Agriculture committee  I should really defer that question to the federal experts on this, because that's their jurisdiction. But I certainly believe we are on par with the Americans—

Agriculture committee  —in terms of our systems. I do believe we have taken steps far in excess of what they've been prepared to do to date.

Agriculture committee  This is not a food safety issue we're talking about here today, though. I'd just like to reiterate that.

Agriculture committee  It is a concern for us. We have two federally inspected plants and 12 provincially inspected ones and a large number of health-inspected plants in the province. The health-inspected plants, I would suggest, are the most likely to have the lowest economies of scale, and therefor

Agriculture committee  We haven't been informed of the process by which the allocations were made. We understand the allocation for Saskatchewan is $11 million from the federal government and we have our 40% on top of that, but we don't know the process by which the interjurisdictional allocations were

Agriculture committee  Just to reiterate our points again, the two federally inspected slaughter plants account for over 95% of our slaughter in the province. So when we talk about the other 85 or so plants in the province, we are talking of smaller numbers—very small numbers in some cases. Those who

Agriculture committee  Just to address the issue of technology and the handling of the SRMs, I would like to add that we have one of the newest plants in Canada in Saskatchewan, Natural Valley Farms in Neudorf. They have a solution that sees almost the entirety of the SRMs, and in fact all the animal w

Agriculture committee  For our stakeholders, the primary issue is to make sure they have a solution that satisfies CFIA, in terms of the federal regulation, and that they have plans in place that will do so, except for some fine-tuning. We have been providing some verbal comfort to them with regard to

Agriculture committee  The transition period we're talking about is not so much a matter of storage, but that while the plants are in transition, while they're cleaning out the system and finishing construction, everything out of the plant will be considered an SRM and will go to the renderer as an SRM

Agriculture committee  Good afternoon. I am pleased to be here to represent Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food. I have with me Paul Johnson, who is the manager of our policy branch. With Canada's second-largest cattle herd, about 21.7% of the national total, the subject we are discussing today is of