Ms. Bowen.

MS. BOWEN: I'm Diane Bowen. I'm Executive Director with California Certified Organic Farmers and I thank you for this opportunity.

Founded in 1973, CCOF was the first U.S. organic certification organization. Today, our membership includes over 900 organic growers, processors and handlers and we represent a significant portion of the California organic industry, whose total fresh and processed product sales we estimate at nearly $1 billion and growing at over 20 percent annually.

The export market is a significant growth opportunity and most frustrating challenge as you've just heard. While demand for organic products in the Pacific Rim and in Europe is exceedingly strong, serious problems loom over trade of organic products to these regions. We ask you to support the needs of our robust organic sector in the upcoming round of the WTO negotiations.

And I'm going to cite two specific examples for your consideration. The first is actually phytosanitary requirements. Phytosanitary requirements in some countries, Japan in particular, deny access to many U.S. organic fruits and vegetable chemical fumigation requirements. For example, negotiated U.S. trade agreements with other countries have made organic products, such as apples and cherries, completely ineligible for sale as organic products. So we're asking you to open the dialogue at the WTO about the special circumstances of organics in the SPS agreement.

Second, Gay mentioned a standard setting and conformity assessment. And here, we just sense serious protectionism and conflict of interest operating all in the name of the EU Organic Regulation, a very uneven application of the regulation in the EU member countries as Gay said.

Also, our organization and others have been burdened with unfair paperwork requirements and abrupt demands by authorized bodies in many of the EU countries.

And now, we're facing a new threat and we'd had products stop to date. And the EU has imposed on third country organic certifiers a June 30th deadline by which we must provide third-party accreditation of our compliance with ISO 65, the international certification body guidelines.

However, the EU has not provided us a feasible means for demonstrating compliance to these guidelines and the USDA is trying to do this for us, but it's not going to happen by tomorrow.

So in the meantime, we're deluged daily by communications from European importers and control bodies who are demanding to know how we will meet this requirement. And, as I say, we've had product stops to date, the deadline is tomorrow.

We accredit the EU for establishing, you know, harmonized organic standards and for wanting certification of imported products by reputable third-country certification bodies. But, as Gay said, there are no yet internationally negotiated organic standards. And this ISO 65 conformity assessment has not been historically applied by the organic sector.

The WTO recognizes the potential for technical barriers to trade to arise from standard setting and conformity assessment. And it can be the symposium on this topic on June 8th in Geneva. The organic sector was not addressed. We feel that the WTO should include examples from the organic sector in conferences and other exchanges on standard setting and conformity, because this is very important, central to organic agriculture and trade.

And so, in general, we ask you to work with the WTO to ensure that standards and conformity guides are implemented uniformly on a global basis for a particular sector, such as organic.

So this is just a brief view on organic trade. And we hope for future chances to broaden your view and to enlist your support on behalf of our growing sector.

Thank you.