The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement came into effect 21 September.

However, regulations which require the EU health mark be applied to pork at the production plant and the use of antimicrobial treatments not approved by the European Union continue to limit Canadian pork and beef access to Europe.

Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay told reporters participating in a teleconference yesterday during his trade mission to Germany, Belgium and Italy, the visit gave him an opportunity to discuss such issues.

Lawrence MacAulay-Canada Agriculture Minister

It gave me a great opportunity meeting all the ministers here in the EU in order to bring up the issues that we had but, in Parma, Italy we Canadian producers or producer representatives meet with the beef and pork importers.

It was really the first time they got together and I think it was an excellent time.

As I've always said, if you look with our business partners eye to eye, you can resolve issues.

There's always going to be issues and we have a number of issues to bring up and they have issues to bring up.

Obviously we open doors to the farmers and we'll continue to work hard on any of the issues that are there but it's obvious that both sides are quite interested in making sure that this is a very successful venture.

As you know it opens the doors for agriculture to about 1.5 billion dollars extra which is of great importance to our GDP and very important to our agricultural sector.

I feel it's my job to help open markets.

Mr MacAulay says, in Parma, it was great to have the purchasers and the producers looking eye to eye and they'll be talking back and forth.

He says Government can help but they have to work out a lot of things themselves.