[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD
AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED
AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2004
_______________________________________________________________________
HEARINGS
BEFORE A
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
________
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG
ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES
HENRY BONILLA, Texas, Chairman
JAMES T. WALSH, New York MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
JACK KINGSTON, Georgia ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, Jr., MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
Washington SAM FARR, California
TOM LATHAM, Iowa ALLEN BOYD, Florida
JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri
VIRGIL H. GOODE, Jr., Virginia
RAY LaHOOD, Illinois
NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Young, as Chairman of the Full
Committee, and Mr. Obey, as Ranking Minority Member of the Full
Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees.
Henry E. Moore, Martin P. Delgado, Maureen Holohan, and Joanne L.
Perdue, Staff Assistants
________
PART 7
FARM AND FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL SERVICE PROGRAMS AND FOOD SAFETY
PROGRAMS
Page
Farm and Foreign Agricultural Service............................ 1
Farm Service Agency.......................................... 135
Risk Management Agency....................................... 367
Foreign Agricultural Service................................. 471
Food Safety...................................................... 771
Food Safety Inspection Service............................... 889
________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
87-870 O WASHINGTON : 2003
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida, Chairman
RALPH REGULA, Ohio DAVID R. OBEY, Wisconsin
JERRY LEWIS, California JOHN P. MURTHA, Pennsylvania
HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington
FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia MARTIN OLAV SABO, Minnesota
JIM KOLBE, Arizona STENY H. HOYER, Maryland
JAMES T. WALSH, New York ALAN B. MOLLOHAN, West Virginia
CHARLES H. TAYLOR, North Carolina MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
DAVID L. HOBSON, Ohio PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana
ERNEST J. ISTOOK, Jr., Oklahoma NITA M. LOWEY, New York
HENRY BONILLA, Texas JOSE E. SERRANO, New York
JOE KNOLLENBERG, Michigan ROSA L. DeLAURO, Connecticut
JACK KINGSTON, Georgia JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia
RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi ED PASTOR, Arizona
GEORGE R. NETHERCUTT, Jr., DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina
Washington CHET EDWARDS, Texas
RANDY ``DUKE'' CUNNINGHAM, ROBERT E. ``BUD'' CRAMER, Jr.,
California Alabama
TODD TIAHRT, Kansas PATRICK J. KENNEDY, Rhode Island
ZACH WAMP, Tennessee JAMES E. CLYBURN, South Carolina
TOM LATHAM, Iowa MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York
ANNE M. NORTHUP, Kentucky LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California
ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama SAM FARR, California
JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri JESSE L. JACKSON, Jr., Illinois
KAY GRANGER, Texas CAROLYN C. KILPATRICK, Michigan
JOHN E. PETERSON, Pennsylvania ALLEN BOYD, Florida
VIRGIL H. GOODE, Jr., Virginia CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey
RAY LaHOOD, Illinois SANFORD D. BISHOP, Jr., Georgia
JOHN E. SWEENEY, New York MARION BERRY, Arkansas
DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
DON SHERWOOD, Pennsylvania
DAVE WELDON, Florida
MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho
JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas
MARK STEVEN KIRK, Illinois
ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida
James W. Dyer, Clerk and Staff Director
(ii)
AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND
RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2004
----------
Wednesday, March 5, 2003.
FARM AND FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL SERVICES
WITNESSES
J.B. PENN, UNDER SECRETARY
JAMES R. LITTLE, ADMINISTRATOR, FARM SERVICE AGENCY
A. ELLEN TERPSTRA, ADMINISTRATOR, FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL SERVICE
W. KIRK MILLER, GENERAL SALES MANAGER
ROSS J. DAVIDSON, JR., ADMINISTRATOR, RISK MANAGEMENT AGENCY
STEPHEN B. DEWHURST, BUDGET OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Introduction of Witnesses
Mr. Bonilla. The subcommittee will come to order.
We are delighted today to have with us for our hearing Dr.
J.B. Penn, the Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign
Agricultural Services; Mr. James Little, who is joining us with
the--he is Administrator of the Farm Service Agency; Ms. Ellen
Terpstra, the Administrator of the Foreign Agricultural
Service; Mr. W. Kirk Miller, the Department's General Sales
Manager; and Mr. Ross Davidson, the Administrator of the Risk
Management Agency; and, of course, Steve Dewhurst, the
Department's Budget Officer.
Members' Opening Remarks
We have read your statements and appreciate your submitting
them in advance, and they will be included in the record.
Before I turn to you, Dr. Penn, for your opening statement,
I would like to recognize Ms. Kaptur for any opening comments
she may have. But I would like to, before I do that,
acknowledge that Mr. Miller is from her home State of Ohio,
attended Ohio State University and no doubt thought that that
end zone pass interference call was the right call in the
championship game this last January.
So Ms. Kaptur.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate your
acknowledgment of a Buckeye up there at the table. It is a
welcome change, and we wish all of you success and appreciation
for your service to the people of our country and, indeed, the
people of the world.
Dr. Penn, we want to welcome you and all of your colleagues
and to say that I know that there is a lot of pressure on you
because of the adoption of the 2002 farm bill and the recent
disaster package, and that is a lot of effort for the Farm
Service Agency. I want to thank the Secretary and the
Department for responding immediately to some of the issues
that we brought up here last week about staffing difficulties
in various offices and trying to provide sufficient staffing to
accommodate farmers who are applying out there.
So I want to thank the Department for its speedy
acknowledgment of the need that was presented last week.
I also want to mention on the crop insurance issue, as we
begin, we obviously hear from many farmers around the country
who claim that they can't get insurance because of the crops
they raise. Then other farmers who aren't buying insurance
because they say, well, you know, 1 out of 5 years, we will
take the losses. The inability of the insurance system to reach
broadly remains a difficulty for us.
In terms of the Foreign Agricultural Service--and we will
have questions on this--they really face a very daunting task,
and I personally will ask questions about this. I am concerned
about the inadequacy of resources to do the job and how we are
going to meet the demands, not only in terms of Central Asia
and the Middle East, but the Asian Peninsula and other places
around the world.
So we look forward to your testimony this morning.
And thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. It is a pleasure to
be here today.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Ms. Kaptur.
J.B., bear with us. We have a lot of members of the full
committee that are at simultaneous hearings, so people will be
coming in and out. As you may have heard, we are trying to--we
are going to try to get our appropriations bills done all
across the board as early as possible this year. This
subcommittee has a lot of pride in the fact that they have--
that we have worked together to get our bills done in a timely
fashion in the last couple of years, and we fully expect to do
that again.
We are going to--so we are cramming in a lot of hearings
that are running simultaneous with our different subcommittees.
On this subcommittee, we expect to conclude our hearings by the
end of the month, by March 20th.
So with that, I would ask you to proceed.
Under Secretary's Opening Statement
Dr. Penn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be
back with you again and before the Committee.
As you noted, we have the administrators from our agencies,
except for Mr. Little, who somehow has been waylaid on his way
here, and so we expect him momentarily. And we also have, as
you noted, Steve Dewhurst, who is well known to this Committee.
I will be very brief in my remarks, because I know that you
have seen the prepared statements.
I would like to just begin by noting the importance of the
Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services mission area to the
entire Department of Agriculture. We are at the forefront in
trying to meet the challenges that our farmers and ranchers
face in the 21st century, and as Congresswoman Kaptur noted, we
have had a lot of challenges this past year. First, we had the
farm bill, which was enacted in May and made applicable to the
2002 year. So that was a massive undertaking for us, and it is
still ongoing.
We also had a very severe drought that affected
considerable parts of the country last year; and then, along
with that, we had the failure of the Nation's largest crop
insurance company, which we had to work through. Now we are
involved in implementing the emergency disaster program that
was passed on February 20th.
And at the same time, as you have heard, we have this very
ambitious trade negotiation agenda that is underway, and we are
also dealing with all of the problems involved in keeping open
the markets that we have already gained for the products of our
farmers and ranchers.
The budget proposal that we are going to discuss today
fully supports continuation of these activities, and we
thinkthat it is more than adequate to enable us to do a successful job
for American agriculture.
FARM SERVICE AGENCY
I would like to note the three agencies individually for
just a moment. The Farm Service Agency, which Mr. Little heads,
is, of course, the one in which we have the most presence
around the country. We have perhaps 2,500 locations. This is an
agency that interacts most directly with farmers and ranchers;
and we have been heavily involved, as the Congresswoman noted,
in implementing the 2002 farm bill. That is a very complex farm
bill. It enabled producers to update bases and yields, which
they hadn't been able to do for many years before, and it posed
a lot of difficult economic decisions. And so we have been
working very diligently to try to get all of the producers
enrolled and to try to get the benefits going to the farmers
and ranchers as quickly as we can.
We think that the progress on program sign-up has been
satisfactory. We would like it to be a little faster, of
course, but we believe we will be able to complete that job by
April 1.
We have paid out $2.2 billion thus far in direct and
countercyclical payments as a result of the sign-up. We have
paid out $1.1 billion in Milk Income Loss payments under the
new program that was included in the farm bill. And the
Congress enabled a Peanut Quota Buyout Program, which was worth
$1.3 billion, and thus far, we have paid out $1.2 billion. So
we are nearing the end of that program.
And in addition, we have made the Apple Market Loss
Assistance and several other payments thus far this year.
Our budget places priority on enhancing FSA's ability to
continue to assist producers. We propose a 2004 program level
for salaries and expenses of $1.3 billion, and that supports
our ongoing ceiling of 5,900 Federal staff years and 10,800
non-Federal county staff years.
In addition to personnel, we continue to modernize our
services. This is an area that lends itself well to
modernization with information technology; and so we are
implementing geographical information systems. The President's
budget has $42 million included for that purpose, but it
appears under the Office of the Chief Information Officer.
And I would note that FSA, since the mid-1990s, has played
a critical role in providing loans and loan guarantees to farm
families who would otherwise be unable to obtain the credit
they need to continue their operations. By law, a substantial
portion of the direct loan funds is reserved each year for
beginning and limited-resource and socially disadvantaged
farmers and ranchers. And so our budget proposal includes
funding for $850 million in direct loans and $2.7 billion in
guarantees. We think that these numbers are sufficient to meet
the needs that we are going to encounter throughout fiscal year
2004.
RISK MANAGEMENT AGENCY
Turning quickly to the Risk Management Agency, led by Mr.
Davidson, the Federal Crop Insurance program, we believe, plays
a very important role already and can play a much more
significant role in helping producers manage their risk. Last
year, crop insurance provided $37 billion in protection on over
215 million acres, and that was 4 million acres more than the
previous year.
For point of reference, we produced $200 billion worth of
agricultural output. The Risk Management Agency is insuring $37
billion of that. We are budgeting for slightly lower
participation in 2004, based on estimates of planned acreage
and expected market prices for the year.
Our budget also includes a legislative proposal to reduce
the administrative expense reimbursement from 24.5 percent to
20 percent of the premium to the companies.
The 2004 budget requests an appropriation of such sums as
necessary for the mandatory costs associated with the program,
and that, of course, will provide the necessary resources that
we need to meet the program expenses at whatever level the
producers may choose to participate.
For salaries and expenses for the Risk Management Agency,
$78 million in discretionary spending is proposed, and that is
an increase of $7.8 million for this agency.
We also have nearly $9 million for RMA information
technology, which falls under the departmentwide common
computing environment, and that will provide for upgrading a
lot of the IT facilities of the agency which have not been
upgraded for a decade or more.
FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL SERVICE
And finally, Mr. Chairman, the Foreign Agricultural
Service, and USDA's international activities. I think that
everyone here would agree that we can't overstate the
importance of expanding market opportunities for America's
farmers and ranchers. That is among our very highest priorities
and certainly the highest priority of the Foreign Agricultural
Service.
As I mentioned, we continue our trade expansion efforts on
several fronts. We have the expansion of new trade agreements
as a top priority, including the multilateral negotiations on
the Doha development agenda. In addition to that, we have found
that we have to devote more resources now to maintaining the
markets that we already have open. The difficulties we have
with China and with Russia and with Mexico have been widely
reported, and it takes a lot of resources, not only from the
Department of Agriculture, but also from our interagency
colleagues, to make sure that everybody lives up to the trade
agreements that they have already entered into.
And I would just note, Mr. Chairman, that this month marks
the 50th anniversary of the Foreign Agricultural Service. We
are so privileged to have Ms. Terpstra as the Administrator,
who is far younger than her agency.
The budget provides funding of $145 million for 2004, and
this supports several of our major activities. We have 20
additional staff-years proposed for this agency to support the
trade negotiations, to give us some capability in the important
area of biotechnology and in sanitary and phytosanitary
activities. We also will expand our trade capacity-building
activities, and then we have to meet the pay costs and our
payments to the Department of State for the administrative
services that are provided to our foreign missions.
Also, FAS, as the committee knows, administers the major
export promotion and market development activities, and these
are guided by the new farm bill. The amount of funding for
these activities is indicated in the new farm bill, and our
budget fully reflects those funding levels.
Now, for our commitment to alleviating hunger and improving
food security in developing countries through food assistance,
the budget includes a proposal of $1.6 billion in total. This
includes $1.3 billion for Public Law 480 for both Title I and
Title II. We also have included $50 million of appropriated
funding for the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education
and Child Nutrition Program, which was included in the 2002
farm bill.
So, Mr. Chairman, let me conclude by saying that we view
this as a very modest proposal. We think it is a very positive
proposal. It is intended primarily to enable us to continue to
provide the services that we have been providing, and we
appreciate the support of the committee.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, J.B.
[The prepared statements of J.B. Penn, James R. Little,
Ross J. Davidson, Jr., and Ellen Terpstra follow:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Bonilla. Before I begin questioning, I would like to
also welcome someone on your panel.
Ms. Kaptur has a hometown friend here; I also have one from
Texas, Mr. Davidson. Ross Davidson has a good, long history
back home in Texas working for great corporations like Tesoro
and what has been judged consistently over the years as the
best insurance company in America, and that is USAA--so you
have good men here--and his home is within about half a mile of
my home back in San Antonio. So a small world.
But welcome--a special welcome to you today.
COMMODITY PROGRAM SIGN-UP
Dr. Penn, during our hearing last Thursday, the Secretary
was here, and she was telling us that there would be no
extension of the April 1 deadline for enrollment in the direct
and countercyclical farm program for crop year 2003. About a
week earlier, the Department said only 41 percent of farmers
had signed up for the commodity programs under the farm bill.
Members of this subcommittee have received complaints from
their constituents who could not get appointments in their
county offices until after the deadline. I point out that we
had the same kind of situation with the livestock compensation
program announced by the Department last October. We think we
fixed that as part of our final action in the omnibus bill this
year under section 203 of Division N of Public Law 108-7, but
the fixed cost of $100 million according to CBO.
Would you tell us in some detail what you are doing to meet
this workload crunch and how you will handle farmers who missed
the deadline through no fault of their own?
Dr. Penn. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me see if I
can provide some perspective and some clarification.
As you indicated, each week we issue a sign-up number,
which is an average across all of the States for the United
States. That number at the current moment, as you indicated, is
48 percent. So if you look at all of the farmers across the
country, 48 percent have signed up and are now eligible for the
benefits under the 2002 Act.
But we note that there are a considerable number of farmers
who are not going to sign up; that is, they are going to accept
the default option, and the default option is simply that they
accept the production flexibility contract acreage and yields
with the addition of soybean acres that they have historically
had. So there is no reason for them to come to the office. We
don't know exactly how many that is going to be, but we would
venture a guess that it is certainly at least a fourth and
perhaps as many as a third.
So we have the major agricultural States where most of the
acreage base and yield updating will occur, and we would note
if you look at those, that their numbers are between 55 and 60
percent. So if we take 55 percent and we add a third to that,
then that gets us pretty close to 85 percent of the producers
that we think are already taken care of. That leaves us the
rest of this month to sign up the remaining 15 or 20 percent of
the farmers.
Now, Mr. Little and his staff look across the country every
week, and we are trying to identify those particular counties
in which the workload is the heaviest; and in those cases, we
are trying to divert additional resources to those counties. We
are bringing in more computers. We are trying to lengthen the
office hours so that producers can come in beyond the regular
office hours. And we think that doing these things, focused on
these particular counties where the workload is heaviest, that
we will be able to complete the sign-up by April 1.
As I indicated earlier, we have well over 2,000 locations,
and we think that the difficulty is probably going to occur in
no more than 10 percent of those. So that is maybe 200 counties
where we have to make these extraordinary efforts, we think.
Mr. Bonilla. So none of these producers then that have just
got caught--as they claimed, they called and just couldn't get
an appointment--they should be addressed then, right?
