MR. HANDLEY: No problem. I'll be real short and quick. I'm Jim Handley. I'm the Executive Vice-President of the Florida Cattlemen's Association. Right before lunch you heard from our President Larry Bartle. We're a grass roots organization that is comprised of ranchers in the state of Florida.

I just want to summarize a few points that most of the speakers have mentioned already today. One point about Florida agriculture -- many, many of our producers are quite diverse in their operations. People that are in the cattle business also have citrus groves. People that have sugarcane also have cattle. People that have fruit and vegetable operations also have cattle. They are real diverse, so things that affect one commodity group certainly affect the other.

There are three main themes that I feel as though have come out here today that we hope that you all leave here with, the first one being out in the real world the producers seem to get frustrated with some of the agreements that are in place that aren't being fully implemented. I think the point is that we don't need any additional agreements until we enforce some of the agreements that we have in place.

The European ban, the hormone ban in Europe is a major frustration in the cattle world. If they don't respond and comply with the way I understand the ruling to be, then I think we will hope to implement some retaliatory measures to maybe make them reconsider and open their market to us and quit protecting us and shutting us out. It's getting extremely serious, and if we're going to maintain viable, profitable agriculture enterprises across the board to all commodity groups, we've got to have fair trade. We've got to have consistent profitability and not just little windows of profitability. I think it was a good point on one of the slides that was shown about the loss of equity. That is definitely occurring.

In Florida we're fortunate because we have such a development state. On one hand we're fortunate. In many cases, land values go up and people survive that way. But we can't continue to count on that. Another point is taking care of our domestic market. We mentioned the labelling, country of origin labelling. The overwhelming majority of U.S. consumers, we believe will buy and purchase U.S. grown beef -- it's the safest in the world -- if they have the opportunity to make that buying decision at the retail counter.

Then the other issue concerning our domestic -- taking care of our domestic market is the foreign pest, invasive pest controlling our ports. That's about as much of an opening of trade applying a tariff, but it is paying attention to what is coming in here. The cattle industry is fortunate. We aren't suffering like the citrus people are. They are fighting a big one. We could have a rival on our shores, some of the same -- some problems of the same magnitude if we don't tighten the ports.

With that, I really appreciate you all taking the time to come to Florida to recognize the magnitude of agriculture here. It is a huge industry and it is important to the state. We really, really appreciate you all going to bat for us and arguing on ag's behalf. Thank you.

(Applause.)