Agriculture committee  There's a list, and I'm sorry I don't have it with me. There's a regulation under the meat labelling act that lists the processes that constitute minimal processing, and some of them are slicing, cutting, and those sorts of things. Basically, if you were to bring in a whole rib-

Agriculture committee  Right. We have difficulty where people start to misuse and misrepresent that. If somebody takes imports that are either Australian or American muscle cut and cuts them into steaks, we have a problem if they then label those steaks as Canadian, because that is not lawful.

Agriculture committee  We think the definition of “Product of Canada” needs some updating from its 51% value-based approach to more of a transformation-based approach, and of course the education enforcement needs to be looked at as well.

Agriculture committee  We view everything in terms of regulations we have in Canada. Do we want to face those same regulations in other countries? As I said, we export about 1.3 million head of cattle into the U.S. per year. In 2007 we imported just over 5,000 head. In 2006 we imported just over 7,000

Agriculture committee  The rules of origin in NAFTA are based on tariff change. A live animal is classified in chapter 1 of the tariff; raw meat is classified in chapter 2 of the tariff. NAFTA says if you change the chapter from an imported animal into beef, then the beef has the origin of the country

Agriculture committee  And that's our argument under the U.S. COOL and why we believe U.S. COOL violates NAFTA. We say that if a Canadian animal is slaughtered in the United States, that's U.S. beef.

Agriculture committee  That is the proposal right now, and that's why we believe COOL violates NAFTA.

Agriculture committee  I don't think the proper response to a violation of our trade rights is for us to also violate the same agreement. We believe the Government of Canada should be challenging that U.S. law and hopefully getting a panel report that would cause the United States to bring that measure

Agriculture committee  It needs to have become beef in Canada.

Agriculture committee  I'm making a distinction between cattle and beef.

Agriculture committee  If you're talking about raw beef, which is in chapter 2 of the tariff, it has to be totally Canadian beef, not necessarily from Canadian cattle but Canadian beef.

Agriculture committee  Right. If you're going to call it Canadian, it has to be Canadian.

Agriculture committee  I'm not sure if you mean a percentage of value.

Agriculture committee  I don't even mean a percentage. In the example I used, when you have ground beef that has imported ground beef, it's not Canadian, so it can't be called Canadian, period. That's what we'd be saying on that. I think probably in this room--and I don't think anybody has mentioned i

Agriculture committee  In the context I tried to present at the beginning, most of the beef in Canada is Canadian beef, and most of it comes from cattle that are produced in Canada. What we wanted to establish were two levels: “Product of Canada” and “Grown in Canada”. Each of these requires some tra