Dr. Penn. We think they should be addressed, and if there
are any producers who through no fault of their own can't get
signed up by April 1, then we will make sure we get them signed
up as soon as we possibly can. They won't suffer any loss of
benefits whatsoever because of that.
Mr. Bonilla. On implementing the farm bill, J.B., last year
a budget amendment was submitted requesting $60 million for the
increased costs of implementing the farm bill programs, and
final congressional action in our most recent bill, $70 million
was provided for that purpose.
My question is, is this level of funding sufficient to meet
the need throughout the current fiscal year, and is this level
of funding sufficient--funding sufficient also to administer to
new disaster payments that we just appropriated in the omnibus
bill?
Dr. Penn. Yes, Mr. Chairman. We think that financial
resources are not our problem. It is just finding enough people
and having enough hours in the day to get everybody through the
offices.
As you note, the farm bill itself included $55 million for
our expenses. We had originally estimated we would need $110
million. Of that $55 million, $5 million was earmarked for an
unrelated project, so we had $50 million immediately, and we
used that to add temporary staff so that we could immediately
begin implementation.
And then we had proposed an additional $60 million, and in
the appropriations bill, as it turned out, we got $70 million
for the remainder of implementation of the 2002 farm bill and
the disaster package. So we think we have enough financial
resources.
Again, our problem is just getting enough people, getting
them trained and making sure we can get the producers through
the county offices on time.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you.
I will now yield to Ms. Kaptur.
CCC SALES TO IRAQ
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We will have several rounds of questioning, but my first
round, Mr. Under Secretary, I am going to ask questions
regarding Iraq and the Department of Agriculture. And we had
called your office on this, so I know many of the questions you
will not be able to answer today, but we are asking for full
disclosure for the record.
As I begin my questioning, I would like to ask unanimous
consent to submit a GAO report to the record, November 1990,
entitled Iraq's Participation in U.S. Agricultural Export
Programs.
Mr. Bonilla. Without objection, that will be entered into
the record.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We will also be asking to submit House hearings that were
held by the Economic Stabilization Subcommittee of the Banking
Committee back during the early 1980s, regarding these same
sets of questions.
Mr. Secretary, my objective this morning is to try to make
the record clear, as clear as we can as we face this imminent
war with Iraq, and how America ended up in this position and
how various policies led to the very dangerous situation we
find ourselves in today.
One of the most curious developments in all of this is
trying to decipher what happened back during the late 1970s,
1980s and 1990s with regard to the relationship between the
Commodity Credit Corporation and the financing of billions of
dollars' worth of sales to Iraq. For example, in the early
1980s, between 1983 and 1990, nearly 17 percent of total
guarantees from the Commodity Credit Corporation went to one
country, Iraq. And indeed, in the years 1987 and 1988, Iraq was
the beneficiary of almost 25 percent of all guarantees provided
by the Commodity Credit Corporation.
One of the first questions I will have for you is looking
at the GAO reports back in the 1990s, we thought we were at
least $2 billion in arrearages in terms of Iraq's ability to
repay, but I wanted to give you the benefit of my own questions
that I ask myself on this; and if you could provide for the
record manifests and accounting records.
Was the CCC involved in any way in the shipments of--the
financing of shipments of anthrax, for example, or fertilizers?
I know for certain, fertilizers were exported from the State of
Ohio through the CCC early in the 1980s.
I would like to know which exporters received bonuses to
facilitate sales to Iraq through the early 1990s, and if one
reads carefully the original GAO study that was done on this,
probably the three most important pages, pages 12, 13 and 14,
document the history of the CCC's relationship to Iraq from
1983 to 1990, indicating that Iraq began participating in the
Department of Agriculture's GSSEP program with an initial
allocation of $401.9 million in export credit guarantees.
There seems to have been quite a debate in the Reagan-Bush
administration about the nature of that relationship, and it
always seemed that the decisions were made back in the 1980s
that really favored Iraq. The amount of CCC financing
increased. Sanctions were lifted in 1988. And during the 1980s
Iraq was declared not a terrorist country. Right up to the
invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, the amount of financing through the
CCC was increasing.
What is more interesting, in 1990, June, the Assistant
Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs for
the Bush administration testified before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and said the administration opposed
congressionally imposed sanctions against Iraq as not
contributing to our foreign policy goals; and so I just wanted
to stress to you, at least the concern of this member, about
what really happened.
And for the record this morning, I am wondering if you
could at least initially provide us--in terms of those
relationships, what kind of insight can you give us, and what
are the arrearages remaining today from those operations of the
CCC with Iraq?
Dr. Penn. Well, thank you for the question and thank you
for having your office alert us as to the subject you were
interested in. We didn't have enough time to compile the
records that you are requesting, but we will certainly make an
attempt to do that. We will try to provide all the information
that responds to your questions just as quickly as we can.
As you note, these are developments that occurred some time
ago, well before our watch, and the world was a much different
place then, with Iran and Iraq and the geopolitics. So it is
very difficult for me to recall at this moment exactly what may
have come into play there.
I did ask our staff to examine the CCC's relationship to
Iraq, and the most information I can provide you at this moment
is that we think, from our preliminary examination, that the
Commodity Credit Corporation is owed $2 billion in principal by
Iraq and that there is perhaps a billion dollars arrearage in
overdue interest on that account.
That is as much as I can give you right now in terms of the
particulars, but we will, as I said, examine the records and
try to be as responsive as we possibly can.
[The information follows:]
Iraqi Debt to the Commodity Credit Corporation
Iraq's debt to the Commodity Credit Corporation under the
GSM-102/103 programs as of March 5, 2003, is as follows:
[In thousands of dollars]
Item Amount
Principal Arrears....................................... $1,940,703
Interest Arrears........................................ 212,321
Late Interest........................................... 1,597,474
--------------------------------------------------------
____________________________________________________
Total............................................. 3,750,498
Ms. Kaptur. I thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. My time
is up on this round, but I think it is important for the public
to understand that when these arrearages exist in the way that
we function as a committee, obviously, and as a Congress, we
have to reimburse the CCC for any losses eventually. So those
arrearages are paid for by the American people ultimately.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Ms. Kaptur.
As we usually do on this subcommittee, when the gavel goes
down, we recognize members in order of seniority, but if not,
we go by the time of arrival. And considering that, I will now
recognize Mrs. Emerson.
FSA COUNTY OFFICE STAFFING
Mrs. Emerson. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I do have some
questions I want to submit for the record, because I am going
to have to be scurrying between subcommittees too, and I
apologize for that, because I have a lot of questions I want to
ask.
I appreciate, Dr. Penn, the fact that y'all are going to
try to accommodate our farmers who for some reason or other,
because of the backlog and the tremendous time it has taken to
sign up for the farm bill to be accommodated, so that they
actually can participate in the program. I just want to
reiterate that we have several counties--and I know one of
which, you are sending in extra people to help because wehave
got a huge, huge backlog. And contrary to perhaps other areas, most of
my farmers do sign up for the program.
One of the things that does worry me to some extent is,
when you send in temporary employees, the level of knowledge
they have about the program and whether or not that is going to
lengthen the process. You know, what are you all doing to
ensure that our producers do get the same level of assistance
with the temporary personnel as they do with the permanent?
Dr. Penn. Well, Congresswoman Emerson, as you know, that is
a problem, and in a lot of these rural areas where the county
office has the greatest workload, it is very difficult to just
go out and quickly add temporary employees who are trained and
who are knowledgeable of the program. So that is a particular
challenge for us.
Most of the people that we can get quickly are people who
can do the clerical work of the office, freeing up the people
who do know the details of the programs to interact with the
producers; and that is what we are trying to do, to make sure
that when the producers are in the office, that they are
dealing with people who do understand the programs and who have
been trained.
And so, to the extent that we possibly can, we are trying
to make sure that that happens.
Mrs. Emerson. Okay. And that brings to mind another issue
that we talked about with Secretary Veneman last week, and that
was, you know, in the whole scheme of reorganizing or
consolidating offices, it does make me very uncomfortable, the
thought that we would contract out some of these services to
the private sector when you need a tremendous amount of
technical expertise to help administer the program. And when
you have got, you know, the farm bill, you have got disaster
assistance--you know, what have you--this becomes very
problematic in my opinion. So I just wanted to raise that.
RICE FOR HUMANITARIAN AID
Let me ask another question, just shifting subjects
completely. With regard to Foreign Agricultural Service
indirectly, one of the things that--and to Iraq specifically,
one of the things that, you know, we are trying to encourage is
that in the aftermath of whatever we end up doing in Iraq, we
can include rice in any kind of humanitarian aid. Certainly we
have an abundance of it, and I would like to know if you all
will be able to work with USAID to ensure that we can include
rice as--since that is the main staple of the Iraqi diet. So I
want to say that.
EMERSON TRUST ACTIVITY
And then let me ask about the Emerson Trust, and I feel a
little funny asking about it since it was named after my late
husband, but anyway, I am concerned about it. Can you summarize
the instances for me in the past that the Emerson Trust has
been used?
Dr. Penn. Off the top of my head, I can give you a bit of
information, and we will supplement that for the record.
The Emerson Trust has been used in the past few years. The
trust is authorized at 4 million tons, and it has been drawn
down to 1.9 million tons, today, of grain. It was used two
times in 2002.
Under the current Administration, there were two tranches
taken from the reserve that totaled 575,000 tons, and those
have been the only times that it has been used in my memory. We
can go back and provide you more detail.
[The information follows:]
The Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust
The Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust (BEHT) was established
in 1998 by enactment of the Africa Seeds of Hope Act. It
replaced the Food Security Commodity Reserve, which was enacted
in 1980. The 1998 Act also changed the release authority from
the President to the Secretary of Agriculture, authorized the
Secretary to swap eligible commodities held in the BEHT for any
U.S. commodity (including processed commodities) of equal
value, and allowed for holding cash in the BEHT. Since the
wheat reserve was established, it has been used for the
following purposes:
December 5, 1984--President Reagan authorized release of up
to 300,000 metric tons for use in P.L. 480, Title II, for
unanticipated needs in Africa.
October 26, 1988--President Reagan authorized release of up
to 1.5 million metric tons for P.L. 480, Titles I and II,
because of short domestic supplies.
September 14, 1989--President Bush authorized release of up
to an additional 2.0 million metric tons for P.L. 480, Titles
I, and II because of short domestic supplies.
May 31, 1991--President Bush authorized release of up to
300,000 metric tons for use in P.L. 480, Title II, for
unanticipated needs in the Middle East.
July 19, 1994--President Clinton authorized release of up
to 200,000 metric tons for use in P.L. 480, Title II, for
unanticipated needs in the Caucasus region.
January 22, 1996--President Clinton authorized release of
up to 1.5 million metric tons for use in P.L. 480, Titles II
and III, because of short domestic supplies.
June 7, 2002--Secretary Veneman authorized the release of
275,000 metric tons of wheat to be exchanged for other
commodities for use in P.L. 480, Title II, for unanticipated
needs in Southern Africa.
August 28, 2002--Secretary Veneman authorized the release
of 300,000 metric tons of wheat to be exchanged for other
commodities to be used for the Southern Africa food security
crisis. After this release, the Trust was reduced to about 1.98
million metric tons.
Mrs. Emerson. Have y'all come up with any kind of a plan
that would supplement or replenish the trust with additional
food?
Dr. Penn. We have not, but we are considering how best to
do that. As I said, it is down now to 1.9 million tons, which
is still a very considerable amount of grain, but we are
looking at the possibilities for how to do that.
Mrs. Emerson. So is that the reason, then, perhaps, that
y'all didn't include any money in the budget request for
replenishing it?
Dr. Penn. Well, we think that it is adequate--that we have
adequate resources for the food aid needs for the current year;
and, yes, we are still considering how best to do that and
where the funds might come from.
Mrs. Emerson. In spite of all the food aid that we may need
to give not only to Iraq, but also to sub-Saharan Africa, et
cetera, do you think there is enough in that to----
Dr. Penn. We think we have enough, counting the money that
is proposed in the budget, plus the carry-over, plus the use of
the reserve and the shipments that follow on once you tap the
reserve; we think there is an ample amount for this year, yes.
Mrs. Emerson. Okay. Well, hopefully if we have an
opportunity, we can talk about that in more depth.
And the time is out, Mr. Chairman, so thanks.
FOREIGN DEBT TO CCC
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Mrs. Emerson.
Before I yield to Mr. Farr, Ms. Kaptur brought up an
interesting issue about foreign debt specifically owed by Iraq,
but as we all know, there is a lot of money out there from
different countries, and I think it might be appropriate,
J.B.--I am not asking you to go back and dig through files back
during the Carter administration, but to--if you have a running
total on what foreign debt is to the CCC from all foreign
entities, that would be very helpful if you could provide that
for the record.
Dr. Penn. We can certainly do that.
[The information follows:]
Commodity Credit Corporation Foreign Debt
As of February 28, 2003, the exposure of the Commodity
Credit Corporation resulting from direct credit and loan
guarantees to foreign countries totaled $22.4 billion. Of this
amount, $4.3 billion represents contingent liability for the
GSM-102, GSM-103, and Supplier Credit programs.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you.
Mr. Farr.
Mr. Farr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
COFFEE PRICES
Thank you, Dr. Penn, for being here. And I am sorry that I
am just going to have to ask this question and run.
It is often said that our food policies and our foreign
policy, the right hand of the Federal Government doesn't know
what the left hand is doing, and I can't think of an area that
is more demonstrative of that issue than essentially what is
happening in the coffee-growing countries of Central and Latin
America.
We are involved in a $1.2 billion investment in Colombia,
which is one of the leading coffee growers in the world, and at
the same time throughout Colombia and the Central American
countries, which we have been heavily involved in because of
tragedies there by natural disasters and wars in the past, we
have really been trying to help these countries, which are
growing countries, take their number one cash crop, legitimate
cash crop, coffee, and really sustain it.
Yet we have four multinational companies, three of which
are headquartered in the United States--Kraft, Sara Lee,
Proctor & Gamble and Nestle--who buy 80 percent of the coffee
in the world, and what has happened is that the coffee prices
have gone to an all-time low, so much so that we are now
putting our food aid program, which you monitor, the Public Law
480 food, back into these countries to feed starving coffee
farmers.
In fact, the Ag News reported in the last year that some
40,000 El Salvadorans, 130,000 coffee workers have lost their
jobs since the crisis. At least three children were reported to
have starved to death because of malnutrition, because of the
coffee industry collapse.
So the right hand here is that we are investing in trying
to get people to grow legitimate crops which are cash crops
that are--that they can--and the best growers in Latin America
are the coffee growers, and it is still small, agrarian
agriculture.
Congress was so concerned about this that last year we
passed in the last night of session--I authored it along with
Cass Ballenger and other members of this committee, H.
Resolution 604, which essentially put the onus on the State
Department to come up with some recommendations in this area.
But it seems to me that the Department, your department, ought
to take a look at that resolution and come back with a strategy
that does something that gets at these American corporations.
I mean, in essence, the coffee prices on the market here in
the United States haven't dropped at all, but what they are
buying, the coffee--and we have put a lot of money into
teaching the Vietnamese how to grow coffee. They are growing
the poor-quality coffee which is flooding the market.
But here is the dilemma. I mean, these are American
companies, and we buy a lot of food from these companies for
our School Lunch Program and for our Feeding Nutrition Programs
and for, certainly, the military. I would imagine that for
these companies the United States might be their biggest
customer, and yet their corporate policies regarding coffee
purchases are just abominable as far as what we are trying to
do for social international aid to stop the cocaine growth and
all of that.
And my point is, in your assisting these farmers who are
being displaced because of low prices, has there been any
discussion about how to stop that spiraling downfall of coffee
growers in Central America and northern Latin America so that
you don't have to put so much of our food aid program, in
addition to our foreign aid, just to keep these people from
starving? And are there ways in which you can use your
influence over the purchases of food from these four big
companies?
And I am not the only one that is talking about this.
Congressman Ballenger is very, very active in this issue,
because we have just seen what happened in Colombia where we
are appalled that our American corporations are sort of
undermining our effort to have a sustainable agriculture there.
So are you familiar with this issue, and is there anything
you can do from your department to try to balance out, I think,
the equity of coffee issues here and our purchases of coffee.
And perhaps there is even discussion that we are one of the few
countries that doesn't have any quality standards for coffee.
We don't have any coffee growers in the United States other
than Kona, Hawaii, and it is a niche market, so we don't have
any pressure from the inside to sort of worry about the quality
of imports.
Dr. Penn. Well, I can say, Mr. Farr, that I am generally
familiar with the issue.
