DR. SIDDIQUI: I think most of the speakers addressed the issues. I share total agreement with USDR and USDA that we should not allow EU to get away with those --

MR. BAAS: And the state.

Dr. SIDDIQUI: And the state. I'm sorry. I think you are aware that the policies that we are taking to task, the decisions made by WTO to the council where their ban was found to be not based on science, we have taken a step, but of course under the WTO dispute resolution process we have May 13th as the deadline if they did not comply. We must continue to authorize to suspend trade positions to EU be acknowledged. This also requires that we give them 30 days to petition and ask for our decision based on the above.

Secondly, we essentially believe in the U.S. position that we will exercise the rights under the review to go against those suspended concessions. Finally, I want to share with the audience, especially cattlemen and ranchers here, that the U.S. continues to take EU to task because we find U.S. beef grown with hormones is safe. There has been repeated conclusions by international committees and they did not find any health concerns with the use of those hormones, while EU continues to raise concerns -- that is just not recently. It was before when essentially there is no new information gathered but it made enough headlines in Europe and essentially what they're saying is there is some risk of cancer with the use of hormones. We have begun the process of countering and dividing that study. It is not a new study. It is essentially a rehashing of the same old arguments that are present in Europe.

MR. KELLY: I think what we might do is if there are any questions that the panel has of the audience we will do that, and then we will take individuals. We'll try to keep -- did you have a question?

MR. BAAS: I've got two questions I'd like to ask, if I might. The first one is to somebody, I guess, in the sugar business. My question is, as I understand the price situation, the world price of sugar is something in the 2 to 4 cent range whereas the U.S. price is somewhere around 18 to 22 cents, something like that. So I was very interested to hear the sugar industry folks say, "We're ready to compete with the foreigners as long as the playing field is level," and all that. We certainly share that desire that the playing field should be level.

I'm having a little trouble understanding how one can compete with that huge price difference. Surely -- maybe I'm wrong. Surely subsidies can't explain the price difference of that magnitude -- if I've got the prices correct.

MR. YANCEY: I'll try to answer the question for you.

MR. BAAS: Thank you.

MR. YANCEY: My name is Dalton Yancey and I represent the sugar farmers in south Florida, Hawaii and Texas. I'm a native of Florida. The current price of 4 1/2 cents for sugar, as you accurately reported, is the world price as you read in the Wall Street Journal every morning. That is a price that is a dumping price and represents all these other subsidies around the world that are creating excess production right now, and it also represents the Brazilian devaluation of the real a few months ago which knocked the price down about 2 cents right off the bat.

But if all the other sugar producing segments from around the world were to eliminate what they do in their industries, they would not be able to overproduce and the price of sugar would reach an equilibrium which is higher than the support price in the United States and we would do very well with that. So that's why we are for free trade, but we're for it if everybody does it. We're not going to jump off the bridge first. We all have to hold hands and jump off into the cold water of free trade together and we will do just fine because we are efficient, we've got good land, we've got good production practices, we have good varieties, and we've got the best market in the world right here in our backyard.

But in order to do that, we ask the trade negotiators to get rid of these other country's subsidy programs and bring them down where we are so that we can then compete -- and that's what it's all about in trade. It's competition. We can compete if the ground is level.

MR. BAAS: Thank you. If I could just ask a question of a citrus person. I understand that some of the Brazilian juice that comes in from Brazil or that the Brazilian juice generally does not taste as good as Florida juice -- I'm not surprised about that, Florida juice is excellent -- but that as a result, Florida juice is mixed with Brazilian juice so that Americans will, in fact, drink it. Is that true and if so, what sort of quantities are we talking about and what does that mean for the -- we've got some pretty dire information about the citrus industry here this morning, and I'm just curious what this means, if it's true, for the citrus industry. Not that I'm proposing that Brazil has free run of our citrus market, at all.

MR. GRIFFITH: I'm Jim Griffith. I've been here since 1946. I don't believe it's fair to say that Brazilian juice that comes in here is not good juice or not as good as a lot of what we produce. They do produce good orange juice and our standards are such that they by-and-large bring in juice. Actually, there are times that the Brazilian juice has been used to improve the color of some of our low color, early produced oranges. Well, I guess that answers your question.

