MR. RAIHL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, you do have the correct pronunciation of that name and I thank you for that.

I do represent the Montana Feed Association, both manufacturers, independent manufacturers, and corporation manufacturers. Our concern, very strongly, is the preservation of agriculture and the livestock producer, particularly within the State of Montana and these northern tier states. We have beef manufacturers that are going broke not because the producers aren't buying the feed, but because the product is coming by the truckload out of Canada. In order for Canadian manufacturers to sell in the State of Montana, all they have to do is get a license, a feed distributor license. For manufacturers, whether it be small independents on the northern border or larger manufacturers, to ship into Canada is a tremendous amount of red tape and some of the companies have just washed their hands of it and decided not to do anything about it. But in retaliation, we have truckloads upon truckloads and train loads of manufactured commodity by-products coming into this state to our producers. And we don't blame our producers for doing it because in some cases it's $50 a ton less. They need to survive. But our small agribusiness in the community needs to survive also.

Part of the problem here is in the dairy industry. The dairy industry cannot export any milk or butter or cheese products to Canada. But yet they can come to this country and supply the dairymen. We need better access of cattle to Canada. I just took part in the Montana/Alberta trade conference, and the Canadian producers very strongly want access year round to US feeder cattle; particularly, Montana and Wyoming, but with the nonvector season rules only from the first of October until the end of March. Well, the price of cattle when the Canadian producers are starting to buy, it will significantly affect the feeder calf price. Last fall it affected it from $3 to $5, but that's not until October and November and December.

There's too many protective Canadian laws, and part of this is the dairy products, which is part of the WTO. Part of it is the livestock industry, which is also part of the WTO. Open trade barriers and economics handle the flow. Is it better for northern tier cattle to go to the Midwest to our feed lots and processors? Or is it more economically feasible to take northern tier cattle across the border, which is much closer for processing? And I realize there is a big issue here on numbers of cattle going in and coming back, but it seems like the cattle flow is one way, and that's from north to south. Transportation is another problem on major transportation byways, whether it be highways or whether it be railways, in these northern tier states.

In order to settle all of this, and I realize this isn't an issue with the World Trade Organizatin or with the USDA, but currency values have got to change in order for this to work. We can knock down the trade barriers, we can have free flow of products, chemical, grain, pesticides, cattle back and forth across the border. But until these currency values are more equalized, it isn't going to work either. Thank you.

MR. NELSON: Ray, thank you. Any questions or comments for Ray?

MR. GALVIN: Appreciate your testimony, Ray. I was wondering if you have some more detailed information you can send us on the licensing and other requirements that are imposed on those who want to send manufactured feed into Canada? It would be very helpful to have that. As part of this agreement we have with Canadians, we do sit down and meet with them twice a year and we go through the whole list of current issues and information along those lines would be very helpful to us. I'm sure Sharon would appreciate it a lot.

MS. LAURITSEN: I would just like to add, if we could have that in August, that would be useful.

MR. RAIHL: I think we can put that together. Thank you so much.

MR. SCHROEDER: A quick comment again on the theme that you've been making several times here, and that is trade agreements are not the "be-all" and the "end-all." The comments touching currency exchanges, I can recall years ago asking somebody why the Yen was going up against the dollar or why the Rial was going down against the dollar? And the guy said, well, you know there are about 12 people in the world that know about these currency evaluations and six of them are somewhere in Switzerland. I got to tell you, this is a big problem. We sat down and made NAFTA with the Mexicans, and the next day the Peso went from 2 or 3 to 1 to 9 to 1. And it's a whole new ball game. And I don't know what we do about that, the Department of Agriculture. Quite frankly, I'm not sure the guys in the Treasury Department or Allen Greenspan know how these things work. Again, we try on trade agreements to do what we can, but some of these things are beyond our jurisdiction and power.