MS. DAVIDSON: Good morning. I, too, am making a statement this morning as a concerned citizen and as one who has come to the disquieting realization that our government agencies are not adequately serving the public interest. In this I am directly referring to politics of corporate profit vis-a-vis agricultural genetic engineering.

In an early June interview in the St. Louis Dispatch, USDA Secretary Dan Glickman stated that the American public believes the USDA along with the FDA and the EPA are "on the level," and I'm quoting here.

That these agencies are "not in anybody's hip pocket" and truly represent the public interest. In my opinion, it is specifically this public faith that the USDA has violated in its aggressive campaign to introduce GE crops if our agriculture system and to force our trading partners to accept this controversial technology.

Initial promises of ending world hunger through genetically engineered crop improvements have been shattered by the bare truth that most GE seed was designed to resist target pesticides or herbicides. In reality, this technology has never yet been about feeding the world. It is a strategy at the heart of an industry-wide war, with a handful of transnational corporations intent upon wresting control of the world's food supply at its most basic level, that of the seed.

Many global trading partners want to scrutinize this emergent technology further and apply it slowly and with caution.

In its unyielding support of agriculture biotechnology, the United States has been aggressive in threatening serious trade sanctions against those countries that oppose agricultural genetic engineering. I denounce this stance. We have no moral imperative to feed the world, as promised by Secretary Glickman, President Clinton and industry representatives, by forcing this technology and its by-products on other nations.

This new brand of agriculture threatens the sovereignty of other countries at the most basic level of human need. It threatens the health of the soil and the integrated management systems for food production. It also threatens to tie our farmers to a system that ultimately will not have their best interests in mind. As centralization occurs within agriculture, independent small farm enterprises may be threatened to the point of extinction by declining seed variety and the small farms' outsider status in specialty-crops markets. And because most genetically engineered seed is right now linked to the use of particular chemicals, the farmers who do invest in this technology will have less decision-making power over their crop management practices, yet still may bear of risk of crop failure.

The vision of Thomas Jefferson was of a democracy grounded in the independence of small farms. The strengths of the democracy is in freedom of choice and the autonomy of farmers to make independent management decisions about their land. When that is threatened, a domino effect is set in motion that ultimately threatens the very way of life of any democracy.

I call on the USDA to begin again serving their public mandate -- negotiating in the interests of the people of this country and the land, not in the interest of profits for and promises made to transnational agribusiness corporations. In my opinion, it is the continuance of our true democracy that is at stake.

Thank you.

(Applause.)