MR. BAAS: It does answer it. Thank you.

MR. KELLY: Thank you, Mr. Griffith. Any other questions from the panel, comments? Dr. Siddiqui.

DR. SIDDIQUI: While we're waiting for somebody to raise a question, maybe you could answer another concern. Several speakers mentioned about the number of pests found in Florida. The U.S. Board of Agriculture inspection services is also concerned about a repeated medfly and citrus canker infestation. I want to assure you USDA is an equal role partner in those negotiation efforts because we believe that these pests if they are established anywhere in the U.S., in Florida or elsewhere, makes our job -- the USDR and the State Department's job difficult to convince trading partners toward -- for any excuse to deny us access to their markets. So I know we share your concerns.

But I think after reducing these infestations to something, I think the jury is still out. We've had infestations of medfly in California and even in Florida, so I think that these infestations are coming because there is more trade. There is also more travellers. Both Americans and foreigners are coming to our shores and I think there is a lot of evidence that some of these infestations are getting in because of the travel in the world -- travel is a lot faster than it used to be.

Senator Bob Graham and the folks at USDA set a 40 member panel, a team of scientists, regulatory officials, some of the folks from Florida agriculture -- Richard Gaskella was one of the members of the subcommittee. They said regarding Florida is already supposed to come along -- this is going to evaluate the effectiveness of USDA's agricultural reporting program and make the conditions what can be done to strengthen and safeguard U.S. agriculture. So I want to assure you that both USDA and the Florida Department of Agriculture is working very closely in terms of reviewing this problem and hopefully finding some solutions.

MR. KELLY: Mr. Baas.

MR. BAAS: Thank you. One more question I just came up with here. I think Congresswoman Thurman and a number of other people mentioned the necessity or the importance of having a specialty sort of safeguard procedure for perishable products, and I can understand intellectually why that would be desirable and an interesting thing to have.

What I don't understand, having not thought about it very long, is how that might work. I would appreciate if either now or later if somebody who has thought about this a little bit could provide us with some ideas about how this might work in writing or if, in fact, someone has ideas already now, so that we can get the benefit from your thoughts. Thank you.

MR. STUART: Well, I think it's a great question and if we could just go back a little bit in history, particularly during the negotiations in NAFTA and also during the negotiations in the Uruguay Round there was a lot of discussion about coming up with some type of a special safeguard that would specifically address some of the unique characteristics of fruit and vegetable production or perishable seafood production of agricultural products.

What was arrived at within the NAFTA was basically a cookie-cutter approach, basically the tariff or quota approach, which basically dealt with volume. It didn't account for the rapid fluctuations in perishability of the industry. So what we have abdicated historically going all the way back into the U.S./Canada Free Trade Agreement, is some type of a mechanism that is sensitive to price. Offer some type of an issue, whether it's a five-year floating average of prices or some type of an immediate trigger that doesn't require any kind of an injury determination.

That's what we suggested in the past. Again, during the NAFTA debate they wanted to use the TRQ or Tariff Rate Quota approach and apply it across all commodities, and that simply has not worked for an industry that relies and has such a quick change in market conditions almost on an hourly basis.

MR. BAAS: Just if I could pursue that point for a second. So one thought you have is you might take, for example, a five year moving average of the price of tomatoes and then if the price goes 10 percent lower or 20 percent lower than that price that would give an automatic trigger for a brief safeguard?

MR. STUART: Conceptually, that was the kind of mechanism that was utilized in the U.S./Canada Free Trade Agreement. The problem we have, quite frankly, from a trade and information standpoint is our trade statistics can not keep up with the speed at which the marketplace moves. That's the problem historically we've had with that.

The other example I'll throw out to you is conceptually what we've used in the tomato dispute, which is basically a floor price. That is not the end-all or necessarily the cure of the situation, but it is to help substantially in stabilizing the market at very low levels.

MR. BAAS: Thank you.

MR. KELLY: Okay. Do we have any others? Mr. Griffith.

MR. GRIFFITH: If I might, I need to distribute something.

MR. KELLY: While he's distributing that, anybody who is interested in speaking, if you will move close and then we'll be ready to go. We'll try to limit this as much as possible so that everybody gets a chance to say something, so please limit it to three or four minutes, if possible.