This is a very important issue in terms of economic
development activities all around the world, and as you
correctly note, not only the U.S. Government, but international
development organizations such as the World Bank have
encouraged small holders to produce the crops that they produce
best, everywhere in the world. Coffee has been one of those
that has been very important, and it has been particularly
noted that Vietnam is a new producer and has provided a lot of
supply to the market now and that coffee prices have been
depressed for quite some time. So it is a problem, I think.
I take your point about coordination across government
agencies, coordination among the international development
agencies, because if everybody expands production, we are going
to increase the supply and drive down the price.
And then I take your point about our food aid programs. The
development activities are not something that the Department of
Agriculture has a direct responsibility for. That would be
carried out under Title II of Public Law 480, which is the
responsibility of the Agency for International Development. But
we do have some food aid activities, and I take your point that
some of our food aid may be going to places where the coffee
prices are depressed.
We will certainly look into that, and I would be happy to
try to provide you more information as soon as I can.
[The information follows:]
Worldwide Coffee Crisis
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is
providing resources and coordinating initiatives to address the
worldwide coffee crisis. USAID Coffee Activities work to create
sustainable small-holder coffee systems which provide
significant income, employment, social, environmental and
consumer benefits. Where potential exists for farmers to
effectively compete within the coffee sector, USAID is working
to improve local capacity to produce and effectively market
high quality coffee thereby increasing the price farmers earn
for their product. At the same time, USAID programs assist
farmers that cannot effectively compete within the coffee
sector to diversify their activities and identify other sources
of income.
On August 30th, 2002, USAID signed a Quality Coffee
agreement with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras,
Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Panama. USAID will
provide $8 million for a market-based program to assist small
and medium coffee producers to improve coffee quality, form new
business linkages, secure longer-term contracts with the
specialty coffee industry, and identify and implement
diversification options for producers that cannot be
competitive.
In Colombia, USAID is helping mitigate the present
situation by beginning a $7 million 5-year effort on specialty
coffee activities in opium poppy and coca cultivation areas.
USAID's partners are working in partnership with the Coffee
Quality Institute and the Specialty Coffee Association of
America on coffee quality and market access activities.
Mr. Farr. Thank you very much. And it would be helpful if
you could talk to AID and the State Department, because you
have ag attaches in the very embassies of the countries we are
talking about.
Mr. Penn. We do.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Mr. Farr.
Mr. Nethercutt.
RELEASE OF WHEAT UNDER EMERSON TRUST
Mr. Nethercutt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to all of you. We appreciate your being here to
testify.
Mr. Davidson, I especially appreciate the remarks of the
chairman with respect to your position as Administrator of the
Risk Management Agency. I know you went out to my district in
our State. You have been out around the country talking to
people, and that is advisable for people in administrative
positions.
I looked at the Web site of the Farm Service Agency, and
this is what it says, just to remind you if you haven't looked
at it recently: The Farm Service Agency at the U.S. Department
of Agriculture ensures the well-being of American agriculture,
the environment, and the American public through efficient and
equitable administration of farm commodity programs, among
other things.
You probably know that I am not happy about the Emerson
Trust history with this administration. You all--the USDA is
the subject of an Inspector General's investigation at my
request, and it stems from the sales that occurred in 2002,
three separate times as I look at the record, that in my
opinion--I think an objective opinion of most of the people
looking at it--caused a reduction in the price of soft white
wheat in the marketplace, a total reduction by virtue of the
government's releasing stocks, offering these sales without
prior notice contrary to a policy that had been in place for
years, since the 1980s as I understand it, under the Food
Security Wheat Reserve Act of 1980 and subsequent times, that
later became the Emerson Trust in 1998.
These sales occurred to the detriment of not only the
farmer, the agriculture industry in the Northwest and across
the rest of the country, but specifically to the serious
financial detriment of the small elevators, the guys who are
holding government stocks, getting storage at low storage
prices, I might add to you, in the Northwest. We have some of
the lowest in the country.
And by virtue of your agency's either intentionally
departing from the prior practice of taking only so much from
each elevator so there would be equitable distribution across--
you know, equitable paying, so to speak, taking those stocks
out of an elevator and no more government storage payments--I
think it was done either intentionally, without notice, in a
departure from prior practices--it was either done through the
gross negligence of someone or some of those in the agency, or
it was just bone-headed.
By any objective standard, I would argue to you, it hurt
American agriculture. It hurt the price for the farmer, hurt
the storage conditions for the small elevator guys by having,
you know, others be able to engage in predatory practices that
cleaned out an elevator when, you know, the purchaser, the
third-party purchaser, had lots of stocks on hand; and so,
therefore, it eliminated some competition in the grain storage
area, and it literally hurt the price of wheat for the farmer.
And I think it was done for one of those three reasons.
That is what I have tried to think through might be the
motivation that resulted in the action.
I don't see any good reason for having done what you all
did, and there is further investigation being undertaken now by
the IG. They are out on the ground, and God bless them. I think
they are going to find all kinds of things with respect to the
improprieties with the way this unfolded.
I have been a strong ag supporter, the agency as well. But,
boy, this has me hot, because it hurt my people, and it hurts
rural America. It hurts rural eastern Washington and other
regions that were stuck with, you know, the impact of a policy
that allows predatory practices to occur. Whether intended or
not, I don't know, but it allowed it.
So I will have more questions, but I am happy to have any
answers that you might want to express to justify what you did
and why you did it.
But I am a hard sell on this one. I think you made a huge
mistake, and it hurt my own people. It hurt the wheat industry,
and frankly, it hurts the program and it hurts the Department.
So that is my little speech. But I am serious about it. It
really bothers me. I am really irritated by it, and I am going
to follow it up vigorously. So if you have a response, I would
be happy to hear it.
Dr. Penn. Well, I would just say, Congressman, that we do
know your feelings on this, we know how strongly you feel about
it. You and I have discussed this. The IG is conducting an
investigation, and so I think with that, rather than rehash it,
I will just leave it there, but I do appreciate your
sentiments.
Mr. Nethercutt. Thank you.
Mr. Bonilla. Mr. Goode.
LIVESTOCK COMPENSATION PROGRAM
Mr. Goode. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Penn, Mr. Little, I have got a question, I guess
directed best to Mr. Little, on the Livestock Compensation
Program which was included in the omnibus appropriations
package.
The sign-up date is April 1 for all those that didn't make
the September 9th cutoff date?
Mr. Little. Yes, sir.
Mr. Goode. Let me ask you this: What about livestock
producers that sold their livestock, say, in November or
December? They would still be eligible to go back and pick that
up?
Mr. Little. We are still developing the final procedures,
but if they sold them in November--the original date that we
were looking at was back in June, I believe. As long as they
owned the livestock between 90 days before or 90 days after
June 1 of 2002, they would be eligible, so if they sold them in
November, they should be covered.
Mr. Goode. Is that fixed, or is that what you are looking
at?
Mr. Little. That would be what we are still looking at,
yes. At least I don't know of anything----
Mr. Goode [continuing]. That is going to change that?
Mr. Little. Yes, sir.
Mr. Goode. So if they had them on August the 1st or August
15th, they would still be okay?
Mr. Little. Yes. They had to own the cows anywhere between
90 days before or 90 days after June 1, 2002.
ADVERSE EFFECTIVE WAGE RATE
Mr. Goode. Let me ask--and I don't know whether you--I
guess you are on this too.
You know, the H2A workers get an adverse effective wage
rate. Those are the persons from mainly non-U.S. areas, and
their wage rate--it is adverse. It is not minimum; it is not
prevailing. And the Department of Labor, of course, determines
prevailing wage rate, and the Department of Labor I believe
issues what the adverse effective wage rate is. And this is
what food producers and a number of other agricultural
producers pay to the migrant labor.
In my area, wages aren't going up; they are coming down--a
tremendous amount of layoffs in manufacturing. But the adverse
effective wage rate for--I will just pick a peach orchardist
that called me yesterday about it--continues to go up. And the
survey, it is my understanding, is done by the Department of
Agriculture. I am not sure it is done by the FSA, but y'all do
the survey, and then you give the information to the Department
of Labor.
I want to know if you could tell me why the adverse
effective wage rate--and it is a pretty sharp increase, and it
is a huge impact on the apple growers and the peach growers and
a number of other agricultural commodities in my area. I would
just like to--I can't understand why the persons from the USDA,
when they are calling around getting information for the
survey, why it keeps going up when the wages and everything
else aren't going up.
Mr. Little. First off, I don't believe it is the Farm
Service Agency that does the survey. It is probably the ERS or
NASS. If I were to give you a reason why the rate is going up,
it would only be an opinion. It could be because it is
difficult to get temporary labor, but that is only my opinion.
Mr. Goode. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Mr. Goode.
Mr. LaHood.
FSA COUNTY OFFICE STAFFING
Mr. LaHood. Mr. Little, if you have already answered this,
I will just--you don't need to answer it.
What is the status of putting people in the field to help
with the paperwork that needs to be filed by April 1st?
Mr. Little. Dr. Penn did refer to that earlier. The 2002
farm bill did provide additional staffing, so beginning in the
July time frame, we brought on about 1,000 new staff-years for
the remainder of 2002 and all of this fiscal year. Then the
2003 appropriations provided an additional $70 million, with
which we will hire additional temporary staffing.
You know, temporary staffing is not the best fix, because
it only provides additional staff to do the administrative
work, but it does free up time for the people that have the
technical knowledge to conduct the sign-up.
We are getting as much temporary help as we can out there,
we are working overtime, we have provided additional personal
computers for the additional staffing. We are shifting people
from counties that aren't heavily booked to those counties that
are. So we are doing everything we can to provide the staff
that is necessary.
Mr. LaHood. So you believe that there is enough staff out
there to accommodate the folks that will be coming in the
offices between now and April 1st?
Mr. Little. We believe we've got enough staff overall. We
are thinking there might be 200 counties nationwide that will
have difficulty getting everybody in by April 1, but as long as
the producers let us know that they still need to come in, we
are putting them on a register that will allow them to go in
after April 1. So no farmers that have an intention to update
their bases and yields are going to go without.
WAREHOUSE ACT IMPLEMENTATION
Mr. LaHood. Well, which one of you--I don't know if it is
you, Dr. Penn, or maybe somebody else at the table--has the
responsibility for the Warehouse Act implementation?
Dr. Penn. I guess I am the culprit there.
Mr. LaHood. I notice from your testimony that the issue of
preemption is something that--whether you are proposing it, it
is a done deal or what. But, you know, there are a lot of
States that are opposed to that, including Illinois, Iowa,
Indiana.
Can you address that? Is that a done deal, or is that
something you are proposing?
Dr. Penn. It was something that we proposed to do, but in
the 2003 Appropriations Act, the Congress installed a 180-day
moratorium, so, in effect, all of our activity is now
prohibited.
I think, Congressman, this was one of those efforts to do
good that got widely misunderstood. The case law associated
with the Warehouse Act has been such that the Federal
preemption issue, our lawyers thought, was well established.
When the Congress revised the U.S. Warehouse Act and we
published the final regulations, we noted that in the
regulations. Then we tried to provide additional coverage for
producers. And we did that in our proposal virtually all of the
States except a very few, including the ones that you
mentioned--Illinois, Indiana, Iowa still have programs that
would provide more producer protection than what we would do.
For most of the States in this country, our proposal would have
provided additional protection for producers, not only those
who store grain in the warehouse, but also those who sell grain
to the warehouses. So it was an effort to try to improve
producer protection, and we thought those States that provide
more than what the Federal Government was going to do could
still do that. In fact, we think that is the case.
We worked long and hard with the National Association of
State Departments of Agriculture, we worked with the warehouse
group, we worked with the National Grain and Feed Association,
we made a good-faith effort to try to deal with all the
stakeholders to work out a program that would be satisfactory
to all, but we didn't succeed, and so the Congress has imposed
the moratorium on our activities.
Mr. LaHood. Well, I assume you are going to be working on
this between now and the time that we sort of established in
the bill that we passed a month or so ago, to make some kind of
a policy, right?
Dr. Penn. Well, we have had extensive negotiations with all
of those groups, as I indicated, and we are still quite willing
to sit down and see what could be put together that would be
satisfactory to everybody, We are willing to visit with all of
the stakeholders during the time that is allotted to us.
Mr. LaHood. Would you be willing to consider exempting
those States that have more protection than the States that--
well, for example, would you be willing to exempt Iowa,
Illinois and Indiana because they provide more protection and
actually make that a part of the policy?
Mr. Penn. Yes, sir, it is my understanding that they are
exempt, that they are quite free to provide more protection
than the Federal Government was providing. But I think in a
large number of States, we were simply increasing the amount of
protection that was available to producers. Our sole intent in
this was to increase the protection that was available to the
farmers who were producing the grain.
E-FILING OF FORMS
Mr. LaHood. Could somebody tell me what the progress of the
e-file bill is? E-filing that allows for producers to be in
their farmhouse and use their computer to file forms that
ordinarily they would have to file in the offices?
Dr. Penn. Mr. Little?
Mr. Little. The e-file legislation did require that the
service center agencies--Farm Service Agency, Rural Development
and NRCS--provide farmers the capability to file from their
homes or their place of business as of July of 2002, and we
have got substantially all of our forms on line to where they
can fill them out from home.
We also implemented a system for electronic loan deficiency
payments on a pilot basis which we are expanding this fall. So
we are basically compliant. We are not as far as we would like
to be because the forms are not totally integrated with our
systems, but as we grow and we continue to move on to the
common computing environment, those forms that they fill out at
home will automatically tie into our systems. Just this past
week we also implemented e-filing for one of our farm loan
programs. Producers are able to file their loan applications on
line as well. So we are moving ahead. I will be honest, we are
not as far ahead as I would like to be, but I think with the
limited resources that we have and the time that it has taken,
I think we are doing fairly well.
Mr. LaHood. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Mr. LaHood.
We will now go to our second round of questioning. Whatever
questions I have, J.B., I will submit for the record. We may
have a vote. If that happens, I am going to go and vote and you
can continue.
Ms. Kaptur.
CCC SALES TO IRAQ
Ms. Kaptur. Mr. Secretary, you responded to my first round
of questioning in terms of your willingness to provide data
from the Department on Iraq. When you made the comment at least
in which you inferred that it is very old information and you
would not go back to the Carter administration, let me just
make the observation that I consider this Iraq issue obviously
paramount and I don't consider it to be old. I consider it to
be current.
I just wish to make these two statements before moving to
another topic. In the year of 1988, Iraq received over $1
billion in GSM-102 guarantees, making it the second largest
recipient of GSM credit guarantees during that year.
Also, at that time there was a serious disagreement between
the Congress, the legislative branch, and the executive branch
regarding policy--policy toward Iraq. A Senate bill in April
1990 was introduced stating that no assistance, grant, sale,
loan, lease, credit guarantee or insurance may be furnished to
Iraq unless the President certifies that Iraq has opened its
nuclear, chemical and biological sites to international
inspection. A similar bill was introduced in the House, and yet
in June 1990 the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern
and South Asian Affairs testified before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee that the administration--the then Bush-
Quayle administration--opposed Congressionally authorized
sanctions against Iraq, saying that they would not achieve U.S.
goals in Iraq, that other nations would not join the embargo,
that the administration's policy is to avoid using agricultural
trade to pursue foreign policy goals, and sanctions would
increase the U.S. trade foreign deficit.
I would suggest that the U.S. policy in terms of
international relations flows not in days but in decades and
that part of the quandary we face today is because of the
relationship between the financing of sales to Iraq and signals
that were given to that government which remain problematic
today. So I just wanted to place that on the record and again
appreciate your cooperation.
Mr. Bonilla. Ms. Kaptur, as I said earlier, you can
continue as I go vote and when you feel that you need to leave,
go ahead and we will take a short break until we return, J.B.
BIOFUELS
Ms. Kaptur. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to move to the
subject of biofuels, a real new market for agriculture in
America. We discussed the experience of biofuels last year in
your appearance before our subcommittee, and energy
independence being a paramount goal for our Nation as gasoline
prices go over $2 a gallon in America, your budget proposes to
reduce the CCC funding in support of the biofuels program by
$15 million, and I am asking you in this round why are you
doing this, particularly in view of the fact that even in terms
of the President's proposal at the Department of Energy, the
so-called money for the hydrogen fuel cell comes out of the
biomass accounts at the Department of Energy? So we are
reducing our commitment to biofuels, not just at Department of
Agriculture but at the Department of Energy.
Dr. Penn. I am not familiar with that specific reduction,
so, Congresswoman, if I could, I would like to ask Steve
Dewhurst if he could elaborate on that.
