MS. LEHMAN: I think we have a larger Listening Board in the audience with all due respect.

MR. ALLBEE: With all due respect, I will ask you to sit down and testify --

MR. SCHUMACHER: That's okay.

MS. LEHMAN: I'll just stand here.

MR. ALLBEE: I want the panel to see you, too.

MS. LEHMAN: Okay. My name is Brooke Lehman. Actually, do I need to use the mike?

MR. ALLBEE: Yes.

MS. LEHMAN: I'm here from New York City, and I'm here today to explain to you why it is that the World Trade Organization would disregard all of our testimony.

We have all come to Burlington to deliver testimony to two institutions which have demonstrated time and time again, their blatant disregard for the health of individual citizens and the environment. The USDA's clearly in the pocket of transnational corporations as demonstrated so beautifully for all of us last year with the inclusion of GMOs, radiation, and toxic sludge in its proposed organic standards.

Many of us here were on the receiving end of that bureaucratic slap in the face. However, the World Trade Organization is by far the more frightful institution, which is why it is so important to me that I explain to you why it is that the WTO will disregard all of our testimony.

Let it be known that the World Trade Organization will not represent us for the simple reason that it was never intended to do so. The WTO was formed in 1994 as a non- democratic institution to insure and enforce free trade at the explicit expense of human rights, health, labor and the environment. It is essentially a service organization working on behalf of transnational corporations.

WTO meetings are held behind closed doors without any citizen review. The sole purpose of WTO is to provide transnational corporations with the means to enforce nation states to repeal all regulations which were deemed in the violation of free trade.

Since its inception, the WTO has force Guatemala to stop warning mothers of the dangers of breast milk substitute. It has put an end to dolphin-free shrimp and tuna campaigns. It has forced countries to repeal their ban on the known carcinogen, asbestos. And is in the process of forcing bovine growth hormone down the throat of France, all in the name of corporate profits.

By the way, the apartheid divestment movement of the 80s would be illegal today.

The WTO is the product of capitalism.

However it is not the product of capitalism run awry, but rather the capitalism as it was intended to be. Inherent in capitalism is a propensity for the greater accumulation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. For capitalism not to do so, would be for it to negate itself.

Many argue that our best offense against global capitalism is to fortify our nation state, but they are two sides of the same coin.

We are in effect witnessing our American public being dismantled by capitalism. However it is precisely the institution of capitalism which our state is designed to protect. The state therefore has ushered in and continues to usher in its own demise, and to call for a strengthening of state against capital is oxymoronical.

What is going on here today is a sad attempt on the parts of the USDA and the World Trade Organization to make the American public feel that they are being heard. And to this, all I can say is WTO, USDA you grossly underestimate us if you think that we are stupid enough to conflate pleading upon largely deaf ears with representation.

MR. GRAVES: Ron, just a couple comments. First of all as Commissioner of Agriculture, I am pleased to have the opportunity to host this listening session here. And I can tell you that your point is being well heard and recorded, and I can tell you as a personal friend under Secretary Schumacher that he will take your point of view back to USDA, U.S. Trade Representative. That he is here, and will certainly take that point of view back as well.

I would like to try to close, if we can, on a positive note. This is not an opportunity for a rally. I would like your remarks addressed through your U.S. representatives that are here so they can be appropriately put on the record. I can assure you as the Commissioner of Agriculture in Vermont that is just the beginning of this very important debate here; that I would be happy to talk with you about at some point in time in the future.

But I would like to ask you to address your remarks to the Undersecretary and the representatives that we have here for the remainder of this meeting. Thank you.