Agriculture committee  In chapter 16 of the harmonized tariff system, you have to have 20% meat content to be in that chapter. All these 13% rules are an exception for chapter 16 products. So if you have less than 20% meat, you just become a food preparation in another area. We're not talking about co

Agriculture committee  Around the world, that's the standard.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, committee members, for the opportunity to come before you and talk about “Product of Canada” labelling. I am representing the Chicken Farmers of Canada, which is the national organization that represents Canada's 2,800 chicken farmers. As our boa

Agriculture committee  Our concern centres more on the fact that imported products can be labelled as products of Canada. In our view, the consumer is not interested in knowing exactly what country a product comes from, but in being able to distinguish between a product of Canada and an imported produc

Agriculture committee  I'm going to think about that. I had not thought about that, that there is a difference between the two. But there is no doubt that it is necessary for us to ensure that a product labelled "Product of Canada" truly is a product of Canada.

Agriculture committee  For us it was coming back to the essential character of the product. If you walk down a grocery aisle, frankly, the challenge for us in the meat industry overall is that even if it's a packaged product, most of it is sold by the meat and then the add-ons that go into it. Certai

Agriculture committee  Veterinary agreements are the means by which CFIA approves the inspection regime in another country and that country approves our inspection regime. Our only issue there is that we don't get consulted in terms of what countries and what processes are going on, and what the risk

Agriculture committee  It's exactly the same. It comes under the meat inspection regulations. John has one for an importer. If it's actually going through a plant, you'll usually see an establishment number on the bottom part.

Agriculture committee  That's how you know where it's from. But then you have to search on the CFIA website. Those of us in the industry can find it pretty quickly, but I don't think a consumer can necessarily go through and find where it's coming from based on that.

Agriculture committee  Roughly speaking, of our domestic consumption, about 91% to 92% is from domestic and the rest is from imports. While there have been only two supplementals in beef since 2003, there are supplemental imports every single year, all year long, in poultry.

Agriculture committee  We don't import live chickens. People can bring in whatever they want, so they'll bring in the highest-value product, and “live” would not be that. They can if they want to. Yes, the meat can come in and go into a product, and that product can be labelled “Product of Canada”. T

Agriculture committee  They rarely bring it in for that. They usually bring it in to put it in another further processed product; they're going to put some value in it here. On that value part, our view is that they have to get that value up to a certain level to make it a product of Canada. I think th

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of Chicken Farmers of Canada, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to share our views with you on the issues affecting competitiveness of all Canadian agriculture. Our chairman, David Fuller, sends his regrets that he wasn't able to make i

Agriculture committee  When it comes down to it, we're dealing mostly with tariffs now. As we start to see tariffs go down, countries that truly want to protect their markets find other means to do so. I'll compare Canada with U.S. and Australia in terms of chicken. The U.S. doesn't have any tariffs

Agriculture committee  In our view you have a harmonized tariff system. Anything in chapter 16 is declared a meat product. For something to be categorized in that chapter it needs to have at least 20% meat content. So if it's in chapter 16 and it's a meat product, it's either a chicken, beef, or pork p