Mr. Dewhurst. You are correct. The program has been
authorized at $150 million a year. I do think it is important
to know that if you look at the program over the past couple of
years, in 2001 the actual use of the program was about $41
million. If you look at 2002, the actual use was $78 million.
In the 2003 act that Congress just passed the program is at
$115 million. And in the President's budget it is at $100
million. So you are absolutely correct. The $100 million is
lower than the authorization, but it is higher than the actual
use that we have had in the program in 2001 and 2002.
Ms. Kaptur. I thank you very much for that clarification,
Mr. Dewhurst. I think part of the problem is the lack of real
commitment by the Department of Agriculture to see itself as a
player in the biofuels industry in this country.
Mr. Secretary, you couldn't be from a more important State
and a more important region of the country. I have a really
great map here that shows where capacity is being developed,
and it just seems to me that the Department of Agriculture
should be in the lead. And frankly, when I look at a $60
billion trade deficit in petroleum, as I said to the Secretary
last week, it is very clear where the target is. Every single
person that is fortunate to be appointed in the Department
should be thinking about this new industry and ways to
encourage its development here at home.
I wish that I personally could buy ethanol in my district
because I can go up to Detroit and buy a Ford Taurus today and
by the time I get it back to Toledo it is out of fuel. I cannot
buy ethanol in my State. Well, there are two pumps in Columbus
but I am not going to drive 2\1/2\ hours to fill the tank and
drive another 2\1/2\ hours back to Toledo.
Can't the Department be more creative in helping this
industry come on line and help it be farmer owned? What is the
problem?
Dr. Penn. Let me respond by saying that I think, this one
budget entry aside, the Department is very favorably inclined
to renewable fuels. And look at the ethanol industry. This is
an infant industry, maybe 10 years old, that today is going to
use 10 percent of the entire corn crop, and the Department I
think has been very supportive in the development of that
industry.
We are also trying to be very supportive in all of the
renewable fuels areas, not only in this mission area, but also
in the Rural Development area and in the Office of the Chief
Economist. There is a lot of activity concerning renewable
fuels and how best to support those, and the Department was a
big participant in the energy bill that the Congress considered
last year and did not complete action on.
So I think that it is not quite fair to say that we are not
interested. We are always seeking new uses for products, new
markets for America's farmers, and so this is an area in which
I certainly agree with you we have a lot of opportunity to do
more.
Ms. Kaptur. Mr. Penn, I don't know what your request was to
OMB, but I can tell you that in the cross-cut budget analysis
that we received from the Department of Agriculture indeed your
budget for 2004 proposes a $70 million cut in support for
biofuels development, $40 million alone--over $40 million out
of your value-added research accounts.
I can also tell you that the vehicular use within the
Department of Agriculture, other than Beltsville, using
biofueled vehicles is abysmal. And the reductions in CCC, I
wish I was a prosecutor here. I could say that your rhetoric
does not match the reality, and maybe it is OMB that is the
problem. But the reason I am pleading with you, you set the
policy. Most of the development that has gone on around the
country in biofuels has been without your help. I see farmers
in my State struggling to finance the development of ethanol
and biodiesel production. There is no help from the Department
of Agriculture. Actually it is an embarrassment. And you are
right in saying it is an infant industry, and because it is an
infant industry the Seven Sisters can come down and push down
the prices in this country.
I have a bill modeled on the rural telephone and rural
electric experiences, for a rural biofuel industry in this
country. I would love the Department's support. We have to
provide the platform to birth up this industry, but I don't see
the muscle from the Department of Agriculture behind this. We
have a $60 billion hole in terms of imports, yet we have a
budget from your Department that cuts support to biofuels.
I am really pleading with you for the sake of the country,
and look what is happening to us. Whether it is Venezuela,
whether it is Africa, whether it is Iraq or Saudi Arabia, we
are becoming more and more dependent. Our military is extended
all over the globe and why are we there? What is the main
source of income these places are getting from us? Buying
petroleum.
So this is, as I said to the Secretary, this is our
generation, our time, our watch, and it will never come back to
us again. Your Department is critical. I would love during your
tenure to be able to have you help come to my district and open
up some biodiesel and ethanol pumps and to in your value-added
accounts find the most Btu's per ton of biomass that we can
create in this country and to have that industry flourish and
to provide a financing platform not just for the big muscle
guys like ADM but for the farmers who are struggling across
this country to make income from the market, not from their
mailbox. We really need your help. You are on the executive
side, I am not, and I would just plead with you to consider
what more can be done at USDA and to bring together a team.
The Secretary's answer to me last week on this was:
Congresswoman, you know the regulatory side; MTBE, for example,
is helping the demand side. I am asking you also to think about
the supply side and how we jack up the supply side and do not
wait just for EPA and others to solve this problem, but to be
aggressive. Look at the power you have.
America needs your engagement on this beyond where you see
yourself today. Can you do more? Can you assemble a team there
at USDA of your top experts and really look at bioenergy as a
top priority for the Department?
Dr. Penn. Well, again let me just say in response that I
think we share your enthusiasm for renewable fuels. We share
your enthusiasm for new markets for the products from the
farms, and I would argue that we are making a big effort. When
you look at all of the activities across the Department that
are not particularly visible in this budget, such as the
research effort in the Agricultural Research Service and
activities in Rural Development and other parts of the
Department, we are making a big effort to be supportive of
renewable fuels and all of these new markets that may be
available for farmers.
Again, I say we have been very supportive of the ethanol
market and that is one which has now started to mature. A
billion bushels of corn this year, over 10 percent of the
entire crop that was produced in 2002, will be used as feed
stock for ethanol, and so we are enthusiastic about renewable
fuels.
Ms. Kaptur. Mr. Secretary, do you have a special bioenergy
working group at top levels, at your level of USDA?
Dr. Penn. Not that I am aware of.
Ms. Kaptur. If I could plead with you, connect the dots in
your Department and with a $70 million reduction in the
Department's commitment to biofuels which I hope that this
Congress can fix, you should not have a reduction in this
important area. I can't make you do this, I guess, but I would
encourage you in the strongest way possible to use the power of
your Department to help America dig herself out of the hole
that she is in and remove the chief strategic vulnerability
that we have from a military standpoint and an economic
standpoint.
I will say on the record the last four recessions,
including the one that we are in today, were caused by rising
oil prices. And so America better wake up. And our farmers--
Keith Collins told us last week 50 cents of every farm dollar
is Federal subsidy. Why can't our farmers farm the market? We
need to look at supply side and we need to help our country,
and I think you are a central player and you need to see it
that way and be aggressive.
Now I am going to give you permission to take a break
because I have to go vote, and I thank you very much for this
round of questioning. Appreciate it.
Dr. Penn. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. Bonilla. J.B., if you are ready we will continue, and
thank you for bearing with us to break for the vote. I now
yield to Mr. Nethercutt.
RELEASE OF WHEAT UNDER EMERSON TRUST
Mr. Nethercutt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Penn, did you
analyze or anybody in your shop analyze the market impacts that
could occur by the release of this wheat in July and September
and I think December, if I am not mistaken? Did you do any
analysis in terms of the market impact?
Dr. Penn. I can't recall all of the particulars and I can't
recall the exact timing, but I believe that release was during
the period when we had a run-up in wheat prices. So if there
was ever a good time to release wheat from the reserve, I think
that was probably it. There was an analysis. I can't recall the
details, but we always look at what the market impacts of this
are going to be because we know it is a very political issue.
Once we release grain from any of these reserves, we watch
that.
Mr. Nethercutt. I am not talking so much about the decision
to release, but the decision to release like you did that is
allowing this predatory practice to occur. Wipe out one small
reserve in favor of a third party buyer who has reserves of
their own, essentially knocking out the competition. That is
the negative effect that it appears to me that it had, and I am
wondering if you did any analysis in the field. Do you go out
to the field offices frequently?
Dr. Penn. Yes, I do.
Dr. Nethercutt. How often?
Mr. Penn. Oh, I don't know. I can't tell you precisely. I
would have to look at my travel schedule. I do go to the field
offices and the producer meetings. I spend a lot of time with
the farmers. My door is always open to anybody who wants to see
me. I don't think accessibility or involvement is an issue with
me.
Mr. Nethercutt. I am not suggesting that it is. I just want
to understand what analysis in the field, in the market, in the
industry you might have engaged in before making the decision
to depart from prior practices of a little from here, a little
from here, limitations on purchasing--or putting that release
of those wheat bushels out in the market.
Dr. Penn. Congressman, the situation was analyzed. And
again it has been such a long time ago and there have been so
many other things that I can't recall the particulars. But as
you know, it did involve the release of required wheat for
particular users; certain types of wheat were required. Those
were stored in particular parts of the country. There was an
examination of all of those details and it wasn't just a
question of releasing wheat, but it was releasing wheat by
class, and the differential market impacts were analyzed.
I do not recall the details. I wish I could. But I assume
the IG will look at all of that in the course of their
investigation.
Mr. Nethercutt. I think part of the problem in the process
that is engaged in with respect to these decisions is that
there is a lack of information. So I have to assume that if
there is no evidence of analysis, or if there is no evidence of
bids that were rejected, that they were not done or that they
were not--that the records were not kept for some reason, which
leads me to the question: Do you see any changes necessary with
respect to future releases of CCC-owned wheat?
Dr. Penn. Well, as I indicated in response to another
earlier question, we have had several sales of wheat from the
Emerson Trust. The one that you are most concerned about was
the very first one, and I think the policy was modified for the
subsequent sales to go to a broader area.
Again, I think there was a particular need for a particular
class of wheat which I think caused the first sale to be
concentrated in the Pacific Northwest. I think as the
subsequent releases were made that other classes of wheat were
required and so the geographic area was much broader. So the
removal from the warehouses was more widely dispersed in the
other releases than it was perhaps in the first one.
Mr. Nethercutt. That does not answer my question. There was
hard red and soft white, and you hit us hard the second time
just like you hit us hard the first time and you hit us hard
the third time, and there was not any great need with respect
to any international Emerson requirements in the second sale.
As a result of what the Department has done, we have got now
the government-owned wheat concentrated in five big
international companies. Five. That is where the concentration
is. So we have essentially, by virtue of the action of the
Department in connection with this matter, limited those who
occupy a place in the Emerson Trust reserve. I mean, you have
got it concentrated in five international companies, big guys
who had adequate reserves, and I am just trying to get a sense
of whether you think that was the result you expected.
Do you think there ought to be any different procedures
used next time? Is this 20 percent limitation a sensible one or
is it, based on all that has occurred, you still don't want to
do it?
I would just finally--I know my time is up--I would urge
you not to do this again if you are contemplating doing it;
that is, additional similar sales. I would be stunned if you
did--you, the Department--because I think there ought to be
this limitation that does not have such a negative impact on
rural America and small grain elevators. Do you see what I am
driving at?
Dr. Penn. I understand your concern.
Mr. Nethercutt. Do you see policy changes necessary?
Dr. Penn. Well, we are reviewing the situation. As I said,
we have been aware of your concern for some time and we are
aware of the nature of the problem that you have pointed out to
us and we are reviewing the situation.
Mr. Nethercutt. Well, is it your opinion as you sit here
today that maybe going back to the prior practices of limiting
that which comes out of any elevator to say 20 percent is a
sensible practice? A fair practice?
Dr. Penn. I think it may well be. But the point is that
this grain is stored at the behest of the government and it is
stored for a purpose and at some point the grain does have to
be released. I mean that is the purpose for having it stored,
of course.
Mr. Nethercutt. I understand.
Dr. Penn. And I would note that a lot of elevators are
never happy when any grain is removed from their premises.
Storing grain for the government is a good practice, a good
business, but we do have to use it from time to time.
Mr. Nethercutt. I understand, but yet when you come along
and you wipe out a small elevator by virtue of the practice and
policy that is in place, contrary to prior practice and policy,
you bet they are unhappy. I have got some real unhappy people
in my district to the tune of about a million bucks. And what
that means is that in the price depression that occurs as a
result of, in part, I am not blaming you for all of it, but in
part for the actions of the government, we have got lower
prices now for farmers. That has a corresponding negative
impact on small towns, and sometimes the only way to keep the
economy going is to have a little bit of grain in the small
elevator rather than the big guy down on the river, because
they do not worry so much about the impact like the small guys
do. And you allow the predatory practices to occur that I think
occurred in this case. Big ones going after small ones because
they wipe out the competition.
So I can't imagine that you would not say this policy
should be formalized or changed from the last 2 years of this
administration. And I love this administration. Don't get me
wrong. I am very proud of this administration; however, it is
not beneath me to be critical when my own people are affected
and affected negatively. So I would hope that your testimony
would be that it was not the greatest judgment that you made
three separate times, because it had this negative impact on
the market. It hurts rural America and it really advantages big
versus little.
So is there any reason why you would say that policy change
is not necessary?
Dr. Penn. Well, Congressman, let me respond again and say
that like most issues there are two sides to the issue, and
there are some other considerations, and I feel inadequate
today to respond to you, to tell you what the other side of the
issue is because I simply am not familiar enough with it to do
that. But there are good arguments for doing what was done. As
I said before, we do not think we are infallible, and we are
certainly willing to review and reevaluate the policy, and if
it was a boneheaded decision, as you suggest, then we certainly
will not do it again.
Mr. Nethercutt. And I appreciate that, and I would hope
not. I guess my sense is that there may be good arguments, but
I have no clue what they might be, and at this point, your
testimony is you do not either, although they might be out
there?
Dr. Penn. No, no, that is not what I am saying. There were
good arguments and it was a considered judgment. I could give
you those arguments, and I would be happy to do that. I would
be happy to follow up with discussion with you personally and I
would be happy to provide material for the record, whatever you
think might be most appropriate. But this was an issue that was
considered and as I said before, there are other
considerations.
Mr. Nethercutt. I do not want to beat this horse until it
is completely dead, but I do refer you back to the Farm Service
Agency mission: Equitable administration, efficient
administration of farm commodity programs and to ensure the
well-being of American agriculture. I have a lot of farmers out
my way and a lot of elevator people who would say this is not
fair. My own State legislature this past week passed a
resolution condemning, criticizing, constructively suggesting
that what happened in 2002 to present was so detrimental to the
ag industry in our region, and I would argue some parts of the
rest of the country, that it was worthy of a rather unanimous
vote out in my State legislature. So it is getting the
attention of a lot of people and they are very concerned about
the policy of the administration.
I understand I might have a chance for one more question,
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bonilla. Go right ahead, Mr. Nethercutt.
FUND FOR DEMOCRACY PROJECT
Mr. Nethercutt. On another matter, my staff recently met
with some representatives of the Fund for Democracy and
Development. I understand there is some kind of a dispute
between the Department and the Fund about some project in
Russia, and I would request that the Department make a good
faith effort to reach some sort of a compromise so that the
money can be used for something worthwhile rather than the
current situation where I understand there is money sitting
idle, and I can provide with you more details on that as well
if you want or later with a staff member to get some details.
But I would just put it on your radar screen, if you do not
mind; take a look and see with respect to this particular Fund
issue.
Dr. Penn. We are aware. Thank you.
Mr. Nethercutt. Mr. Chairman, I am finished.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Mr. Nethercutt. We again have some
members who are attending other hearings. We feel like we have
allowed ample time for them to return from the last vote. Mr.
Latham was interested in submitting questions for the record,
and I understand Ms. Kaptur has some further questions, but we
cannot locate her at this time so with that in mind we suspect
that her questions will be submitted for the record, and we
stand adjourned until 9:30 tomorrow morning and we appreciate
your appearance here today.
Thank you.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Wednesday, March 12, 2003.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE FOOD SAFETY AND INSPECTION SERVICE
WITNESSES
ELSA A. MURANO, UNDER SECRETARY FOR FOOD SAFETY
GARRY L. McKEE, ADMINISTRATOR, FOOD SAFETY AND INSPECTION SERVICE
STEPHEN DEWHURST, BUDGET OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
Introduction of Witnesses
Mr. Latham [presiding]. Good morning, everyone. I am
Congressman Tom Latham; I am not Henry Bonilla. The Chairman is
in a caucus conference this morning; I believe the Democrats
also have one, so there may be fewer members initially than
what we would expect normally. But welcome, everyone.
Today the committee takes up the very serious issue of food
safety, and the administration's fiscal year 2004 budget
request for the Food Safety and Inspection Service. I am
delighted to have before us today Dr. Elsa Murano, the Under
Secretary for Food Safety; Dr. Garry McKee, the Administrator
of FSIS, and our budget guru, Mr. Steve Dewhurst. Dr. Murano
appeared before the committee last year, but this is Dr.
