Few things have more impact than nutrition on a child's ability to survive, learn effectively and escape a life of poverty.

The demand for beef in Canada remains strong because I think people in America, in North America, know that we have a very strong food safety system and that our food is safe to eat.

We are doing everything we can to protect the food supply. And I can tell you that we're making decisions based upon sound science and good public policy, given the circumstances that we are now in.

I think it's important that, as a matter of course, the brain and spinal column were removed from this cow, and that would be the material that would cause concern in terms of human health. And therefore we're confident in the safety of the food supply.

We've had risk assessments performed by Harvard University, which said that even if we did have a small number of cases in this country that the likelihood of it spreading or getting into any kind of human health problem is very, very small.

I also believe that it's the right thing to do, to maintain strong consumer confidence in our food systems. And I believe that the consumer should have strong confidence in our food systems.

Actually, in this instance we do have probably a better tracking system than was the instance in Canada. Because this is a dairy cow, they're all individually tagged.