SECRETARY GLICKMAN: I'd like to make a couple comments to Dennis. I will follow through on your comments about the issues. You are aware, of course, that the President did announce very significant trade relief pursuant to Section 201, and that is accompanied by a directive to me and to others in our government to purchase more lamb for our commodity programs and to engage in a program where he will put significant additional money, so hopefully that will be of some significant help in connection with what you're talking about.

On the pork thing, Tim Galvin -- I don't know if Tim is here or not -- but anyway, it's an interesting phenomena. Pork is one of the success stories in terms of the volume of exports. It's moving up. Pork demand is up in this country. Pork demand is up in the world. The value of our exports, of course, with price is not, but we're seeing some positive signs there and, of course, we signed an agreement basically with the Koreans for a billion dollars worth of credits, GSM credits, and pork remains a big part of that as well. One of the interesting things when we look at all these figures during the last time it showed that the reduction wasn't as great. It's a fascinating thing. The current reduction was fairly significant among smaller producers but not among larger producers. And it speaks to the complexity of the pork issue as it relates to the structure of agriculture and the changing nature of the pork industry. It's also true in the other aspects of livestock as well. How we deal with issues of supply and how the livestock goes through the national order of the marketplace when the structure is no longer based on smaller to medium-sized operations (inaudible) but most of the animals are from the larger scale operations. It's a real challenge for all of us as we deal with a lot of these export problems as dealing with a livestock industry which is much more concentrated than it used to be. And we need to work with you to continue on this kind of problem.

AMBASSADOR SCHER: Let me make one comment. One of the interesting things I find as a running theme through all of the comments was the SBS, the science issues. And what I'd be interested in getting feedback from this panel and to give to other panels, what we are seeing is that tariffs are coming down both through agreements, and NAFTA governments are reforming their (inaudible), the countries that want to keep their markets closed and keep out our exports and keep out other exports are turning to science as sort of a trade barrier of choice to keep exports out. And one of the dilemmas that we are facing in these negotiations and we are doing a lot of computations on right now is how can we ratchet up the enforcement of scientific standards. We don't want to change the agreement. As a couple people said, don't re-open the agreement, and I think generally we would agree with that. I think what we will see is if we re-open the agreement, other countries will want to weaken it. We've heard from Europe about the consumer choice provision in the SBS agreement. I'm not exactly sure how that will work, if you take a pole and if a certain amount of consumers didn't want the product, then you can find a scientific barrier. But one of the things we have to deal with is how do we actually increase enforcement of if. We've got the case law (inaudible) or the case against Japan on a variety of testing, all goods precedence for the SBS agreement. But what we're struggling with and what we need your input on is how do you think we can do a more effective job in ensuring that countries abide more strictly to the terms of the SBS agreement and not let politics drive what should be scientific regulatory decisions.

MS. SCHWARTZ: I can't answer that, but I have a question and then maybe a suggestion. Is there a scientific -- a universal scientific panel? There is?

AMBASSADOR SCHER: Well, there are international scientific products. There's Codex (phonetic), there's the World Health Organization. Those are international scientific bodies who review these, and those are -- for example, the hormone case, the WTO panel relied on both Codex and the World Health Organization in determining that there was no scientific standard for the foreign EU's ban on beef.

MS. SCHWARTZ: Which makes sense to stand by it. They have to stand by those decisions, I would think. I think timing is a big thing, and I observe -- it seems like the timing of a recent resolution and this doesn't happen all the time (inaudible) and that's my question.

