Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. My name is Tim Lambert. I'm the chief executive officer of Egg Farmers of Canada. I appreciate the opportunity to address the group. I’m glad to see this on the agenda of the committee. This is a really important issue for our industry, one which I would sug

Agriculture committee  Certainly, and thank you for the question. In fact, antibiotic use is very infrequent. It's not a normal part of egg layer production. That's for both the shell eggs and the processed eggs. Basically, of all the eggs that are produced, about 70% of them will go into the shell eg

Agriculture committee  When eggs are gathered, all eggs in the regulated system go to a CFIA certified grading station and all eggs are refrigerated. They're all washed, graded, and then packaged. Cleaning the eggs is part of the process.

Agriculture committee  Certainly there is. That's a key aspect for anyone such as yourself who has experience on a farm. You know that the people involved in livestock agriculture are almost universally people who care about animals. That's why they do it. They are always concerned with the welfare and

Agriculture committee  With the enriched or furnished cage system, what they've done is ask what the reasons were. If you go back far enough, birds weren't in any form of cage. They were on the ground. They actually came off the ground into cages as a way of managing disease, managing cannibalism, and

Agriculture committee  I'll start. You asked a question about farmers. Of course, any time you lose research capacity it has a negative impact, so the short answer is yes, that creates some challenges. We are in the enviable position that we do have the resources to invest in research. We sponsor Dr.

Agriculture committee  We will try to mitigate it. Any time you lose research capacity it has a negative impact. I also understand there is a lot of competition for resources. Ideally we have continued research, but we will fill the gap.

Agriculture committee  What we have done so far is we've focused more on retailers. We find on the layer side that we aren't getting a ton of pressure yet from broadly stated consumer groups. We get a lot of pressure from activist groups. Together, Robin and I often go out and meet with retailers.

Agriculture committee  It would absolutely have a very significant and damaging impact. The reality for supply-managed commodities is that because they're profitable for producers, they have the money to reinvest. They're quite willing to invest in on-farm food safety and animal welfare. We sponsor the

Agriculture committee  Specifically in the layer sector, what happened in Europe was the science got subjugated to the emotion and it went directly from the activists into the political process. Legislation was passed throughout the European Union starting in countries like Holland and migrating to Ger

Agriculture committee  I'll start. It is an interesting challenge, and I know Mr. Lemieux referenced it as well, getting ahead of the consumer view. What I find interesting in Canada, because of the amount of work we do in both the U.S. and Europe, the Canadian public is—I don't know if it's a Canadia

Agriculture committee  I'll be quick. It speaks actually to a question which Mr. Payne asked. There is value in continued financial support from government for this process because it's seen more objectively than if industry pays for it all themselves. You lose a certain third party credibility. Yes,

Agriculture committee  Actually, we are sponsoring a network of research chairs across the country. We have a chair in agricultural economics at Laval, Dr. Maurice Doyon. We have the welfare chair with Dr. Tina Widowski at the University of Guelph. We're looking at a chair in human nutrition in Manitob

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I would echo that appreciation, my appreciation and our appreciation, in regard to being able to have this time with you today. As you've heard from Ian and Janine, they have a real message of hope, and hope in devastated areas of the world is of particular

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for that question. We are looking at a project in Pakistan and at a project in Nicaragua. This foundation was only started about two years ago. Rather than having our reach exceed our grasp, if I can put it that way, we've tried to focus on making sure we engage in pro