International Trade committee  The 38.5%, and the threat of it going up to 50% from time to time, if you're successful in the market.

International Trade committee  The non-tariff barriers would include the age restriction with the SRMs, and it's basically that they're not fully in compliance with the international standard of how you treat countries that are a controlled risk for BSE. That's the primary one. The other one would be the approval of the further processing facilities.

International Trade committee  I think the 21-month rule is a perfect example of that. Japan is the only country that has set a 21-month age limit. The reason they did that is that they believed they had two cases of BSE from cattle that were 21 months old. It was difficult, in that those cases were not confirmed by the World Reference Laboratory for Foot-and-Mouth Disease.

International Trade committee  No.

International Trade committee  It's probably more on pork.

International Trade committee  I don't know if we've broken it down by each barrier what they would add, but if we eliminated all of the barriers and the tariff.... We did $66 million this past year, which was down a bit from $86 million in 2010. We think the potential for beef is in the range of $250 million to $275 million.

International Trade committee  Japan is significant for that reason. There is a high demand for the offals: the organ meats, tongue, intestine, liver, and tripe are important.

International Trade committee  I wouldn't entirely discount the premium stuff as well. There are different segments of the Japanese market. They have what they call their beef bowl restaurants, where they basically have some beef and rice that are cooked up with some other things. For that, they really use the lean beef: the shoulders, the hips, and the briskets are important.

International Trade committee  I don't know off the top of my head, but I would believe it's the same.

International Trade committee  What is CAFTA's announcement?

International Trade committee  That they support the free trade, absolutely. We are a member of CAFTA. We're a founding member of CAFTA. We're very supportive of it, and I know pork is also a member as well as other sectors.

International Trade committee  I think he's on his way now.

International Trade committee  Yes. I'm quite optimistic. In fact there is a process that has started to do that. They have an independent body, called the Food Safety Commission, outside of government. It's a panel of scientific experts. Before the government refers an issue to the Food Safety Commission, they float a trial balloon amongst the public to see what the reaction would be to whatever it is they ask the commission to evaluate.

International Trade committee  I'm not sure I know it on a percentage basis, but in 2011 we sent 12,287 tonnes, worth $66 million, to Japan. So if I do the math, that's less than 5%.

International Trade committee  We're working on a lot of research projects in a number of areas. Some of them are research related to production, feeding cattle, and better forage. It's not only growing better forage and getting better yields on feed grains, because it's such a high cost; it's also how you manage forage.