animal did not have that. We know the farm it came from because it was after 2002, but since it was born before that system was in place we did not have that information. However, there was some excellent work done by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the provincial governments. I want to stress here that the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C. have been extremely cooperative on this and they have been able to trace through records. The farms have been extremely cooperative on this as well and that is why we have been able to trace it.
In the future we will be able to trace it even better. For any animals that leave farms, we will not only know where they have been but we will know where they are. When they go somewhere, we will know where they went because that will all be in the system.
We have provincial slaughter facilities and we have federal slaughter facilities. I have full confidence in the safety of the food coming out of both of those systems. The difference being that in provincial slaughter houses the meat that is slaughtered there cannot be marketed outside that province. As far as health and safety is concerned, it is the same as the federal inspection. It was the provincial system that pulled this cow out of the food chain and tested it, and then passed the results on to the federal government.
However, in Whitehorse, ministers at the federal-provincial meeting in June 2001 said very clearly not only on this issue but on environmental and farm food safety issues that we need to go to national standards. If meat is going to cross the border of a province or out of the country it must have federal certification. We are well along in discussions with the provinces to combine those two systems into one system of inspection and certification.
Anything that we need to do is already underway. There is no question that because of this incident it has demonstrated that we must move even quicker than we had previously planned on.
I also wish to thank the United States. It has sent pathologists and its top person on BSE to Canada for a few days. It has offered its laboratories as have other countries. The United Kingdom has offered support to us. We think back when it had the terrible situation of foot and mouth disease. We sent a number of veterinarians and people over there to help. The United Kingdom has offered to do that and we certainly appreciate the support from everyone.
I am not diminishing the seriousness of this in any way, shape or form. The economic effect that this is will have will hopefully be only short term, for everyone in the beef industry and the spinoff industries from that. However, as far as food safety is concerned, we must keep it in perspective.
In closing, we can be proud of the system that we have. We can be proud of the fact that we constantly review it. Resources will not and are not a limiting factor. I am pleased that the Treasury Board has already said to us that it will be there if needed. That may very well be the case. But it was one cow. Our system found it and it did not go into the food chain.
I look forward to the comments of others. I may not be able to stay for the whole session this evening because of another committee that I am supposedly chairing, but again I want to thank the opposition for giving everyone the opportunity for what I consider to be an information session for Canadians and the House tonight.