Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Thank you, members of the committee, for the opportunity to be here today. The Canadian Sheep Federation is a national non-profit organization that represents over 11,000 Canadian sheep producers. It has eight provincial members and three associate members: the Canadian Co-oper

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I would just like to concur with Dawn on the costs of the program for producers. One of the issues around incentives in the lamb industry is that right now we have such a shortage of Canadian lamb on the market that you can pretty much sell whatever you produce. If nobody is dema

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  The smaller plants that are producing in limited markets are what keeps our industry in business. So we really don't want to do anything that's going to impede their ability to process more lambs. We'd perhaps like to see a reciprocal agreement across provinces. We don't have en

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  To your second question, whether it is right that grocery stores can only access certain products from federally inspected plants, the short answer is no. If our focus is on the consumer and the consumer is looking for a Canadian product or a local product—if they're in Grey or

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members of the committee, for the opportunity to be here today. The Canadian Sheep Federation is a national non-profit organization that represents over 11,000 sheep producers. It has eight provincial members and three associate members: the

Agriculture committee  There are different ways we can use them. If we're going to be in line with our food safety program, it's better for us to have them labelled for use in sheep. There was a backlog for years at the VDD, and it took three or four years to get medications in. They've cleared that up

Agriculture committee  Yes.

Agriculture committee  And it costs a lot of money. We're thinking that if New Zealand and Australia, who are supplying 50% of our market, deem it safe—

Agriculture committee  —then why can't we use their product and their science?

Agriculture committee  It's interesting you should say that. You mentioned earlier about increased demand and New Zealand coming and gobbling it up. There's a world-wide shortage of lamb, and New Zealand and Australia are actually having their flocks shrink. So the question we're asking is, if they're

Agriculture committee  We do.

Agriculture committee  Compensation is quite complex. In order to get compensation, you have to provide the carcass, and the predators don't often bring the carcass back when they're done. It's very difficult to get compensation. We're looking more at mitigation. Most shepherds assume they're going to

Agriculture committee  Currently we supply 41% of our demand, so 59% is being imported, from New Zealand, Australia, and then “other”. As I said earlier, New Zealand's and Australia's flocks are constricting, so the supply will start constricting. If we look at who might be knocking on the door to supp

Agriculture committee  There is huge potential for our sector to expand.

Agriculture committee  We can export feeder lambs and lambs direct to slaughter, but with the Canadian dollar being what it is, we're importing more product than exporting right now. Prior to the border closing, we were exporting slaughter and feeder lambs at a very high rate, but in the last three yea