AMBASSADOR SCHER: I don't want to monopolize the time, but one of the interesting dilemmas we have both in terms of the sort of international standards as well as the timing is that we have traditionally in the United States as negotiators, we've been more concerned about the impacts that those have on us, and Secretary Glickman is the regulator of the FDA. We want to ensure that we can impose the highest possible standards of food safety in this country, not necessarily in the national standards, but in some cases if there's a scientific basis even higher. We've also wanted to ensure that if decisions come down against us when/if we lose cases, which luckily we're not. We're winning far more than we're losing, but if we lose cases, we don't want to have to change our laws too quickly. We hear a lot from many members of Congress, you know, they have to change the laws, the regulators that have to change regulations, that they don't want the WTO in Geneva telling our Congress or telling our regulators to change their laws too quickly. But we're finding the shoe is much more on the other foot, and our effort is much more focused on getting other countries to change their rules, and so it's a dilemma. It's one I think we're going to have to really get a lot of feedback on over the next few months as we prepare for these negotiations.

MR. VINCHATTLE: (The following comment was inaudible to the reporter.)

SECRETARY GLICKMAN: You talk about Mexico. You know, we want to export our products, but we also have to recognize that in an open world, it has to go both ways. You just can't sell only. And I think of the situation a couple years ago where it had been 75 years since Mexico avocados were allowed in the United States. And you talk about universal science. The U.S. avocado industry had priorities in science, and they came up with different perspectives than many other scientists had come up with. But we made a decision that under certain circumstances, Mexican avocados could come in the United States because we used what we thought was the best science possible. One of the reasons why we did that is one, because the science was real, but the other one is if we played the game by the same rules everybody else played the game, nothing would ever move in any of the markets. There had to be some credibility to the U.S.'s position. Our eggs could then go into their markets or our beef could go into their markets. That's why it's so critical. These aren't abstract problems. It's so critical to have a uniform set of rules and everybody plays by those rules and they have to be based on good sound science.

MR. SAUNDERS: I've got a question. We heard from Congressman Boswell and Senator Grassley earlier about the overall affects of global trade, and within our U.S. Congress there's not always agreement on this. And what I'd ask you, what are you doing to educate your members, whether it's members of an organization; Sharon, your farmers in Kansas; or Dr. Gorley, your clients. What are you doing or is there general agreement, consensus that global trade is essential for agriculture in your sector? And then secondly, whether there is a consensus or not, what are you doing to educate your members on the importance of this and communicating with their elected officials?

DR. GORLEY: The sheep industry has kind of made two points I want to make out. With the WHO, with the recognition that they're going to use health protocol and health standards, they're going to need some type of enforcement from that because of like in China, they can recognize, like you said before, all the things that tell you what science can do for a certain disease, and then, of course, like I stated before, it goes from political to a barrier that they just don't see them all of a sudden anymore. So that will be interesting to see in the WHO and then have the WTO have some type of ability to be able to recognize or help enforce some of those actions.

To John, as far as the first thing is -- what's very interesting is that the United States in general has not been able to compete with Australia, New Zealand in the past just because of the dollar investment those countries put into their export industries. Those islands down there, the Oceanic countries, they export almost 94 percent of all their products. So they're experts. When you show up in Stavropol, Russia, the Australians that have been there three years before greet you at the center and tell you where to go and where not to drink the beer or vodka. So these guys are experts within their fields. As far as being able to get to the members, I think there's been new alliances, the United States Seed Stock Alliance which now has that 22 percent of their industry that it does get out to them. It shows a wealth of potential. One small area of success, for example, is in Mexico where we had a group of clients take some semen down, and it was a $250,000 sale of semen just for these type of clients. So with the ability of the access of the Internet and a few other things like that, I think you're going to get a wealth of potential because the U.S. has not been there and now Chile doesn't like us and a few other ones. You know our presence is being felt because they're talking about us.

MS. SCHWARTZ: (The beginning comment was inaudible to the reporter.) I know the fueling importance of trade, as far as how the legislature in Kansas and legislators, how they are -- this information, I would say that that's probably very limited. Unless someone as a legislator gets up and talks about the issue, that it is not a point to the forefront like it should be, and it's very important that Kansas is already recognizing what's happening with agriculture, and we can't say that this is what's happening (inaudible) and I've seen it happen. And I would like to say and would generate a good guess in the topic of agriculture (inaudible) and that's wait and see down the road and if that's what's happening. So we need to speak up. We really truly need to speak up.