Agriculture committee  I'd say each country has its own set of non-tariff barriers. In the global meat trade, meat will be like water; it will follow the path of least resistance. Where it starts encountering resistance, the industry has to decide whether there is enough market potential there to actua

Agriculture committee  I apologize. Labelling in what sense, country-of-origin labelling or just—

Agriculture committee  It's something we certainly are following. Certainly, our further processors and processors that do, essentially, processed meat and whatnot are paying close attention to that. They're in a much better position to comment directly on that than I would be. I sincerely apologize.

Agriculture committee  I want to add something. One of the merits of NAFTA has been that it has brought governments together, both Canada and the U.S. Usually, there are areas where things get contentious and there are disagreements. However, moving forward and while trade agreements are helpful and

International Trade committee  Certainly, I would say, one piece of infrastructure that is in the process of being developed is pre-clearance and e-certification. That's moving forward. We're an industry that does ship—basically meat and live animals—across the border. There are some steps already in place to

International Trade committee  There are some differences in the three countries. One example is building codes. We have a winter climate here, so we have more robust farm structures compared to what may be available in other countries. At the same time, we do rely on the CFIA and their food inspection to ensu

International Trade committee  Fortunately, there are a number of standards on how hogs are raised, so there wouldn't be very much of a difference between the three.

International Trade committee  Actually, that has been one of the successes of NAFTA. It has basically been encouraging governments to align some of their regulations and processes over the past several years. This is one of the dangers if NAFTA is essentially dismantled or if we come to have an agreement with

Agriculture committee  We've had some discussion around the table on that. Some of our producers, a big group of them, would say that it's not worth applying for. It's basically one feed shipment that they would recover. On the flip side, there are perhaps some smaller producers or medium-sized produce

Agriculture committee  Certainly, both in the processing plant and even on farms, we have to have an environment that generates interest, whether it's attracting people from the rural community, or attracting people from urban communities to work within that atmosphere. That is one of the challenges. I

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. We have seen some of our processing plants independently make investments on their own. It's usually with some of the manufacturing equipment to adapt to labour issues, which are ongoing. But for the most part, most of our processing plants are running slightly under

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. I will point out that some of the obstacles are the availability of land and the cost. When a hog barn is constructed or contemplated, there are several processing steps involved, to be more precise. Essentially, you have the land; you place the barn. What are you go

Agriculture committee  Certainly, coming from the east coast, producers are innovative. They've been well in advance of some of the trends within the industry in the past 15 years that I've been with the pork industry, and they continue to be. These regulations would make it difficult to be innovative.

Agriculture committee  I was just going to add that producers are responsible for the animals they raise. Most of the commodities have on-farm handling procedures on how to move animals from one pen to another, or moving from their farm onto a truck. That's where training comes into play. Bearing in mi