International Trade committee  In the cattle and beef industry, there are 86,000 beef cattle producer operations in Canada. It is the largest sector of agriculture in Canada. To put that in perspective, there are roughly 32,000 to 33,000 supply managed producers. So it's very large on the cattle side. I don't have the exact number of jobs in my head, but there are thousands of workers in plants--for example, in the Levinoff-Colbex beef plant just outside of Montreal.

International Trade committee  Absolutely.

International Trade committee  It may just be terminology there, but both Canada and the U.S. have agreements. Neither of us have ratified them yet. And because of that we know what's in both of those agreements, so this bit of lag in the transition period can be overcome if we move fast. As I looked at the U.S. agreement, theirs was concluded while we were still negotiating.

International Trade committee  The process of how we got from where we were during the negotiations is basically the story of the negotiating process. The last time I was here the details were still subject to negotiating confidentiality, but at that time, what Colombia was offering was certainly much less favourable for Canadian beef than for U.S. beef.

International Trade committee  Good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I might even keep it under five minutes for the opening statement. Again, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you again. The last time I was here to speak on Colombia, I was stressing the importance of Canadian beef being treated at least as favourably in our agreement as U.S. beef is treated under the Colombia-U.S. agreement.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  It's been hard to break it down in total. We understand that the total user fees paid for all meat inspection in Canada--so that's all meats--is approximately $20 million per year. We're a subset of that.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  There's a number of things. I heard the debate about hospitals versus slaughter facilities. I don't know anything about hospitals, but the point on slaughter facilities might be moot, because nobody wants to build a slaughter facility in Canada.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  It has nothing to do with food safety. It's a marketing initiative. It has been described by the administration that was in place when the law was passed as basically a marketing initiative and having nothing to do with food safety. Since the new administration has come in they've started to waiver, and they don't seem sure whether it's marketing or food safety.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I think people have to be careful what they ask for. There's nothing wrong with the concept of country of origin labelling per se, but our problem with the U.S. law is how they did it, labelling the meat with where the animal was born. With the Canadian approach, which is a product of Canada standard, a voluntary standard, maybe there's still some work to be done on how that's defined, but I think what we're doing here in Canada is a much more appropriate approach, on a voluntary basis.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  In fact, it's the opposite. We're worried about the ones that we have built over the last few years and that are closing down because they're not competitive. For a long time, we have been an advocate of regulatory harmonization. Regulatory harmonization is not all about food safety.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Absolutely. You want to make sure you're doing all the things necessary to ensure that it's safe, without going as far as doing things that are purely cosmetic, that add costs and affect your competitiveness.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Yes, that's certainly the one that's biggest in our minds as being a disease that perhaps has a reputation it doesn't deserve, and how countries and trade and emotions react to it. That's perhaps instructive for what the pork industry might be going through right now with the H1N1 virus.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to make just a few brief comments and then turn it over to Dan Ferguson. I would say that the situation among cattle producers is very similar to what Mr. Fuller outlined. Food safety is something that producers take very seriously. We're keenly aware that consumers insist that the food they purchase is safe--and so they should.

International Trade committee  No, not for beef. Beef has been excluded from the EFTA agreement.

International Trade committee  I guess it's hard to come to the beef industry and say to us, “Well, things didn't get any worse for you in that agreement; will you support it?”