Mr. Speaker, it was certainly not the opinion of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association and representatives of all provinces.
The program was put in place in cooperation with the provinces and with the encouragement of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association in order to move fat cattle to market. Immediately after the May announcement, we were slaughtering about 25,000 cattle a week. By the end of the program, we were slaughtering 73,000 animals a week, which were more animals than we were slaughtering per week before we announced that we had an unfortunate case of one animal with BSE.