Agriculture committee  I'm saying that there have been all kinds of reports from Europeans that their farmers would take action against the imports of Canadian beef and pork and so on. It's been in the media; I'm not inventing this. I'm saying that we haven't done that, right? Quite frankly, we're be

Agriculture committee  I must admit that I find it quite interesting that Europe is giving away one-half of 1% for beef and pork and is threatening to pour chemicals on the loads as they arrive at the ports. They have a huge amount of concern over one-half of 1% of access, while everybody here says, “W

Agriculture committee  That's retail, and that's 60% of that $425,000. You have to make a distinction again that retail is about 63% of the total $425,000. That is growing at about 1.6% per year.

Agriculture committee  Geographical indication is really a European system. Most of our cheese makers today use trademarks. We get protection of our names through trademarks or standards of identity for what I call the “common name”, which is one of the issues we have: how protected is it?

Agriculture committee  Imports of different kits and blends that we've been opposing have taken part of that market. Margaret referred to the financial difficulty the country went into. We saw a major drop in the restaurant sector, which affected the fine cheese as well as the industrial cheese. There

Agriculture committee  One of the difficulties we've had over the marketing in this country with the products in what we call a standard of identity—which is a regulation that declares what cheddar is—and all the cheese we have is that what you see on the market is cheddar “style”, or cheese “product”,

Agriculture committee  On the little milk containers, check next time, because I'm sure none of you have noticed. They don't call them “milk” or “cream” anymore; they're called “milker” or “creamer”. This is not milk or cream. It's milk and cream that has permeate added, which is lactose, and it no lon

Agriculture committee  The farmers invest all together. In DFC we have $80 million in marketing and nutrition, but overall the farmers invest $110 million across the country on generic advertising, school milk programs, and nutrition programs. We have been focusing primarily on cheese and fluid milk—th

Agriculture committee  Yes, that would be industrial cheese. Everything that is non-retail, and that has been very flat. So that would be further processed products for the restaurants, the pizza cheese, etc.

Agriculture committee  The European CAP is $80 billion. That's what most of the uncoupled payments are, paid to the farmers in Europe. This is not just dairy; this is the overall agricultural sector receiving that. But do the math. Even on a prorated basis, that's a significantly bigger investment than

Agriculture committee  As I said, there could be some very high-value market niches that can probably get there, but we would be talking about extremely small volume. For the rest of it, we're not in a competitive environment that provides for it.

Agriculture committee  Are you telling me that the shelf space in the stores is all going to increase? The reality is that you have a 50,000-tonne cheese market right now. There's the fine cheese in this country, and that grows by 500 tonnes. In five years, you're bringing 3,200 tonnes into a market th

Agriculture committee  There will be displacement, whichever way you look at it.

Agriculture committee  Yes, but that's not the cheese you're importing.

Agriculture committee  We've said it very clearly: the producers are investing to grow that market, and you're saying it's okay, we're just going to give all the growth of that total market. The reality is that the competition is not going to be in the total market; the competition will be in the marke