Take it away, Gay.

MS. FRANKLIN: Okay. Well, thank you very much for this opportunity. My husband and I are growers, processors and shippers of certified organic product and we live in Gilroy, California. And, yes, I do ship garlic.

I have been directly involved with export for the past 23 years. And I say that, because I don't want you to think I'm naive about export, it's really difficult, no doubt. I want to set the stage a bit by providing a definition of what organic food is, because that's the primary reason I'm here.

Organic food is grown and processed in accordance with a set of standards evolved over the past 30 years, with a lot of pain, I might add. Further, these standards are reflected in the California State Organic Food Act of 1991, since we don't have an implemented USDA Organic Food Act. We have an Act, but we don't have an implemented rule.

Some of the materials prohibited for use in organic production include methyl bromide and genetically engineered crops. For further information, I want you to be very clear on the fact that this is the fastest growing segment of the food industry. Forecasts for growth in the organic food industry have compelled companies like General Mills, Smuckers, and Uncle Ben's, just to name a few national brands, to begin certified organic projects. Some of you may have seen some of the advertisements for an organic cereal General Mills has out on the market currently.

Organic products are marketed internationally in, what I would call, a parallel system. We sell the exact same things that everybody else today here has spoken about. I also need to add that we face all of the problems they have already brought up into addition to a further set of problems.

Finally, I want to -- I take it back, I just did it. Hand notes after writing this four times.

So the real question for you and for this panel is whether or not organic products, as a class, encounter specific trade barriers. Absolutely. Diane Bowen will discuss more specifically several barriers. But I want to focus on the general area of -- and I'm just -- I'm losing my place here, on the general area of standards.

First of all, there is no international standard for organic definitions, laws, anyway for even the WTO to evaluate whether or not there is an infraction or a trade barrier or anything else. The EU does have a livable standard and that standard, however, is open to interpretation by each country member as well as being open to interpretation by regions in those countries and finally by the certification agencies that are involved with any given transaction.

Therefore, when we're shipping, it means that the rules can change by the mile and by the minute and they literally do. If you ask your customer, what do I need to do to ensure that my product can clear all of the necessary requirements, their answer will literally change day to day. This is an expensive and nebulous problem at the very least.

Further, when this is viewed in the entire context of the world, Japan has no international law, Taiwan has no international law. Some countries have fragmented laws which is pretty much what the U.S. has. There are laws in progress in all of those places but nothing is clear.

Because the WTO is eventually going to be dependent on Codex, but it is also not there yet, I would ask that, at this point in time, they make it, I'll ask for a priority, it never hurts to ask, if they could make an interim tool by which they could assess whether or not there are trade barriers affecting specific organic transactions. I know that this is certainly a lot to ask. But until such time as you have some sort of tool, I can't see any sort of assistance for California or any American shipper given the problems that we currently have and we had one today.

So I'll hand it over to Diane.