McKee's first time before this group. And we extend a warm
welcome to you and to the colleagues from the agencies that are
with you here today.
We certainly face some hard work in ensuring the safety of
foods against both intentional and unintentional contamination.
Parts of your agency's mission have not changed since the
start, yet in other areas, you face brand-new challenges. That
certainly creates some hard decisions on priorities and
budgeting. On behalf of this committee, I am proud to say that
last year we fully funded the Agency's budget request. We share
your commitment to keeping our food supply safe.
With the team before us, we can see that the administration
certainly has focused on science, expertise, and food safety,
and on the need to manage resources well. The job that you and
your folks in the field do is extremely important, and I hope
all of the FSIS employees realize that we appreciate their
dedication and fine work.
Before we hear from our panelists, I would turn to my
colleague, the ranking member from Ohio, for any opening
remarks she may have.
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. Dr. Murano,
Dr. McKee, we welcome you this morning, and obviously Mr.
Dewhurst as well back again before our subcommittee.
Dr. Murano, the issues that you deal with in food safety
are obviously on the minds of the American people, and they
meet the results of your work and our work every day when they
shop in the grocery stores and buy product in our restaurants.
We are very interested in your testimony this morning because
of the larger number of food-borne illnesses that are affecting
the American people. And with recalls like Wampler and ConAgra,
the volumes involved are at historic highs.
Just yesterday, indeed in Ohio, there was another recall
from American Food Groups, I am sure you are aware of this,
106,000 pounds of fresh and frozen ground beef products. I
think one of the problems is that the time it takes, if you do
discover it to the time of recall, seems to be a big lag. Then,
as I asked the Secretary when she was here, the issue of
recovery, recall doesn't mean anything. You get some
information out there, but most of the product remains in the
stores or wherever it might be for eventual consumption. The
agency has had a drop of 35 percent in enforcement actions
since the year 2000. The General Accounting Office has
expressed some concerns about that in reports that have been
given to us.
So, we are very interested in the record levels of funding
that Congress has been providing, but the follow-through has a
lot to be desired. So we are really happy that you are here
this morning. We want to hear about what you are doing within
USDA in order to make our food system not just the best it has
ever been, but even better than it has ever been.
Thank you both so very much for being here today.
Mr. Latham. Thank you, Ms. Kaptur.
And on a personal level, thank you for dropping by last
week for a visit. You may proceed with your opening statements.
Opening Statement
Ms. Murano. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am Dr. Elsa Murano, Under Secretary for Food Safety. With
me today are Dr. Merle Pierson, Deputy Under Secretary for Food
Safety, Dr. Garry McKee, Administrator of the Food Safety and
Inspection Service, and other FSIS representatives.
The safety of our food supply is one of the most important
issues we face not only at USDA but as a Nation. There is
really nothing more personal or vital to all of us than the
food we provide to our families. We have the best food
production and processing systems in the world, providing
consumers with the most abundant and safest food supply.
However, last year was a testament that maintaining the safety
of our food is an on going challenge. We faced two outbreaks,
one caused by Listeria monocytogenes, another caused by E. coli
O157:H7. According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, CDC, over the past decade, there has been a major
Listeria outbreak associated with ready-to-eat products in the
United States every two to four years, and E. coli O157:H7, due
to consumption of undercooked hamburgers are almost an annual
occurrence.
Despite these challenges, we have made significant
improvements to our food safety program. We believe that the
Pathogen Reduction/Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point
(HACCP) Rule in 1996 has made food safer. In May of 2002, the
CDC reported that the rate of foodborne illnesses across the
board has decreased 21 percent.
I want to review some of the achievements we have made in
improving food safety before I describe our plan to combat
these outbreaks of foodborne illness.
Last year when I testified before this Subcommittee, I
outlined to you five goals that I intended to pursue in the
coming year to ensure that we are proactive in protecting
public health. We have pursued these goals with an aggressive
vigor, and I am proud to report that much has been accomplished
over the last year in our pursuit of these goals to ensure the
safety of the Nation's food supply.
The first goal is to ensure policy decisions are based on
science. My background as a researcher in food safety has shown
me the importance of utilizing science in formulating
regulatory policy. Risk assessments are scientifically-based
processes of estimating the likelihood of exposure to a hazard
and the resulting public health impact. They are the best way
to measure pervasiveness of pathogens, and they provide a solid
foundation from which we base policies on science. The benefits
of using them can be seen in our initiatives on E. coli O157:H7
and Listeria monocytogenes last year.
We learned from our risk assessment on E. coli O157:H7 that
the pathogen was not the proverbial needle in a haystack that
we once believed. On the contrary, it was much more prevalent
than previously thought, which meant that we had to take a hard
new look at our strategies to address its occurrence. We also
learned that not all establishments were implementing HACCP
systems that were effective for controlling E. coli O157:H7.
Others were not correctly validating the interventions used to
control the pathogen.
Finally, we realized that simply focusing on grinding
operations was not effective. Therefore, in order to be
efficient, we also needed to focus on the production process,
the slaughter process and trimmings as contributors to the
problem.
In December, we issued an interim directive to our
inspectors to make sure that establishments producing ready-to-
eat meat and poultry products are preventing Listeria
monocytogenes contamination. This directive was absolutely
necessary, given the gravity of the northeastern Listeriosis
outbreak in the fall.
Furthermore, we recently completed a draft risk assessment
on Listeria, which evaluates all the factors that potentially
contribute to the overall risk to public health. The
information developed during the risk assessment process is
critical to exploring a variety of risk management scenarios,
and we plan to examine different combinations of testing and
intervention that present possibilities for future
policymaking. We will consult the risk assessment as we work on
a final rule to reduce Listeria in processing plants that are
producing ready-to-eat meat and poultry products, moving as
rapidly as we can to develop this final rule while using sound
science as a basis.
Our second goal is to improve the management and
effectiveness of FSIS programs. In order to fulfill this goal,
we needed a leader to head FSIS through one of its most
profound transformations toward a public health mission. I am
truly proud to say I have found this leader in Dr. Garry McKee,
who started on September 1st, 2002. In this very short time, he
has made a very positive impression on the agency's employees
and constituents alike. Dr. McKee is a committed public health
professional with over 30 years of public health experience,
and a proven leader in managing public health programs and
personnel. With his leadership, we are already seeing increased
employee accountability, improved communication flow, and
increased efficiency in the agency's programs. As a public
health agency, lives depend on our programs and operations to
work as a finely-tuned machine.
In addition to selecting Dr. McKee as administrator, I
started a reorganization of FSIS last year so that the agency
can meet its public health and food safety goals better. The
purpose for this reorganization is to increase accountability,
enhance communication, and improve overall efficiency. This
reorganization will also ensure that the principles of public
health and food safety cut across the entire spectrum of FSIS's
work. We have added four assistant administrators for Food
Security; Program Evaluation, Enforcement and Review; Outreach
and External Affairs; and International Coordination to
strengthen the working relationship between our various
offices.
The third goal is to improve coordination of food safety
activities with other public health agencies. I am a strong
believer that, by working together, all the agencies with
public health responsibilities can best utilize our resources
to ensure a safe food supply. An example of our progress in
this area was an unprecedented investigation that we
coordinated with the CDC and other State and local public
health agencies on the northeastern Listeriosis outbreak last
fall.
Another example is our very close working relationship with
the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, Dr. Mark
McClellan. He and I have established regular meetings to
increase our interaction on issues of mutual concern, and to
discuss policy positions of common interest.
States are also an integral part of the U.S. food safety
system. We are continuing to take steps to improve Federal/
State cooperation on State meat and poultry inspection
programs. For example, we are working in close cooperation with
State program directors on the National criteria for meat and
poultry inspection programs, a project to update, clarify, and
simplify requirements for cooperative State meat and poultry
inspection programs.
Our fourth goal is to protect the food supply against
intentional harm. Since the attacks on September 11, FSIS has
strengthened coordination efforts to prevent, detect, and
respond to food-related emergencies resulting from acts of
terrorism, and ensure the safety of meat and poultry and egg
products that come to us from other countries. With a strong
food safety infrastructure already in place, FSIS has been able
to focus on fortifying existing programs and improving lines of
communication both internally and externally.
In addition to reinspecting imported product, FSIS
continually assesses foreign establishments to make sure their
sanitation and inspection procedures are equivalent to those in
the United States. We have also conducted a risk assessment to
be used as a tool for determining the most vulnerable products,
likely agents, and potential sites for deliberate adulteration
of domestically produced meat, poultry, and egg products.
We are also developing a threat assessment of the import
system to identify points in the production of imported
products where biological, chemical, and radiological
contaminants could be intentionally added to foods being
brought into the United States.
Finally, our fifth goal is to engage in proactive education
programs. As we continue to examine emerging and existing food
safety problems, it is important that we remember that reducing
food-borne illness requires numerous interventions all along
the farm-to-table continuum. We must consider all the
strategies available to us, and education is one of them. That
is why we continually look for the most cost effective ways to
get the food safety message out to all food handlers from coast
to coast.
Because we have the same safety requirements for the U.S.
meat and poultry produced for export and for products entering
the United States, our efforts have a worldwide impact.
Having safe food available to citizens around the world is
vital to protecting global health. For this reason, we are
fully committed to working with our international partners in
ensuring a safe food supply worldwide.
We lead the U.S. Office of the Codex Alimentarius
Commission, and we are actively engaged in the activities of
this Commission.
We have made significant progress in achieving our five
goals on both domestic and international levels. I am very
optimistic that we can make a difference in breaking the cycle
of foodborne illness outbreaks through working with our
partners all along the farm-to-table continuum.
At this time, I would like to focus briefly on the
initiatives of the fiscal year 2004 budget request, and
indicate how this additional funding will help us reach our
goals.
The $42 million increase in the FY 2004 budget to
strengthen the FSIS food safety program encompasses $23.6
million in increases to cover raises in employee salaries and
benefits, the costs of inflation, and FSIS's support of State
inspection programs.
The other part of the budget increase covers $19.3 million
in initiatives to fund the hiring of more food safety
inspectors, provide specialized training for the inspection
workforce, increase microbiological testing and sampling,
strengthen foreign surveillance programs, and increase our
public education efforts.
Out of this additional funding, we are requesting $1.7
million to include baseline studies on a variety of pathogens,
which will allow us to collect data on the presence of
microbial hazards. It is crucial for us to use this information
in developing risk assessment models.
We are also requesting $5.7 million to help us expand our
in-depth HACCP training to all our veterinarians and
inspectors. In addition, our budget requests $4.3 million to
increase our workforce to 7,680 in-plant staff by adding 80 new
positions, which are necessary to meet the demands of industry
growth.
Another request is $4.5 million to provide additional
microbiologists, chemists, laboratory technicians, and other
personnel to increase our ability to identify adulterants in
meat, poultry, and egg products.
Additionally, our budget includes $1.8 million to increase
the number of foreign program auditors.
And finally, our budget calls for an additional $1.5
million for food safety education, to help us spread the
important message of safe food handling and preparation.
Mr. Chairman, I am committed not only to furthering our
progress on our five goals to improve safety, but also to win
this war on pathogens. I am truly optimistic that we can
accomplish these goals from working with everyone who has a
stake in the farm-to-table continuum, whether they are
government, industry, consumer groups, or academia.
This concludes my statement, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
the opportunity to testify before you on behalf of the Office
for Food Safety. I would like to give a couple of minutes to
Dr. Garry McKee, who would like to introduce himself to you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Elsa Murano follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Opening Statement
Mr. McKee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
Subcommittee. I am pleased to have the opportunity to provide a
statement on the current status of Food Safety and Inspection
Service programs, and on the fiscal year 2004 budget request
for food safety within the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself,
since this is my first time before the Subcommittee.
I have been with FSIS for a little over six months now.
Although I come to FSIS from the Wyoming Department of Health,
I am a proud Oklahoman at heart. I graduated from the
Southwestern Oklahoma State University and the University of
Oklahoma, concentrating on microbiology and public health.
Having been in the public health field for more than 30 years,
I am very comfortable with the work and responsibilities of
FSIS, and am pleased to have Dr. Murano as a partner in our war
on pathogens.
I have spent my entire career in this field, and I am
devoted to administering FSIS under its protocols and
scientific foundations. Public health is my number one
priority. Thus, we are building FSIS into a recognized,
credible, world-class public health agency that is a model for
all other public health institutions.
What does a world-class public health agency mean? Frankly,
it means we need to be the experts in improving the safety of
meat, poultry, and egg products for the American people. We
must also ensure that our food supply is safe and secure from
bioterrorist attacks, intentional tampering, or other forms of
adulteration.
While I believe that FSIS has made considerable progress
towards these goals, more can be done to make this agency the
top notch public health regulatory agency we envision it can
be. The nearly 10,000 employees at FSIS are dedicated to
achieving this vision.
To fulfill this vision, there are three functions of a
successful public health model that FSIS must implement.
First, FSIS must assess public health problems using
science, such as surveillance, data collection, monitoring, and
forecasting trends.
Second, FSIS must develop policies to reduce the risk of
foodborne illness using science-based knowledge.
Finally, FSIS must assure the public that we are a credible
public health agency through enforcement of established
statutory and regulatory responsibilities.
While Dr. Murano has already provided an overview of how
our budget request will help us carry out the first two
functions, I would like to take a moment to focus on the third
element of a successful public health model. I am deeply
committed to all three of these functions, but I believe that
an integral part of becoming a credible public health agency is
to have a well-trained workforce capable of enforcing
established statutory and regulatory requirements.
Thus, the FY 2004 budget requests an increase of $5.7
million to enhance the agency's workforce training capability,
which is my number one priority. This will allow FSIS to retool
and expand its existing training programs by incorporating a
public health focus and integrating scientific and technical
principles, including Hazard Analysis and Critical Control
Points validation with training on technical and regulatory
approaches to inspection.
In addition to increasing the technical skills of our
employees, the agency intends to use training opportunities to
strengthen the management capabilities of our workforce as
well.
Additionally, the agency plans to take the training
opportunities we offer into the field and directly to our
employees. The goal of this initiative is to provide employees
a variety of training options, including the ability to take
courses taught by university professors near their work sites.
FSIS plays an essential role in ensuring that the meat,
poultry, and egg products that we eat are safe. While we mainly
focus on the processing of these products, we have a
responsibility to the American people to make sure that the
entire food chain is strong. Food safety is a team effort, and
we are always working to improve our role in the process.
However, it requires that everyone involved in the process,
from the farmer to the consumer, carries out his or her
responsibility in ensuring that the food we eat is safe and
safely prepared. The FSIS works with industry, consumers, and
our sister agencies on a daily basis in the war on pathogens.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to submit
testimony to the Subcommittee on how FSIS is working with
Congress and other partners to become a first-class public
health agency. It is my hope that, working together, we will
take food safety in the United States to unsurpassed heights. I
look forward to working with you to ensure that the vision of
FSIS as a world-class public health agency is realized. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Garry L. McKee follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
LISTERIA
Mr. Latham. Thank you very much for your statements.
I would like to mention that the camera here today is with
Iowa Public Television, which we all love at home. It will be
filming for a premier farm show, hosted by Mark Pearson. We are
glad to have you with us here today.
We spent a good deal of time discussing food safety at the
Secretary's hearing two weeks ago, and I would like to continue
that conversation today.
Specifically, I would like to address your agency's effort
to combat Listeria contamination. As you know, Listeria is a
particular problem since it can contaminate ready-to-eat
products, and can, in some cases, be fatal. I know from our
conversations that this is a top priority for you.
You just told us that you are working on the Listeria rule,
that a risk assessment has just been completed as part of the
rule-making process. You issued the Listeria directive to field
staff this fall, and you are increasing testing for Listeria.
Can you fill us in on how these efforts are going?
Ms. Murano. Sure. I would be very happy to do that, Mr.
Chairman.
Listeria is an environmental contaminant. And that is how
that organism ends up in these ready-to-eat products,
basically, at a processing plant. If Listeria is in the
environment of the plant, it can get onto food contact
surfaces, and from there it can contaminate product after the
product has been processed with a heat treatment, for example.
The key to defeating this pathogen, is to find it where it
lurks, the niches it may be harbored in inside the plant
environment. Environmental testing is very important to help us
find where the organism is, where it might be harbored, and
where we can--by eliminating that niche, minimize the risk of
contamination of product with this organism.
Two items that you mentioned, the Listeria directive and
then the Listeria rule are what we have been working on. The
Listeria directive is a directive to our employees. We drafted
that directive knowing that when a directive is issued you are
basically instructing your inspectors. It is not a rule, and it
is not a regulation. It is simply an instruction to our
inspectors. We drafted it in such a way that we would strongly
motivate industry so that we can achieve a couple of goals.
