Mr. Bell.

MR. BELL: Thank you.

Secretary Schumacher, Commissioner Rogers and Mr. Graves and Mr. Cummings, my name is William Bell and I live in Maine. I know some of you through my work. I'm here today in another position, which is General Manager of New England Brown Egg Council. And apart from my prepared text, I'll try and put a face on what I have to say.

As a side, Secretary Schumacher, we realize that the poultry industry benefits the feed process but historically those benefits are short lived and we have come to the end of that line. Our producers throughout the country have expanded knowing that these feed prices -- so you now have some very low egg prices, some historically low egg prices until the recent comeback. And even though our members probably won't readily admit it, as an economist we appreciate that in the long run we do better with rising feed prices, once the egg prices catch up with them, than we do in falling feed prices.

Just up the road here in Colchester is Shadow Cross Farms. Richard Packett runs a very excellent operation in cooperation with poultry farms across New York State. Dick Packett has probably never packed an egg for export, he probably never will. But he is a small producer, benefits just as much from the export trade which we have today in brown eggs as do the largest exporters. In fact, he gets the same price, he doesn't have to go through the hassle of going out to Washington and getting HEAP funds, et cetera. So, this is a small producer issue as much as it is a large export producer issue.

We produce the best eggs in the world for export here in New England. Only 3 percent of the nation's eggs are exported. About half of those are from New England because we produce the eggs that people want worldwide, which have the brown shells, which is the egg shell color preference for the rest of the world.

And we have historically had a tremendous market in Hong Kong and Middle East. The Hong Kong market until several years ago was like the largest supermarket in New England, right, except you had to access it by water. It was as if we had Stop and Shop supermarkets as another huge customer. And the volume of the eggs leaving Portland, Maine to Hong Kong was the largest single commodity shipped out of Portland. In Boston Harbor it was the fifth largest commodity going to the Orient. So, this was a huge chunk of business.

I have been to Hong Kong. I've seen in the best supermarkets the U.S. eggs displayed. In fact, until we lost that market, we were thinking of stenciling or laser jet printing on each egg; USA. Because that's how popular our eggs were and customers would go into the stores and take a carton from another country, empty that carton, use an empty carton and put the USA's into it as a way of kind of fooling the person at the checkout counter and be getting the U.S. eggs for a less expensive price.

Years ago when we discovered the opportunity, it was when our exporter was in Hong Kong and saw people in the back alley dying white eggs and trying to make them look brown, he said; here's the way to market for the United States. Through the negotiations we lost much of our ability to have export parameters for this. This was nobody's fault. It goes back to a previous administration.

And base year, which was like the -- for all export subsidies. And it was a base year where we have very few export subsidies and the Europeans had discovered how effective they could be with those subsidies. And they have been, as you know, like you, extremely effective. And they get that double benefit. They now use the subsidies available to them. Then they can get a better bulk rate on their shipment, and so their shipping costs go down because of the volume that they have planned for. So, it comes in even sharper, sort --

MR. ALLBEE: Mr. Bell, you're going to have to summarize.

MR. BELL: Summarize, will be brief. We urge you, as previous speakers and colleagues here and those of you as commissioners, please assist on the elimination of export subsidies. We have the cleanest eggs. We have from a food safety standpoint the best eggs. We wash and oil our eggs, which no other countries do. We would love to compete on equal terms with the rest of the world and we will do it very, very well given your support in the subsidies.

Thank you.

MR. ALLBEE: Any questions?

MR. ACETO: I have a question. When you were in Hong Kong before, was that with export subsidies or was that without it?

MR. BELL: That was with subsidies. And we now have half of what we used to in those subsidies. Because of the quality of our eggs, there are -- the upscale supermarkets purchase the U.S. eggs without the subsidy but we can go back to having double that if we want more European subsidies.

And with respect to my colleague here, I lived in Hong Kong right after World War II. I understand how strongly you feel about the need to have an adequate food supply. And so I realize the passion with which they defend the agricultural policies but I think the time has come to phase them out sooner rather than later.

MR. SCHUMACHER: Maybe want to take your colleague who knows what he says (inaudible).

MR. BELL: Maybe we can just resolve this over lunch.

MR. SCHUMACHER: Vermont cheddar, egg, vegetable omelet. Thank you very much.