Agriculture committee  I think Patrick touched on it. There is a real feeling that there hasn't been a premium. That's what they anticipated would happen, and I think there is a great deal of disappointment in how that has turned out. I think there's even a disappointment in the sense that the actual discount that is happening in Canada isn't as severe as they wanted.

Agriculture committee  I buy from everyone.

Agriculture committee  Do you want me to start?

Agriculture committee  Just quickly, there has been a tremendous amount of work done on reopening markets after BSE, and the government has been very strong on that. The new trade secretariat has been a response to a call by the industry to do that, and we hope it will be a successful step to try to open more markets.

Agriculture committee  For the most part, the SRM policy was probably the major issue. That's about a $30 burden right now. I wish to say that our intention is to open the plant in the fall. We did the layoff with a recall notice to the workers for September. Normally what would happen is that we would go into a loss position through the summer and we would push out those American packers that are buying the cattle in Manitoba and parts of Saskatchewan, and we would sustain a loss.

Agriculture committee  This would be a number that I think would probably shock everyone; it ends up being about 12% of our total production. It varies, maybe between 6% and 14%, depending on the time of year and things like that. To be quite honest with you, over the last five years and with the turmoil of BSE, I would just as soon not own any some days, because we have probably sustained losses greater than anyone in this industry.

Agriculture committee  The very first packing plant we bought processed 130 cattle a day. Currently we process 5,000 a day here in Canada. The hardest part for us to learn was that we couldn't compete with the bigger plants. The cost structure from a small plant is so much higher that they have to develop a very targeted niche to be able to survive.

Agriculture committee  I could point out that in our purchase of Lakeside, one of the things that helped was that we knocked the administration costs at the corporate office in the United States by about 80%, because I don't really think I'm worth that much, so we don't charge that much to our plant. We did that to start with.

Agriculture committee  At this point, if it sounds like we have a mission that we believe the livestock need to stay here, it's to sustain our industry. That is part of what we're trying to do. We're trying to make sure, because there is a danger that our industry contracts to a level where we then lose packing capacity in Canada, so we'd lose it and it would never come back.

Agriculture committee  COOL was brought forward from a splinter group within the United States that believed they could create a premium for U.S. meat by identifying our meat as Canadian. Right now these people are frustrated because they're not seeing this premium, so they're saying it needs to be more stringent.

Agriculture committee  I was just going to say that I think what you are seeing is that there is a debate between the two countries on the organic recognition standard. I think that is more of an entrepreneurial...or how would you call it, Patrick? One saying they have an organic standard and you don't.

Agriculture committee  I'd like to see the report that says the prices have dropped to the extent that you're talking about. Actually, this spring the prices were higher than they had been previously. Through a big period from late last fall and on, prices were higher. We've had higher prices on cull cattle going into last fall and last summer.

Agriculture committee  I just don't see that. In general, I will not disagree that the market is still not up to a level that would make it very profitable for producers. The underlying issue that we face, all of us, is trying to maintain the livestock industry. We're part of that. We're in the production part, we have feedlots, we have ranches, and we have auction marts and packing plants.

Agriculture committee  I would go with trying to say that as we move into periods where hopefully we see better pricing, I would like to think that the herd expands again. It's an integral part of the industries I'm in to have that expansion, and that's what we're hoping for. I do qualify that the United States has actually gone through a long period of relative profitability over the last 10 years in their producer group, and they have not had an expansion.

Agriculture committee  No. What I would say is that I, for sure, want to express that I do not support COOL. Absolutely, I would like it to go away. One of the things I wanted to point out is that I think we are not having the consequences to western Canada that were initially perceived. A lot of that, again, is just because of the cattle population being smaller and being more aggressive in the packing side.