Agriculture committee  Again, that was a serendipitous thing. One of the principals in the company at the time had a friend in Panama. It was cheaper to acquire the facility, or to at least lease the facility for R and D, than it would have been to build a brand new facility from scratch in either Canada or the United States.

Agriculture committee  The original problem was superchill. That would have been in an ocean-based facility. When the research developed the AquAdvantage salmon, it dawned on everyone quite quickly that escape was going to be a major concern. That's why the company invested in the technologies of using only female sterile fish in a land-based facility, because the whole idea of land-based is that now you've isolated and contained your fish, so they're not going anywhere.

Agriculture committee  We don't believe that labelling really adds anything. The experts who have reviewed our salmon have found that it's equivalent in every way to an Atlantic salmon. Why would you label something that's exactly the same?

Agriculture committee  Other markets? Yes. We have trials now in Argentina and in Brazil.

Agriculture committee  I think the Canadian system is far superior to what we experienced in the United States.

Agriculture committee  It's a very rational package. You submit all of your data at once, and you're going to get a response within a certain period of time. With the United States, it's more phased in, so it takes a little bit longer. In our case, we were the first to go through the process. We didn't really have a process, so a lot of time was consumed just figuring out what the data package was going to be.

Agriculture committee  In my mind, no. The genetics are the same. I think that with animals we don't have the same problems. We don't have wind pollination. We don't have to worry about these outside things. Plants would be in a field. They're out in the open environment. Ours are contained. They're basically going to be contained all their lives.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to speak to the committee today on this issue that you're studying, genetically modified animals for human consumption. I'm the director of communications for AquaBounty. By way of background, I have a Master of Science degree in parasitology from McGill University; a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture, majoring in renewable resources development, also from McGill; and a diploma in agriculture technology from Kemptville College, which was part of the University of Guelph until it was let go.