Number one, that environmental testing would continue by
industry, but that we would conduct it as well. And, secondly,
because a lot of the industry conducts so many of these
environmental tests already, that they would share that data
with us.
We strongly believe that in the case of the outbreak of
last fall, had we, the agency, known about the results that the
plant had been getting over time, it would have been certainly
very helpful to us in trying to ascertain a trend and maybe
anticipate a potential problem. The directive was designed to
do exactly that.
Now, the directive is in place, but we look at it almost as
an interim fix, if you will. It certainly has been effective, I
can tell you that. A large number of plants that did not share
their data with us before the directive are doing so now. So I
see that as certainly a success.
But the real results are going to be realized through the
finalizing of a rule that was proposed back in 2001. We needed
to conduct a risk assessment that would help us figure out what
the management strategies are that one could put into place to
significantly reduce the risk of Listeriosis, of Listeria being
in and ending up in product. So we are very happy that we have
completed that risk assessment.
We had a public meeting where we discussed the risk
assessment with interested parties. It is posted on the FSIS
web site. In the meantime, we are getting that risk assessment
peer reviewed, and we are moving forward as quickly as we can
to develop strategies based on that risk assessment to complete
the final version of the rule for minimizing risk based on the
scientific evidence we were able to gather from that risk
assessment.
So, I feel very confident that through these steps we will
actually make a difference. We will be able, for the first time
in many years, to address the problem of Listeria contamination
in these ready-to-eat products.
LISTERIA DIRECTIVE
Mr. Latham. From the public health perspective, has your
directive been as effective as you had hoped? Or what is your
feeling?
Ms. Murano. Well, there haven't been any outbreaks that we
know of. So in that sense we could supposedly claim victory.
But to me, the way to look at it is that this directive has
succeeded for us because it has helped us obtain data from
plants that never shared it with us before, which is great for
anticipating trends and potential problems.
So in that sense, it absolutely has been a success. The
fact that we have not had any illnesses due to these products
so far, certainly one could take credit for that, but I don't
take credit very quickly. I would rather continue on this path
and make sure that our inspectors are doing their intensified
testing program, which is also part of the directive, at those
establishments that either don't share data with us or are not
doing environmental testing themselves.
Mr. Latham. I think there was some concern about the
process that was used to develop the directive, and I would
like to, ask you if public health was a deciding factor as far
as changes that were made in the directive?
Ms. Murano. Absolutely, Mr. Chairman. A directive is, as I
said before, an instruction to our inspectors. So we could
issue a directive right now without seeking public input. It is
a set of instructions to our inspectors. We don't have to seek
public input. But we decided to do so in this case because of
the great interest of a lot of our stakeholders on this issue.
We certainly were very, very careful to determine what we
needed to do in order to make this directive able to accomplish
the goals of, again, making sure that environmental testing is
taking place and that for those tests that are being done by
plants, results are being shared with us as much as possible.
Most of it, frankly, came from my mind, so I can speak
personally on this. Certainly, this policy was developed with
the great help of all the professional experts that we have in
the Office of Policy and Program Development at FSIS.
Absolutely, public health is the reason we developed the
directive as we did, and is the reason we do everything that we
are doing in policymaking. So, I appreciate your question.
Mr. Latham. Very good. Thank you.
Ms. Kaptur.
FSIS INSPECTION WORKFORCE
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Murano and Dr. McKee, the Congress, over the last
several years, has seen fit to increase your budget by $228
million. Back in 1997, the FSIS received an appropriated
folding of $574 million. And for the fiscal year 2003, we
increased your funding over your request to $759,759,000. The
budget request this year is for $797 million. So that is about
a $228 million increase over the last few years. At the same
time, based on information that you have given us, you have
actually decreased the number of inspectors from a level in
2001 of 7,645 inspectors to in 2002 a level of 7,560
inspectors, which is a reduction of 85 inspectors. At the same
time, the recalls for class one health violations have more
than doubled in our country to a level of, in the year 2002, 56
million pounds recalled by the Department of Agriculture.
Incidentally, that figure for 2001 is a 29 million-pound
increase over the year 2001. And the number of class one health
violations has absolutely skyrocketed.
Now, what I don't really understand about this, because
lives are at stake, how can we be increasing your budget, how
can you be decreasing inspectors, and, therefore, the number of
recalls increasing across this country? What are you doing with
the money we are giving you?
Ms. Murano. Thank you for that question, Ms. Kaptur. Let me
address a couple of the issues you have raised.
First, regarding the number of inspectors, I will let Dr.
McKee elaborate a little bit more on this if he wants to.
We have changed the classification of our inspectors. The
numbers that you quote certainly apply to inspectors, but
because of the change in inspection system to HACCP that
occurred beginning in 1998, we have modernized our inspection
force. By that I mean that some inspectors are now consumer
safety officers. And these are individuals who are highly
trained HACCP experts. And when you add those individuals,
there are over 100 of them, you will see that actually, if
anything, we have increased the number of inspectors that we
have.
These consumer safety officers are really where we want to
go with our training. We would like nothing better than to have
every one of our inspectors be as well trained as these
consumer safety officers. So that when you count these consumer
safety officers as inspectors, which they definitely are, we
certainly haven't decreased the number of inspectors.
Ms. Kaptur. And are those individuals in-plant personnel?
Ms. Murano. They are not assigned to any specific plant,
but they absolutely go to plants. And their role is, for
example, to conduct audits of HACCP plants. This is extremely
important because it allows us to ascertain whether plants'
HACCP plans are sound and are actually going to prevent
contamination from E. coli O157:H7.
RATE OF RECALLS
To address the second part of your question: Absolutely,
the number of recalls has increased. There is no question about
that. In fact, if you look at the rate of increase of recalls,
it is about 21 to 23 percent over the last few years.
When you consider that the real test of the effectiveness
of programs is foodborne illnesses, and the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention has told everyone that the rate of
foodborne illness has decreased by about, coincidentally, 23 or
24 percent over the same period of time, you have a dichotomy.
You have recalls going up, but you have foodborne illnesses
going down. This is a result of better surveillance systems and
better testing for these pathogens.
The fact that we are finding these pathogens results in
recalls. The vast majority of the recalls that take place have
nothing to do with outbreaks, thankfully. That certainly is
explained when you see the dichotomy of an increase in recalls
while you have a decrease in foodborne illness.
Another explanation for the dichotomy can be the fact that
we are seeing plants increase their reporting of contaminated
product, when they call us and say we have contaminated product
with an adulterant and we are going to do a recall. That has
increased about 12 percent. So the increased surveillance and
the increased reporting are certainly what have resulted in
most of the recalls that we conduct.
Now, are we happy with recalls? As the foodborne illnesses
go down we would like to also start seeing a downward trend of
those recalls. That will be achieved as we implement programs
such as auditing HACCP plans, which will be the preventive
measure, as opposed to catching product that is contaminated
once it has reached the retail market, which is certainly not
where we want to be.
Ms. Kaptur. Well, I know that the time has expired on this
round for me, Doctor. But I would like to ask unanimous consent
to place in the record a New York Times article from last
December entitled ``Plant's Sanitation May Have Link to Deadly
Bacteria.'' .
Mr. Latham. Without objection.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF]
Ms. Kaptur. And in the second round, I will be asking about
the Listeria outbreak at the Wampler plant in Pennsylvania and
the Department's rather hesitant approach to what has now
already resulted in the deaths of eight Americans and why the
Department was not more aggressive in cleaning up that
situation, when in fact one of your own inspectors was aware of
what was occurring inside that plant. But we will do that on
the second round.
And I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Latham. Thank you.
The gentlewoman from Missouri.
Ms. Emerson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
HOMELAND SECURITY
Hi, Dr. Murano. How are you, Dr. McKee? Obviously, the
mission of the Food Safety Inspection Service was not changed
by the events of September 11 and the ongoing crises around the
world, but it did expand your scope. And today, biological and
chemical threats to our Nation's food supply are a major
concern. Can you tell me what steps your department is taking
to address these issues?
Ms. Murano. I would be happy to.
Well, certainly after September 11, and I am sure Secretary
Veneman spoke to this issue when she had her hearing here, the
Department took specific steps in terms of organizing itself
with its own Homeland Security Council to protect agricultural
production, as well as food safety. My involvement has been, as
makes sense, food safety. And the activities that FSIS has
engaged in, in food safety, to prevent and be able to respond
very quickly to intentional attacks on the food supply, have
been very extensive.
For example, one of the first things that they did at FSIS
was to establish an Office of Emergency Preparedness, a
Homeland Security Office within FSIS itself. As I alluded to in
my testimony, we have conducted what we call vulnerability
assessments to see what agents are most likely to be used and
what products are most likely to be attacked. And we have also
been conducting a threat assessment, to determine the points
along the production processing where we are the most
vulnerable. These assessments are extremely important.
Secondly, we have been engaging in simulation exercises,
not only just internally, but also with the Food and Drug
Administration, CDC, and so forth, which have been extremely
valuable. Because only when you are in an emergency situation
where you have to make a decision, do you really understand the
scope of the problem, and also you really find your weaknesses
in terms of how quickly you can communicate with other agencies
in responding to a threat. These exercises have been extremely
useful, and we continue to do them.
Our laboratory capabilities have been enhanced. We are now
able to detect certain threat agents that we normally were not
looking for, and that is definitely a necessary capability that
we have. We participate with FDA on something called eLEXNET,
which is a laboratory network. And so if there is a surge of
capacity that is needed to detect a certain agent in a certain
food, whether it is meat or poultry, all of us can help each
other. So that is extremely important.
We have also used supplemental funding that was supplied
back in 2002 to hire 20 import surveillance liaison inspectors.
And these are individuals who are located in specific ports of
entry, and their expertise is to focus on Homeland Security and
to coordinate better with Customs and APHIS. The APHIS
surveillance function is now in the Department of Homeland
Security.
FSIS has put together a booklet that outlines all of these
activities very well. One important activity that we certainly
engaged in at FSIS was to develop guidelines for industry. It
is very, very important to do that, because that is where a lot
of the emphasis needs to be placed in terms of securing the
businesses so that unauthorized individuals can't just go in.
We have copies of that as well in English and Spanish. So I can
certainly provide that to you and any other member of the
committee.
SAFETY OF IMPORTED PRODUCTS
Ms. Emerson. Thank you very much. I would like to see that.
I am sure all of our colleagues would as well.
Obviously, we need to scrutinize or better scrutinize the
products imported from other countries. Have you all increased
efforts to prevent a threat from an imported product?
Ms. Murano. That is very, very important. And we pride
ourselves, frankly, on the fact that our import equivalence
system does that, whether it is worrying about intentional or
traditional contaminants to the food supply.
As you know, Ms. Emerson, the system is based on three
components. One is that we go to the countries that want to
export product to the U.S. and we ensure that they have an
equivalent inspection system. That is very important, because
inspectors are at every meat and poultry processing plant in
this country every day that that plant is open. We require that
other countries who want to export meat or poultry to us have
the same system.
Secondly, we have import facilities, about 145 of them,
where we do reinspection of product as it comes into the
country.
And the third thing we do is conducting, at least once a
year, audits of these countries to make sure that they are
still equivalent to our inspection system.
So that in itself has helped us tremendously, because it is
the infrastructure that we needed in order to be able to
control as best as we can the intentional contamination of
foods that come from other countries.
Ms. Emerson. Well, I would love to ask a follow-up, but I
am out of time. So, thank you very much.
Mr. Latham. You are correct, you are out of time.
Mr. Boyd.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOODBORNE ILLNESS, HACCP, AND RECALLS
Mr. Boyd. Mr. Chairman, you are tough.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Dr. Murano and Dr. McKee.
I just want to say I know we hear a lot of discussion about
statistics of foodborne illnesses and recalls in HACCP. But I
want you to know that this is one member that is very heartened
by what we see, by the facts, by the statistics. I believe that
we have the safest food supply in the world, and I believe we
are making it even safer. I say that because I have visited
many of the processing plants in the district that I represent
and seen the detail of how you are implementing this new
system, and the statistics bear that out.
My question really goes to this. And I think you spoketo
this earlier. But you have got a decline in foodborne illnesses and you
have got an increase in recalls. You have got a HACCP system which
seems to be working well. Do you think there is a correlation between
the decline in foodborne illnesses and HACCP and the aggressive nature
of the recalls? I think you addressed this earlier, but I wanted to
make sure that we went on the record.
Ms. Murano. Absolutely, sir. I do. And CDC also does. CDC,
in their own report, has said that they attribute the decrease
in foodborne illnesses to the implementation of HACCP. So you
don't have to take my word for it; you can take their word for
it. I think if we weren't doing recalls, one could argue that
perhaps we are not doing our job. The fact that we are
aggressively pursuing contaminated product I think is certainly
evident in these numbers of recalls.
As I said before, however, doing lots of recalls is not our
goal. Public health is our goal. And so what I expect will
happen is, because of our policies on E. coli O157:H7 Listeria
and Salmonella, we will see a decline in the number of recalls
to match the decline in the foodborne illnesses.
Mr. Boyd. I think the point that Ms. Kaptur was making and
others may make on this committee is that we ought never to be
satisfied.
Ms. Murano. Right.
FOOD SAFETY TECHNOLOGIES
Mr. Boyd. We can always make the system better and the food
safer, and my next question really speaks to that. Do you think
that your agency can be a catalyst for developing new
technology and implementing new technology and working hand in
glove with the industry? Does that conflict with your work as a
regulator? Would you speak to that briefly?
Ms. Murano. I sure would. Thank you for that question.
I am a firm believer that new technologies and even
traditional technologies that will kill the pathogens is what
we need to really work on, because that is what we want to do.
Otherwise, we will always have pathogens in raw products. That
is just because the micro-organisms are all over nature.
We at FSIS don't want to be a stumbling block to the
approval of safe technologies that are going to work in
enhancing food safety such as new decontamination rinses,
organic acids, whatever the technology might be. Industry and
academia end up doing most of the developing of these
subtechnologies. We need to be able to fast track, whenever
possible, the implementation of these technologies so that we
can put them into place and not be waiting years and years to
allow industry to use safe technologies that are going to
enhance food safety.
Mr. Boyd. So your answer would be that you believe that you
can be a catalyst, and you don't think that conflicts with your
role as a regulator?
Ms. Murano. Correct.
Mr. Boyd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I will wait for my
next question on the second round.
Mr. Latham. Thank you, Mr. Boyd. And I think you set a new
record by not going over time. That is very good and I
appreciate it.
Mr. Nethercutt.
U.S. FOOD SAFETY
Mr. Nethercutt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to welcome the panel and the team behind you,
and appreciate your commitment to the agency. And I also agree
with Mr. Boyd's comments. I think this all has to be put into
perspective, this issue of food safety. And I know we can't
ever be satisfied with any deficiencies. But in terms of our
record in this country versus the record of other countries
around the world, how would you say we rank? And in what--maybe
you can try to sort of quantify how you look at our food safety
record and our food safety standards and protections relative
to other countries around the world.
Ms. Murano. Surely. It is a difficult question to answer,
because when you try to look for the data on the incidence of
foodborne illness from other countries, a lot of countries
don't do a very good job reporting those at all. There are
several countries in Europe that certainly do. When you look at
the incidence of, for example, Salmonellosis, or
Campylobacteriosis, per 100,000 people, we see that the rates
of those illnesses in this country, in the United States of
America, are a lot lower than those countries. And certainly,
when you consider the developing countries, that is not even a
question. We obviously have a much better record of food
safety.
You are quite right. That is not something that necessarily
we should be able to rest on. We do have the safest food supply
in the world. And one might argue maybe there are some
countries, Australia, for example, that say well, we have just
as good a system as you do, United States. And that is fine.
So, at worst, we have as good a system as the best countries,
and at best we certainly have the best food supply in the
world.
But we are not resting there. There is always room for
improvement. And this is our goal, to continually work to
implement sound science in order to absolutely do the best that
can potentially be done to enhance food safety.
Mr. Nethercutt. Well, that is great. And let me ask you
this. My sense is we consume in this country probably--is it
roughly a billion meals a day? Would that be fair to say?
Ms. Murano. I think I have heard that, and I believe that
is probably pretty close. So when you consider the number of
illnesses, certainly it is low considering the number of people
and the number of meals that are consumed. But again, to us, we
want to have the incidence of foodborne illness as low as it
possibly can be. We are not going to relent.
