Madam Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to respond to the member for South Shore on this issue.
It may be that I have talked to and have met with people different from those of the hon. member. However when the industry officials came to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food back in July, there was real reticence on the part of a number of those people about changing the rules significantly between Canada and the United States. They were concerned even about the specified risk material, the changes that were announced by Agriculture Canada to lessen the possibility of mad cow, which is contracted through the spinal cord and the retina.
The other thing that is interesting as well in this whole discussion is this. The Minister of Agriculture indicated to me in a conversation in June, before the House rose, that he fully expected before the end of that month an announcement from Agriculture Canada banning all animal feed to animal feed. It is now more than three months later and there has been no announcement. I have no idea, but I can only assume that it is resistance from the industry itself that has prevented that announcement from occurring to date. I think there are concerns from the rendering plants about what they will do with all this excess material and I think that is the reason for the delay in the announcement from the Minister of Agriculture.