Agriculture committee  I think one of the challenges we've had is that there are so many different people who have authority over different parts of this whole puzzle. CFIA is certainly responsible for the regulations themselves, the technical pieces, and ultimately compliance. Agriculture Canada has always held the money, the provinces are responsible for disposal, and in some cases disposal is going to rest on municipalities for landfills.

Agriculture committee  I was just going to reiterate some of that. We can absolutely be ready for July 12. In fact, we're going to have to be largely ready for May 1. We know from our conversations with the largest packers in the country that they'll be ready even for May 1 to segregate their lines. The real issue, though, is that we're going to have to be very creative about where we put all this stuff come May 1, or July 12, and all the time in between.

Agriculture committee  The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, as I mentioned, has formed a task force to head up coordination of the ban. This is a daunting task, because it really is just coordination; in many cases, they have no authority to make the provinces do anything. Their chairman, Freeman Libby, is actually travelling across the country, even as we speak.

Agriculture committee  We have to meet the July 12 deadline. If we don't, then we lose tremendous credibility with international markets. What we certainly said in our report, though, is that it's highly unlikely at this stage that we're going to have permanent infrastructure in place for July 12. We need to work together with the provinces and with the federal government to have what we're calling transitional measures, but we have to have some disposal mechanism for this material on July 12.

Agriculture committee  Effectively the regulations come into being on July 12 for all of the industries that are affected, and that's completely unrealistic. Our final objective is to get this material off the farm and out of the feed system as much as possible on July 12, so we have to back it up. What we're recommending to our members is that they go to their suppliers and ask their suppliers to have SRM-free material available to them on May 1.

Agriculture committee  You're correct. I think it's fair to say that there has been some progress in the last few months, but given the size of the task and how daunting it is, the progress certainly hasn't been enough to track us to July 12 in a safe way.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I'm Kathleen Sullivan, the general manager of the Animal Nutrition Association of Canada. ANAC is the trade association that represents manufacturers of livestock and poultry feeds across the country. Our members represent approximately 90% of the commercial feed manufactured in this country.

Agriculture committee  My apologies. We have been pleased to work with our industry partners and also with government officials on this initiative. Throughout this process, ANAC has been a leader in its support for the new ban, and we will continue to be leaders in ensuring that the ban is implemented by July 12 of this year.