FSIS BUDGET REQUEST
Mr. Nethercutt. No, I agree. Now, let me ask you this. With
respect to your budget requests and the President's budget, are
you satisfied that the budget requests that you are making to
the Congress and that you are asking us to support here in the
area of food safety and inspection services, are you satisfied
that you can maintain or improve, and even improve, the safety
record of our food system beyond what we have had in the past?
Are you satisfied that it will meet all your needs, that we are
not deficient in any respects with respect to the job you have
to do and the money you need to do that job?
Ms. Murano. I believe so, and I will tell you why. As Dr.
McKee said in his comments, a lot of the money that we are
requesting has to do with training of inspectors. And those are
the men and women who are in the front lines whoare going to
implement and are implementing the policies that we write here in
Washington, D.C. So for them to be as effective as possible can only
improve food safety.
Secondly, we are requesting money for conducting baseline
studies to ascertain the prevalence of various pathogens in the
food supply throughout the country and according to seasonal
differences and geographic differences and so forth. And that
is the foundation for the science of risk assessment, which is
what we base our policies on. So we can only get better.
Absolutely. I am convinced of that.
U.S. FOOD CONSUMPTION
Mr. Nethercutt. Let me finally ask you. What proportion of
the foods that are consumed by U.S. citizens are meat and
poultry compared to other food products, fruits and vegetables?
Have you done any analysis on that? What would you say? Maybe--
and I am not trying to pin you down specifically on numbers,
because that is hard to quantify, I am sure. But based on
percentage, for example, is it two to one? Is it less than that
in terms of meat and poultry versus fruit and vegetables or
prepared foods?
Ms. Murano. I don't think I can answer that question now,
but I can certainly find that out for you. But I will tell you
that consumption of meat and poultry products is very high, and
that is why we have to do the best job that we possibly can.
And knowing there are other products out there that are not
meat or poultry that also cause foodborne illness is certainly
a cause for concern of mine, even though I can't really do
anything about it because they are not under my jurisdiction.
But I certainly urge everyone to realize that, when you talk
food safety, it is everything, it is fruits and vegetables, it
is seafood, it is eggs, it is meat, and it is poultry. And a
lot of the safe food handling practices that we must follow
apply to a lot of those foods as well.
[The information follows:]
U.S. Meat and Poultry Consumption
According to USDA's Economic Research Service, meat and
poultry comprise 13.2 percent of total calories consumed in the
U.S. Nine percent of this total is attributable to red meat
consumption, while 4.2 percent comes from poultry consumption.
Mr. Nethercutt. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bonilla [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Nethercutt.
I would like to take a moment to thank Mr. Latham for
filling in for me at the last moment. We had to make a change
due to an event I had to attend this morning at the request of
Chairman Young.
And I also would like to compliment the good work that you
have done, Dr. Murano, along with your great team Dr. McKee,
thank you for being here, and Steve. With the knowledge and
expertise that you bring to the table every day at your job, we
are very grateful for what you do.
I know Mr. Latham also addressed the question on Listeria
and how that is progressing and how the directive is
progressing, that you answered the question very thoroughly and
we appreciate that as well.
So, without further adieu, I will now yield to Mr. Farr.
MOBILE SLAUGHTER UNITS
Mr. Farr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have one question
because I have got another appropriations meeting I have got to
be in. It really goes to Dr. McKee.
I know my staff chatted with you yesterday regarding an
existing inspection policy for cattle slaughter, for meat
slaughter, essentially the existing policy prohibits the ranch-
based mobile slaughter units, units that the Department of
Health developed on I know Lopez Island in Washington, Mr.
Nethercutt's State, and in the south county of Monterey, which
I represent. And I just want to know that you can get back to
us on how the Department can make these operations cost
effective. I mean, what can be done to make them work?
As you know, ranchers can slaughter their own cattle for
their own consumption. But what is happening to a lot of
ranchers in America is they are beginning to be part of the
eco-turf, farm-agro-tourism, having people come and stay there
and work. Then that food can't be sold to them when they leave
as they could if they harvested vegetables or produced wine or
things like that. And the effort was to try to make this kind
of small business friendly. And I would hope that you could
look into those policies and see how that might turn out and
let us know as soon as possible so that these operations can be
cost effective.
Mr. McKee. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Farr, we will look into that.
I talked with your staff as you mentioned, yesterday. We will
follow up on that. The main focus will be to make sure that we
can protect the public health regardless of the numbers. And we
certainly want to accommodate operations as best we can, and we
will certainly get back to you with an answer on that.
[The information follows:]
Mobile Slaughter Units
FSIS does not have any regulatory or statutory prohibition
on mobile cattle slaughter facilities. The owners would need to
apply for a grant of inspection through the District Office.
The facility would be required to meet the same regulatory
requirements as any other cattle slaughter and processing
facility. Examples of these requirements are HACCP plans, SSOP
plans, sanitation performance standards, potable water, and
local waste discharge. USDA staffing of such a mobile facility
is often difficult logistically when there is a shifting
location in remote areas, for example, where the mobile
slaughter unit moves over a 150-200 mile radius. If the mobile
slaughter unit is used intermittently, that would entail
shifting resources from other food safety responsibilities. In
other words, it can be problematic to provide inspectors to
these remote locations unless there is an established
operational schedule. Public health is FSIS' number one
priority, and thus we must utilize our employee resources in a
way to best achieve this goal.
Mr. Farr. Thank you very much.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Mr. Farr.
Mr. Goode.
FOREIGN AUDITS
Mr. Goode. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, want to echo
what several others had, and say to Dr. Murano and Dr. McKee
and those at FSIS, I think you do a good job. I feel very safe
eating U.S. food.
In your testimony, you mentioned that you do random
inspections. Even though--that is on things that come into this
country. And you have also checked out what other countries do
before their food gets here. And you base that on compliance
history. Is it the history from the random inspections, is it
the history in the country from which the food comes, or is it
a combination?
Ms. Murano. It really is a combination. Because when we
first go to a country that wants to export meat or poultry to
the U.S., we do a thorough inspection of plants and laboratory
capabilities, because they have to do the same things that we
do. They have to basically mimic what we do here. And so the
history of those audits absolutely comes into play, because we
have what we call ``delisted plants'' based on when we go back
and do an audit and find that things have kind of fallen by the
wayside. Absolutely, we delist them, which means we take them
off the list of approved plants and they have to start all over
again to convince us that they have improved their inspection
system.
When product comes here and we inspect the shipments, if we
find problems with those shipments, that absolutely turns on a
red light. And even if a country, for example, may not be on
the schedule to be audited at that time, those kinds of
situations prompt an audit. It is all of the above, to be
honest.
Mr. Goode. Let me ask you somewhat of a follow-up. Could
you just say over the last 3 years, to the best of your
knowledge, which would be said the top three countries that
haven't had any problems?
Ms. Murano. Well, I would say Canada, New Zealand,and
Australia.
Mr. Goode. Okay.
Ms. Murano. And we are travelling to New Zealand actually
this Friday to attend a meeting with these countries. They do
have systems as good as ours.
Mr. Goode. Can you tell us who is in delist status, or
would you rather not?
Ms. Murano. Well, I would rather not. But I can tell you
that there have been countries in the past that have been on
the brink and they have gotten their act together. And that is
certainly very reassuring to us. Because the kiss of death is
to be delisted by the United States. We represent the gold
standard to other countries. If a plant gets delisted by us,
obviously, they can't sell to us anymore, but they are going to
have a tough time selling to anybody else.
Mr. Goode. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Mr. Goode.
Ms. DeLauro.
SINGLE FOOD SAFETY AGENCY
Ms. DeLauro. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
welcome, Dr. Murano, it is good to see you again.
Let me make a very quick comment on the single food agency
and then put those questions in the record so I have time to
move to some other areas. You know what my view is about it,
creating a single consolidated food safety administration and
Congressman Latham also shares that view. I think something
that you said before is critically important; that what you
view as the mandate is that whether it is meat, poultry,
fruits, vegetables, that all of it has to be considered.
There are lots of different pieces here. We need to
consider having it in one place so that, in fact, we can have a
more effective way of ensuring a safe food supply.
RECALL DISTRIBUTION LISTS
Let me move to two other areas. One is recall distribution
lists. Last July USDA implemented a rule ostensibly to allow
State health departments to learn where recalled contaminated
meat is being sold. During last year's recall of E. coli:
O157:117; tainted ground beef from a Colorado plant, the State
public health officials that wanted to inform their citizens
where the contaminated product was sold were not able to get
product distribution information from the USDA. A Denver Post
article noted, ``USDA,'' and I quote, ``will give lists of the
companies that purchased and distributed the meat only to
States that promised not to share it with anyone, not even
consumers.'' This seems, in my view, counterintuitive as
consumers may urgently need to know if that meat in their
refrigerator or freezer came from an implicated product.
Is there any barrier, legal or otherwise, to the
Department's release of their information to any State public
health official that is responding to a recall, and if so,
would you support legislation to allow USDA to tell States
where tainted product has been distributed so that they can
inform their consumers where the recalled product was sold?
Ms. Murano. Thank you, Ms. DeLauro, for that question. This
is such an important issue. I have certainly done a lot of
homework on this. I am not a lawyer, I will tell you right now.
I am a microbiologist, so I have relied on our legal team to
let me know what is and what is not possible.
As they tell me, there is no legal impediment for us to
share that information, the distribution list.The issue is that
we, as a public health agency, want recalls to take place as fast as
possible, and if we need that information, and a plant refuses to give
it, there is no legal impediment. We seek a subpoena, and we get that
information, but then that takes several days to accomplish.
Plants will readily give us that information if we don't
share it, and they will give it to us in minutes, so it really
is an issue of how quickly do we need that information so that
we can monitor the implementation of our recall, which is our
role, and for State departments of health to do the same. If we
obtain that information from these plants and we give out that
information, which to them is of commercial value, that sharing
is not going to take place anymore, and we are going to have to
go after that information through subpoenas, which again is
going to delay a recall, and when it is people sick and perhaps
in even worse situations than just ill, that information is
critical to be available very, very quickly.
I have thought about this a lot. If consumers had the names
of retailers and so forth, certainly in some instances that is
something that would be beneficial. But I did learn from the
ConAgra recall that happened last year that a lot of the
entities in their distribution lists were not supermarkets, but
were distribution centers and so forth, and that information
would not be helpful to a consumer because they don't buy at
those places.
We have always told people whenever there is a recall, and
it is in every one of our recall release sheets, that they need
to take their product to their point of purchase. They don't
need to be worried about whether it was from the place they
bought it or if it wasn't from the place they bought it.
Ms. DeLauro. Let me ask you, Dr. Murano, because my time is
going to run out very soon. Would you support legislation that
would allow USDA to tell States if a tainted product has been
distributed so that we can inform consumers and make consumers
a part of this process? The distributor knows it, the U.S.
Government knows. The only folks that are in the dark are the
consumers. Yes or no, would you support the legislation, so I
can move on to another question?
Ms. Murano. I wouldn't, because right now we have that
legal authority. We just don't utilize it because it takes days
for us to obtain a subpoena that is going to allow us to get
that information, and I don't know any legislation that would
prevent a company from taking whatever steps they need and then
having us have to get a subpoena anyway.
Ms. DeLauro. Maybe what we can do is as a law-making body
is to try to figure a way in which we can provide you with some
legal authority that would lessen the amount of time involved.
This is not about a company's bottom line. This is essentially
about the safety of the people in this Nation, and clearly the
folks in Colorado are very, very concerned about the inability
to get ahold of that data authorized to be able to inform their
citizens to allow their public health officials to do the job
that, in fact, they were instructed to do on behalf of their
constituents.
I will put a question in the record about the Nebraska beef
issue. Thank you.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Ms. DeLauro.
Mr. Kingston is also submitting questions for the record.
He had to attend another hearing as well.
Mr. Bonilla. Mr. Latham, I appreciate your asking my
question earlier on Listeria, and I yield to you for your
series of questions.
Mr. Latham. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to personally thank you for the great job that
you do. With your background at Iowa State, I would expect that
to be the case.
Ms. Murano. Yes, sir.
SINGLE FOOD SAFETY AGENCY
Mr. Latham. Ms. DeLauro brought up an interesting proposal
that we have talked about for several years, and that is the
consolidation of food inspection activity into one agency to
ensure the safety of our food for consumers. I would really
like to get your opinion for the record as to what you think
maybe would be the pluses and minuses to that type of an
entity? Apparently I think last year there was some testimony
about concerns with cooperation and communication between APHIS
and FSIS. I would really like to hear your opinion on the
single agency.
Ms. Murano. Sure. I will try to be concise. To me if I
learn nothing else after coming to Washington and being here
about a year and a half, I have realized that this place runs
based on relationships and to me, whether we are in one agency
or many agencies, it is the relationships of the people that
have to work together to get something done. I know of agencies
that are within the same department that don't see eye to eye,
don't talk to each other. We have better relationships with
some of those agencies than they do with other agencies within
their same department.
So my view is that it is relationships that work, and that
is why I am very glad to say that I have worked very, very
hard, and Commissioner McClellan certainly has worked very,
very hard, to establish a good relationship. We have done the
same to establish a relationship with CDC. We have a liaison
person that is housed at CDC all the time, but who's an FSIS
employee, for example.
So to me it is a question of relationships, and rearranging
the offices and so forth is not necessary to accomplish that if
you do have good relationships with these agencies.
Mr. Latham. Do you see any problems with APHIS moving to
Homeland Security--problems associated with communications
between APHIS and FSIS? Are you communicating well with APHIS?
Ms. Murano. We are, and I will tell you I want to thank the
committee, because the appropriation we received for 2003
funded a computer system that is designed to make it very
seamless between ourselves, APHIS, the quarantine people who
have moved to Homeland Security and Customs. So if anything,
because of that software, we are going to be able to
communicate better than ever. It doesn't really matter to us
where they are. If anything, now it is going to be better than
it has been because we are eliminating that technological
barrier where we hadn't been communicating as well as we should
have on what foods were coming into this country that Customs
or APHIS would be looking at. There were a few potential gaps,
and we have been able to, through this new technology, fill
those gaps and be able to be very seamless with them.
Mr. Latham. You don't see any problem with----
Ms. Murano. I don't.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Mr. Latham.
Mr. Hinchey.
Mr. Hinchey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
FUNDING FOR ADDITIONAL SCIENTISTS
Dr. Murano, it is nice to see you, and I, too, want to
thank you for the job that you do and for the sincere
commitment that you bring to your responsibilities and the way
you carry them out.
You are requesting some additional money for the Food
Safety and Inspection Program. I think it is about $42 million.
About half of that is going to go to required increases in
salaries and things of that nature, but you are asking for,
among other things, $4\1/2\ million for some additional
microbiologists, chemists, laboratory technicians and others. I
am wondering if you can tell us how many of those additional
scientists you will be able to hire, and what kind of work that
they will be doing, and where they will be doing it.
Ms. Murano. We are requesting 26 staff years with that
money. And the reason we need these folks is that obviously,
for example, with our added responsibilities to implement the
Listeria directive, for example, our folks are going to be
doing and are already doing more testing than they were doing
before. We are doing environmental testing of plants for
Listeria that we weren't doing before. Also, Homeland Security
is another issue because we need to be able to test for certain
agents that we never had to worry about before.
Mr. Hinchey. How soon would you be able to have them on
line? Could you tell us?
Ms. Murano. Well, I don't think I can answer that question.
I don't know if Dr. McKee wants to address that, but we can
certainly get that information to you. Our Office of Management
is in charge of human resources and certainly we impress upon
them always how quickly we need to fill positions, whether it
is these or others, and it is because of homeland security, to
be honest.
[The information follows:]
FSIS Staffing
Once the fiscal year 2004 appropriations for FSIS is signed
into law, the Agency will advertise these 26 positions and
begin interviewing qualified applicants. The Agency expects
that it will take three to six months to fill these positions
with qualified individuals.
FOREIGN PROGRAM AUDITORS
Mr. Hinchey. You have also asked for $1.8 million for
foreign program auditors. I wonder if you can give us some more
detailed information about that. Where will they be, and in
what countries are they going to be located?
Ms. Murano. These will be seven staff years.
Mr. Hinchey. Seven staff years?
Ms. Murano. Seven. Yes, sir. It is not necessarily that
they are going to be housed in other countries. They may or may
not be, depending on what needs we ascertain, but this is so
that we can enhance these audits that I was talking about
earlier because we need to do these on as regular a basis as
possible to make sure that when we say a country has the
equivalent system as ours, we say that with certainty because
we have been there as often as possible.
Right now we do those audits about once a year, and with
some of these countries we need to do it more often than that.
