Agriculture committee  I'm not sure if I'm wise enough on the national stage to understand the difference of what countries would demand. If you look at this great country, though, in an ideal world, in a disease outbreak, one portion of the country could then focus on maybe providing domestic consumpt

Agriculture committee  I think all of your reasons are relevant. Older producers don't adopt technology. Maybe some people don't see the importance of it, and I think there's always a little bit of that “I don't really want the government to know what I'm doing” factor. That's a tough one to beat as we

Agriculture committee  That's a very fair statement. I think most producers are at least at the cellphone stage, not all. I think the capabilities of technologies now would be that, when a producer markets his hogs, whether they're from one barn to another, or straight to a processor, or even to anothe

Agriculture committee  That was several years ago, yes.

Agriculture committee  Those issues certainly exacerbated the challenge of knowing everything we can about where our product moves.

Agriculture committee  PigTrace is a stand-alone product that represents traceability for livestock. The swine version is called PigTrace. It's very important for us to get back into the market. I think, first of all, the best thing for North America is not to have ASF land in North America, and not t

Agriculture committee  On the last issue, we certainly agree with Manitoba that it's important to have a national agency. I think, as an issue of equity and fairness, since product going to the U.S. pays the fee, there should be a reciprocal agreement coming this way. Nationally they have a great plan

Agriculture committee  I'll take your last comment about backyard-raised pigs. It's a plausible scenario that in British Columbia, the farm-raised pigs could maybe be the place where ASF lands in this country. The zoning issue would be the most important next step. That would put the whole country off

Agriculture committee  All right. In conclusion, African swine fever could have catastrophic consequences for our producers. These risks underscore the importance of farm stabilization programs including AgriStability and AgriInvest, which help Ontario producers weather the volatility and uncertainty

Agriculture committee  Thank you.

Agriculture committee  Good morning. My name is John de Bruyn. I'm a pork producer with my family in Oxford County and somewhat saturated southwestern Ontario. I'm happy to be here today to present to this committee on the activities to prevent and respond to the threat of ASF for the Canadian swine i