SALLIE ATKINS: Good morning, and I would like to thank Governor Johanns, Senators Hagel, Kerrey, Congressman Barrett, Director Carlson for allowing me to come here and testify today. I thank you, Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Murphy for being here to hear our testimony.

My name is Sallie Atkins. I'm a cow/calf producer from the heart of cattle country, the Nebraska Sandhills.

My beef industry involvement has included many volunteer roles through the years, most recently becoming the Executive Director of the Nebraska Beef Council. And I'm pleased to say that through the years and thanks to a role model like Merlyn Carlson who is a past chairman of ours, we've been able to recognize the importance of export enhancement, and international marketing has been a priority for our board for quite sometime.

In production ag, we have a proclivity to let others worry about issues that aren't in our backyard at times. But we need to realize that exports create such an opportunity for us in production ag to be able to achieve profitability that we need to take a keen interest in what's going on. Nebraska works very closely with organizations that are skilled in these matters like the U.S. Meat Export Federation to enhance our opportunities and add value throughout the beef production processing and global marketing system. Production ag brings $9 billion to Nebraska's economy. So it's very important that those of us in production ag take a keen interest.

USMEF is based in Denver, has offices in 11 countries outside the U.S.. The U.S. government -- or USMEF uses government and private funding to conduct export market development, promotion programs for the U.S. red meat industry in over 50 foreign markets. In addition, MEF works closely with the U.S. government to identify and resolve trade policy and market access issues affecting red meat exports.

Over the past ten years, U.S. red meat exports have experienced unprecedented growth. Beef exports have increased 120 percent and pork exports grew 212 percent. The starting point of much of this growth was a series of market opening initiatives that gave U.S. exporters access to markets that had been closed to them in the past. Notable examples of such market access agreements include the Japan beef and citrus agreement and the NAFTA and Uruguay Round agreements.

Each of these trade policy breakthroughs resulted from a close collaborative partnership between the U.S. government and red meat industry. The time and resources that both parties contributed to achieving these agreements reflect a recognition of the critical role the exports will play in the future health of the U.S. red meat industry. They also reflect a shared commitment to opening markets and building on the competitive advantages that U.S. ag enjoys in the global marketplace.

The Uruguay Round agreement was a milestone in the ongoing struggle to freer global trading environment for ag and food products. The Uruguay Round established disciplines in areas of export subsidies, domestic support, and market access. And it should be the basis for negotiating further liberalization of ag trade in the next round of negotiations. Within the Uruguay Round framework, the red meat industry has identified the following negotiating priorities.

Export subsidies. Complete elimination of export subsidies is the industry's top priority for the next round. Stricter disciplines and tougher enforcement mechanisms should be established to prevent the emergence of new schemes to circumvent the WTO rules. For example, prior to the start of the Uruguay Round implementation period, the EU dumped over a million tons of beef onto export markets by selling beef out of the intervention stocks at a fraction of the buying-in and storage costs. This would still be legal under the Uruguay Round disciplines on export subsidies and the EU still has 600,000 tons of beef in intervention today.

For domestic support, the red meat industry recognizes the complexities of ag politics and acknowledges that the farm programs often are designed to meet social as well as economic objectives. Nonetheless, it is essential for the next trade round to accomplish much stricter disciplines on trade-distorting domestic support programs than was possible in the Uruguay Round.

The industry's top priority in this area is complete elimination of the so-called blue box protection for selected trade-distorting programs.

In market access, tariffication of many GATT illegal ag duties was one of the major accomplishments of the Uruguay Round. Nonetheless, many tariff duties on red meat are still unacceptably high. Existing duties in key export markets such as Japan and Korea must be reduced significantly.

In addition, red meat industries support establishing a ceiling on tariffs for all ag products in the next trade round similar to the ceiling that already exists for industrial products. Along with the ceiling, a target date needs to be set for reducing all tariffs to zero. Until this elimination of duties can be accomplished, existing tariff rate quotas must be expanded to permit growth in exports.

Finally, sanitary-phytosanitary measures have been talked about a lot, but it is critical to ensure the continued expansion of U.S. red meat exports. One measure of the soundness of the SPS agreement is the fact that other countries notably the EU would like to see the disciplines in the agreement relaxed to allow countries to maintain measures that are not based on science. To avoid this outcome, the red meat industry does not support opening the SPS agreement to further negotiation.

As I'm running out of time, I always want to address advances in biotechnology today that we have to go on establishing transparent, science-based rules.

Other market access and trade policies priorities need to be ascension into China to include Taiwan because it has the potential for being one of our leading markets.

Ensuring the effectiveness of the WTO settlement mechanism and additional government resources for market access are so key. To open markets and keep them open will require additional government resources.

The red meat industry requests that the USDA establish a team of experts that is dedicated solely to negotiate market opening, technical protocols, and responding to new access barriers when they are erected. And I wish you the best of luck.

Thank you for your time.