Thank you, Mr. Just. Our next speaker is Steve Sprinkle who will be followed by David Hugo. I mention as Steve is making his way up that we also have received written and prepared testimony from Mel Pitachick (ph)) with the Farm Equipment Dealers Association that will also be in your packets.

MR. SPRINKLE:

Thanks very much for the opportunity to address the audience and the august members of government that are here to listen to us. Interestingly enough, I suppose since it’s at the end of the day it befalls me somewhat to create a summary. I guess I would put it generally under the heading of relevancy of government, because as the former speaker and a number of other folks just mentioned the market itself is taking off and we’re caught in a system now in which there is an awful lot of acceleration going on. For the last three years I’ve been bird dogging the genetically modified organism issue. I’m a certified organic farmer and I’ve been a organic farmer since 1976. Some of you might say, well, what in the world is this organic guy doing here? As a matter of fact, organic farmers are the accidental beneficiaries of all of the maladies that are now befalling conventional farming. In other words, the market for organic food is blowing up in Europe chiefly because the people in the UK and the European Union don’t want to eat genetically modified food. So I’m not disingenuous in saying that I’m here also to defend family farms because I was once a conventional farmer myself. I would also say I’m probably the only person in this room who has raised bananas commercially in Hawaii. And I wondered why in the world it was my government that does not have a single commercial banana field to represent that wanted to do battle over somebody else’s bananas. But the market itself is creating segregation and it’s not really something so small as organic anymore. Everyone has heard of Unilever. Everyone has heard of Nestle. They have independently and arbitrarily decided that they are going to elect to segregate and to label or to even keep it out of their products. And we’re talking about an awful lot of candy bars. We’re talking about an awful lot of processed products. Soy lecithin which is in many products now is going to be either segregated or is not going to end up on the food shelves in many European countries, as well as in Japan. And whoa betide us, once that great sleeping giant, the American consumer, wakes up and figures out that there might be something of interest here that we might want to take a look at. I’d like to remind you that it was exactly one year ago that they were counting up the largest number of public responses to a proposed rule ever issued by the United States Department of Agriculture, it was the proposed rule on the national organic program issued on the 17th of December 1997. 270,000 U.S. citizens got up of their chair and sent an e-mail or a letter or went to a hearing and said, we do not want to have genetically modified organisms be part of the organic paradigm, be part of organic standards. That was probably the first time this ever hit the radar and since that time you have much more consumer education going on. And I have been following this and writing about it, as I write professionally for a national agricultural journal called Acres USA and I’ve also worked professionally, for instance, as a member of the United States delegation of the Codek Alimentarius Committee that last met in Ottawa. And I can tell you this is a burning question. It’s not one that can be brushed off easily. I’m afraid that we’ve probably bought into something and that we’re -- we’re carrying water for a very, a very slim and very small sector of the input manufacturers which really have done a great injustice to our rural communities. So I think that by now it seems to me that almost a market itself is overcoming whatever kind of regulation and labeling might ever be imposed either through the World Trade Organization or country to country. Consumers are now determining what they’re -- what they want to buy and essentially the genie is out of the bottle and the case is being carried now so much so that of all things someone like me has become conversant, cognizant, actually somewhat expert in genetic gene transfer, transgenic manipulation and hooking viruses onto attributes of crops that we want to change genetically whereas most of my training has been in manure management. So I find it’s really incredibly ironic that we should have come to this point now. And fair warning, I also wanted to say that I’m much in favor and I do support the incredibly heartfelt words of Mr. Thullner, Mr. Ukert, Mr. Kloucek and Mr. Winter and also Jodi Slocum. And I think that as these trade meetings go on in Indianapolis and in Des Moines and in other cities I think that we’re going to see many more farmers, of course, address other issues that are important to them and their region, but I think that we’re going to see an awful lot more folks that are going to be able to speak to these issues and refute the idea that sound science has been used to sell and to promote these products. Thanks very much for your time.