Fisheries committee  Yes. We're having talks with the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro about doing research for different kinds of feed. We're more excited about the report we received from China saying give us bigger animals, butcher them like a hog, send us loins, ribs, and so on. The Newfoundland export has been the beater, the small juvenile, which is really not a good product.

Fisheries committee  Yes, I think with proper monitoring it can be done so that it's sensitive to the ecology of Sable Island. I also think--and there are a lot of people in the industry and among the general population who feel this way--we used to have a common seal herd out there that has now been driven off the island.

Fisheries committee  I wish I knew the answer to that. DFO is the regulatory body, and a lot of the management of the seal hunt is based upon the harp seal. I was in St. John's in November for the seal forum, and we received the booklet of questions and issues from DFO. There was very little on grey seals and almost everything on harp seals.

Fisheries committee  That's true. We're meeting with DFO in the Maritimes region in another week.

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  Absolutely not. If the goal of DFO is to have the herd expand, then that's a good harvest level. If the goal of DFO is to hold the herd at the level it is now, it's questionable. But at that level of harvest, as I said, 50,000 pups were born on Sable Island alone. If you harvest 10,000, you're not cutting into the population growth.

Fisheries committee  I think that we need to have commercial markets. I don't think the Canadian population nor the government have the stomach for a cull, although in other countries they do cull the animals, but we need to build the markets for meat and pelts. We can do that. I think we need to have an annual quota that is going to exceed by a considerable amount the number of pups born each year.

Fisheries committee  A herd can be sustainable at numbers other than the number you have now. The number 350,000 is one number. You could have a herd, as the U.K. has, of 100,000, and you could sustain a herd at 100,000. The sustainable number depends on what your population target is. Again I would say that we from the industry don't have PhDs, so when we talk to government people or to the media and a scientist talks to the government or the media people, I guess we're not received with the same credibility, but we see it every day.

Fisheries committee  That's a good question and it certainly deserves a full answer.

Fisheries committee  I'm well aware of the eminent panel. I was asked to appear, but was unable to do so. One of our processors took a tray of cod and haddock in that was loaded with worms to show one impact. I think that deserved about a paragraph in the eminent panel report. I understand one of the comments from some of the people on that was that it was just protein.

Fisheries committee  I want the allocation that we have for 10,000 grey seals over two years, which will expire. We need that continued and perhaps increased if we're able to supply the market. I anticipate that we'll handle the problems that we have with harvesting the animals. We need a scientific forum where we can discuss the grey seals in particular—not harp seals, but grey seals—and what their impact on the ecosystem and the commercial fishery is.

Fisheries committee  Thank you, Mr. Stoffer. You will have to keep me on track. There are several questions that you asked. I would just like to comment, first of all, that seals have lots of places to go in the ocean. Radio transmitters have been put on some grey seals from the Sable Island herd. What we find, not surprisingly, is that they hang around the fishing banks and the coastal waters.

Fisheries committee  The biggest problem we have in seafood processing and exports in Nova Scotia is not enough raw material. We could export more fish, more shellfish; we just don't have it. We're not going to have fish either. As far as the U.S. humane society's boycott, our members are not seeing a great effect from it.

Fisheries committee  Thank you for that question. My objective today, and something I'd like to leave the committee with, is I'm hoping DFO will continue to give the allocation to the Grey Seal Research and Development Society. I would like to see a scientific forum with industry on ecosystem and commercial fisheries impacts.

Fisheries committee  Nobody has rolled up their sleeves. DFO hasn't. The province hasn't. It's been left to the industry. We have some resources. Fishermen's organizations contribute processors, and we have a lot of volunteer work. It's been very difficult. Nobody wants to deal with this issue. And without DFO recognizing that there is an impact on our fish stocks and on our commercial fishery by these 12-month-a-year grey seals, we'll never get there.