Health committee  The antibiotics we are using--especially the preventative ones--are for the most part class IV ionophores that have little or no human health relationship. So do we want to just reduce the amount of the ones that don't have a human connection, or are we more interested in finding

Health committee  This is preventative medicine. That is the point, and this is what we found in Europe. I'll ask Dr. Rosengren to talk about the European experience and what the real impact there is. As you move away from preventative antibiotics, if you have to treat a sick bird you're going to

Health committee  Yes, absolutely we do.

Health committee  Everything, every--

Health committee  We make sure that we have healthy birds. We have an on-farm food safety program that makes sure that we stop the introduction of bacteria. We try to reduce the load there. We have a different production system from what they have in the U.S. In our system, you clean out those bar

Health committee  With regard to CIPARS, I want to make it clear: Chicken Farmers of Canada has worked closely with CIPARS, and CIPARS itself wouldn't come to the same conclusions that Mr. Smith has. We've gone through this and this connection on ceftiofur in Quebec. CIPARS will admit it has done

Health committee  Yes. I think this is the key part. We keep talking about healthy birds and sick birds. When you have an incident in a barn and you have sick animals, you need to treat those animals. We have animal welfare regulations in this country that say you must treat that flock. Generally

Health committee  I think our point is we're working closely with CIPARS. CIPARS knows there's a gap in the data and CIPARS has a very rigorous testing process. That is the type of study that needs to be done, and we're getting there. One of the recommendations we would have before the committee

Health committee  That's fair to say, correct.

Health committee  That's correct, and this is one of the things that comes out in the study. It isn't just by antibiotic use that you develop resistance. That resistance is endemic out there. It comes in the environment. That's why from a management perspective, for example, for all of our flock

Health committee  It is very similar in the chicken industry. We put in place our on-farm program back in 1998, but it has been updated. It's the biosecurity part that is really doing it. In fact, we found that the biggest transmission and cause of bacteria entering is from other service industr

Health committee  This is where we think we need to understand for ourselves. Our farmers need to understand what that connection is. This is where we're talking about the CIPARS on-farm study. Where is that resistance coming from? We want to do the testing when those chicks arrive in the barn and

Health committee  Dr. Rosengren might add a couple of things, but I think there are a couple of points here. It isn't just the environment we're in, and that's a key part, but it's also the regulatory environment and what is approved. There are vaccines that are approved in some countries that ar

Health committee  Thank you for your questions, Mr. Malo. We have invested $5.1 million in the poultry industry, with all of this money going to research into antibiotic resistance and alternative solutions. Real discussions are underway. I'm going to switch to the other language, because this i

Health committee  That's right.