Mr. Hinchey. So these people will be flexible; they will
just go where you think the need is at any given moment?
Ms. Murano. Absolutely. Yes, sir.
FOOD SAFETY EDUCATION
Mr. Hinchey. You are also asking for an increase of $1-\1/
2\ million for food safety education. Can you tell us what kind
of new public education efforts will be undertaken with that
funding?
Ms. Murano. Sure. We need to make sure that we address what
we call underserved groups with messages of food safety. We
have done a lot of work with pregnant women and Listeriosis,
which we are very proud of, but there is a lot more to do.
There is a great need to address food safety education among
minority groups, for example, Spanish-speaking groups. We need
to publish a lot of our materials in Spanish and in a variety
of languages. The elderly certainly is a population that is
increasing in the United States, and we need to be able to
serve them as well with safe food handling messages.
Mr. Hinchey. So will you use public media to reach out to
these people?
Ms. Murano. We intend to use public media. We intend to go
through the country for different events, for example, the
Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, and whatever we can do to
promote the message of food safety. I have personally done
several food safety events in the country, and I am finding
that what attracts the attention of the people and the media is
when you have a celebrity with you. It is not just good enough
for me to show up, apparently.
Mr. Hinchey. I can't imagine why.
Ms. Murano. I can't either. We did an event with Miss
America. We are getting ready to do another event with some
country music artists. So that is part of the strategy to get
that message out.
USER FEE PROPOSAL
Mr. Hinchey. Let me just ask you about the budget. You have
a proposal to collect $122 million in user fees from
slaughterhouses, processing plants and other facilities, but
that amount comes from programs that are not authorized. The
Agriculture Committee has refused to authorize the collection
of those user fees, and the full Appropriations Committee has
never allowed the collection of fees without an authorization
from the authorizing committee. So I am wondering how big a
problem that is going to cause for you. You have written $122
million in your budget, but it is not going to materialize.
Ms. Murano. Legislation would need to be enacted to collect
those $122 million in user fees. Authorizers need to do that.
We appeal certainly to this subcommittee that if user fees are
not authorized, that you will make sure that we get that money
one way or another. We count on you for that.
Mr. Hinchey. Thank you, Doctor.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Mr. Hinchey. If you ever do an
event with Sarah Michelle Gellar, let me know. My teen-age son
would love to meet her.
Just to advise Members, we probably will have a series of
votes at about 5 after 11:00. I don't believe we have any
questions remaining on our side of the aisle, so if we can
conclude by then, and if not, we will consider coming back
after the votes if there are more questions.
Ms. Kaptur.
LISTERIA RECALL
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. These are
extraordinarily important witnesses to us, and I wanted to
focus in on the subject I brought up on the first round, and
particularly the Wampler plant in Pennsylvania. And we could
take other plants, but in view of the time, I have to select
one example here. What troubles me, Dr. Murano, is from what I
have read--and I ask that this New York Times article be placed
in the record.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF]
Ms. Kaptur. There appears to be very judicious work being
done by at least one inspector at the Wampler plant, who then
became engaged in bureaucratic wrangling with another inspector
at the plant, and even though the first inspector issued alerts
about the plant in August, the Department took no action until
October 13.
Several weeks ensued, and the sanitation problems that he
found included mold and algae on the walls, condensation
dripping from the duct work over the processing tables, which
were enough to justify the closing of the plant. And this
particular company is the Nation's second largest poultry
company. In addition, it appears that the Listeria that caused
the deaths was found in the drains.
And my question really is here you have got somebody out
there. It takes a lot of guts. People get intimidated very
easily, don't they, and particularly people who don't have the
top job. Here you have got somebody. I come from a family where
our relatives worked in slaughterhouses. I know what that work
is like. It takes guts for somebody on the line who is an
inspector or a worker to speak up.
So here is somebody who is saying, something is wrong in
this stinking plant, and it went on for weeks and weeks and
weeks, and I don't know which Americans have lost their lives.
I know there have been eight already, and there have been at
least 54 illnesses, but the fact that your testimony doesn't
even mention these, whether it was the Wampler plant or the
ConAgra plant, even to reference them, is shocking for me this
morning.
Twenty-seven million pounds recalled. The inspector general
is now looking into this. We have all these regulations. How is
it possible that USDA didn't listen to one of its own
inspectors? What the newspaper article says is--well, there
were some records that the company had, but they were put in a
drawer. The inspector says, we are not allowed to take records
out of a company and Xerox them or analyze them. Please, what
happened within the USDA that allowed lax enforcement, that has
now killed Americans and injured dozens and dozens of people in
this country? What went wrong?
Ms. Murano. Ms. Kaptur, this is a matter that is extremely
serious and very important to me. The reason OIG is
investigating this is at our request. I requested OIG to
investigate this as soon as I found out there was an inspector
who was claiming he had not been listened to. I talked to the
district manager of that district, who has attested to the fact
that he said to the inspector, do what you need to do, shut
down the plant, do whatever you need to do, you have the
authority. That inspector certainly also could have reported
this to OIG.
So OIG is going to get to the bottom of it, and it is so
serious to me that if OIG finds that inspector was prohibited
from doing his job in any way, we are going to deal with that.
I will assure you of that. So we requested OIG to do this
investigation.
I do want to tell you that the question of the records is
why we put in place the Listeria directive, because it is so
important for us to see the testing records of those plants.
Since we don't have a rule in place yet, we designed that
directive so these plants will share that information with us.
I am happy to tell you that a couple of hundred plants that
never shared that data with us are now sharing because of the
directive.
I share in your concern over people who are ill. This is
what drives us. I have pictures of some of these families'
members in my office, and I don't want to tell you that in some
self-serving way. I just want to tell you how much this
personally means to me and assure you that OIG will get to the
bottom of it, and we will take action, whatever is necessary.
Ms. Kaptur. Are the two inspectors in question still in the
employ of the Department of Agriculture?
Ms. Murano. As far as I understand, they are.
Ms. Kaptur. All right. In the end I don't think that
inspectors should be the ones who hold the majority of
responsibility here. The company is the entity in this equation
that didn't do its job; and according to the data we have, that
the two districts with the highest percentage of no documented
HACCP violations included the Philadelphia office, where 64 of
the plants were listed as having no violations, that is the
Wampler's district, and the Boulder, Colorado, office where the
ConAgra plant is located that had 59 percent of the plants
having no listed violations.
I think that the Department of Agriculture ought to start
doing its job. There has been a lot of compliments for lives
that have been saved and for a food safety system that works
better than most in the world, but the fact is we have the
highest number of recalls that we have ever had in Class I
violations in this country, nearly 100 now, 98, and we have had
the largest amount of recalled meat product in the history of
this Nation.
Somebody isn't doing their job, and we have provided the
money for inspectors. We respect the inspectors that are trying
to do their jobs out there, but somebody is impeding the
process, and these companies had better not be left off the
hook. I don't get a dime from them in my campaign fund. So my
heart is with the families and with those inspectors that are
trying to do their job, Madam Under Secretary, and I would hope
you would support those inspectors that are trying to do their
job.
Ms. Murano. I absolutely do, and I will tell you part of
our reorganization in FSIS is to establish a program evaluation
review function. It is a quality control office that never
existed before. So that is how strongly I feel about us being
able to make sure that if there are problems in districts, that
we find out those problems and fix them.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Ms. Kaptur. And just for the
record, so there is no question, we have the safest food supply
in the world, not just compared to most of the world.
Mr. Boyd.
EFFECT OF BUDGET REDUCTIONS
Mr. Boyd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I knew this lovefest we were having was too
good to be true. But you know, Mr. Chairman, ever since I have
been on the committee, I have seen Mr. Dewhurst sit there. He
has probably served in his position longer than the other
folks, and I don't think I have ever seen him asked a question.
So I want to ask him a question, and it is a very serious
question: Mr. Dewhurst, I was reading Congress Daily this
morning, and I noticed that Chairman Jim Nussle has said that
he is considering a 1 percent reduction in both discretionary
and mandatory programs below the enacted fiscal year 2003
levels; certain programs may be off limits, namely Social
Security, unemployment benefits, defense and homeland security
but USDA will probably not be protected. I assume that if you
take those off limits, that would increase the
percentagesignificantly on the ones that were on limits. Those programs
in the Ag bill would include such mandatory programs as WIC, food
stamps, farm programs, in addition to all the discretionary work that
we are talking about.
My question to you simply, sir, is what kind of chaos would
this create in the department across the board in the budgeting
process? You have been here a long time and you know this
process well. What kind of chaos would it create there in this
Congress, and not only there, but out in the country? Would you
care to comment?
Mr. Dewhurst. Sure. Really you have two kinds of problems.
If you are talking about the current fiscal year, fiscal year
2003, you really have two kinds of problems. One is
uncertainty. We have a fiscal year 2003 appropriations bill. It
had a .65 percent rescission for most discretionary programs
built into it, including the FSIS, and we are working our way
to figure out how to deal with all that. And so anytime there
is any discussion of further kinds of changes like that, it
creates uncertainty in the bureaucracy, and you don't know
whether to hire people or what you should do, because you may
lose some money down the road.
The second thing that comes into the question is whether or
not at the end of the day your funding would be inadequate if
you had to absorb such a rescission, and without knowing the
details, I don't want to make too many judgments about that,
but programs like WIC, food stamps, child nutrition, and farm
programs and so forth are performance-driven entitlements
essentially, and this administration and the previous
administration tried very hard to make sure there is enough
money to help the people who need help under those programs. In
the labor-intensive programs, the biggest cost is salaries and
the pay increase and so forth that is built into the law, and
to the extent that you have to absorb further reductions, it
means you essentially don't have enough money to meet those
costs, and therefore you have to reconsider your hiring actions
and so forth. But this fiscal year has been very difficult from
our perspective simply because the appropriations bills were so
late, and at this point further uncertainty will simply make it
more difficult.
Mr. Boyd. Thank you, Mr. Dewhurst. You did a good job of
answering the question. I didn't know whether Dr. Murano was
going to punt to you over there.
Mr. Dewhurst. She doesn't want her budget cut.
Mr. Boyd. I understand. We don't want that either.
I just want to say that I hope that this Congress, this
House, will reject this notion, and it is an obvious attempt by
the budget Chairman to follow a rule which my Blue Dog
counterparts and I agree with, and that is pay-go. It is a very
meager attempt at pay-go. Of course, the pay-go in this case is
for the $700 billion or $1.6 trillion or whatever it is tax cut
that we are dealing with.
But thank you very much, and I am glad we got to hear from
you to answer the question. You handled yourself very well.
Thank you.
Mr. Bonilla. Mr. Dewhurst always handles himself very well.
Mr. Hinchey.
FSIS ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS
Mr. Hinchey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Murano, I was just looking at some figures on
enforcement actions, and I see that the enforcement actions by
FSIS dropped between 2000 and 2001. In 2000, you took 49,392
actions. In 2001, this number dropped to 32,224. I know I am
springing this on you at the moment, so I don't expect you to
be able to respond in detail about this matter, but if you
would kindly let us know what caused that decline, I would very
much like to understand that better.
Ms. Murano. Sure. Mr. Hinchey, one thing that I do have a
great interest in is of those enforcement actions, how many
resulted in plant suspensions, which is the ultimate
enforcement action, if you will, where we pull inspectors, the
plant is closed down, and can't operate anymore. And when you
look at that, that percentage of enforcement actions that
resulted in plant suspensions has actually increased. In 1998
it was about 2.3 percent, and in 2002 it was 4.8 percent. So
the enforcement actions, even if overall they have decreased,
could be due to a variety of reasons, but certainly the ones
that resulted in suspensions, which are the ones I am
interested in, because they are the ones that protect the
public health the best in the sense of stopping a company that
maybe is producing unsafe product, those have increased.
Mr. Hinchey. Suspensions of inspections actually declined
from 2000 and 2001. It went down from 184 to 119.
Ms. Murano. If you look over from 1998 on--sometimes they
go up, sometimes they go down. It depends on a number of
factors.
Mr. Hinchey. I know that you don't have these numbers in
your head, and I am not asking you to give me a detailed answer
to this now, but I would like the information over the course
of the next week or so.
Ms. Murano. Surely.
Mr. Hinchey. These are the numbers that you gave us, and we
are seeing a decline in suspensions of inspection from 184 to
119 and a very dramatic drop in the total reviews from 49,392
to 32,224. So I am not asking you to give me that explanation
now, I don't think you have it, but I would like to understand
it. I would like to know why that is happening, and if you
could tell me that, I would very much appreciate it.
Ms. Murano. Certainly.
[The Information follows:]
FSIS Enforcement Activities
Suspensions of inspection in fiscal year 2001 are
consistent with the number of suspensions in fiscal year 1999.
The decline in suspensions from 184 in fiscal year 2000 to
119 in fiscal year 2001 is primarily associated with the
success of HACCP outreach initiatives to establishments and/or
industry and plant awareness of the HACCP requirements.
Please note that the numbers that you quoted as enforcement
actions for fiscal years 2000 and 2001 (49,976 and 32,224)
represent the number of planned and random reviews of
establishments and of products as they move through commerce.
These reviews are carried out to prevent meat, poultry, and egg
products that are not wholesome or safe from entering the food
supply, to assure compliance with Federal laws, and to obtain
and maintain current data on persons or firms engaged in the
handling and distribution of meat, poultry, and egg products.
The increased number of reviews during fiscal year 2000 were
related to the increase in the number of warning letters issued
during the previous year and follow-up reviews conducted during
HACCP implementation.
FOODBORNE PATHOGENS
Mr. Hinchey. I am looking at Consumer Reports, and it is
raising a number of red flags with regard to the safety of food
out in the marketplace, not at the production facilities, but
where people are buying it.
In January the magazine released a report on the condition
of chicken in supermarkets. Consumer Reports purchased 484
fresh whole broilers in stores in 25 cities across the country
in the spring of 2002. They found Campylobacter in 42 percent
of the chickens and Salmonella in 12 percent of the chickens.
They also found that 90 percent of the Campylobacter bacteria
and 34 percent of the Salmonella were resistant to one or two
more antibiotics that would normally be used to treat the
illnesses caused by this bacteria.
This is a real product. It is in real stores being
purchased by real people, and I think that what we are
concerned about is that this gets out into the stores in spite
of the system that we have set up for controlling Salmonella
and the other bacteria. The Department doesn't even sample for
Campylobacter, but I am told this is a serious illness that can
cause meningitis, arthritis and something called Guillaume-
Barre syndrome.
Consumer Reports say that USDA is working on a study that
could help establish a standard for Campylobacter, but that you
have no timeline in mind for setting the standard. Last
November another Consumer Report study looked at contamination
in ground beef in grocery stores. They found that 1 percent had
substantial levels of fecal bacteria; again, a troubling
finding, because there were 198 samples of ground beef from
supermarkets in 9 States that tested for fecal bacteria. Two of
the samples had high levels of E. coli O157.H7, and that we
know that 60 people die routinely from E. coli O157.H7
infections, and 73,000 become ill. This is a matter of concern.
It is being published in a national publication. I would like
you to comment on that, if you would, and tell us what you
think we ought to be doing working with you to try to prevent
these things from occurring in the future.
Ms. Murano. Certainly.
Well, as a microbiologist, I am very well acquainted with
Campylobacter.
Mr. Hinchey. What is it?
Ms. Murano. It is a gram-negative bacteria that does cause
a pretty profuse, watery diarrhea with foul odor, and it is
gastroenteritis that certainly can have complications in
specific people, such as what you mentioned, Guillaume-Barre
syndrome, et cetera.
FUNDING FOR BASELINE STUDIES
Let me say to you first, to answer the last part of your
question. One of the reasons that we are requesting money for
these baseline studies is so that we can do baseline studies,
for example, on Campylobacter jejuni, to determine the
prevalence of it in different food products that we regulate
throughout the country. That is very important for us because
that is how we can then discern what should be the levels.
But before we run out of time, I do want to certainly make
the case that without minimizing the importance of doing
whatever we can to reduce Campylobacter illnesses, this is
another one of those statistics that CDC has shown that over
the last 5 years or so, there has been a 27 percent decrease in
Campylobacteriosis illness in the United States, which heartens
us certainly, but we do agree that through these baseline
studies we will be able to really ascertain what is the
prevalence of this organism and then decide what we need to do
about it.
Mr. Hinchey. I remain troubled by it because this is a
recent report in Consumer Reports, and 42 percent of the
chicken that they sampled had this particular bacteria, the
Campylobacter bacteria. That is a very high percentage, 42
percent.
Ms. Murano. But we intend to do something about it is what
I am telling you.
Mr. Hinchey. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Mr. Hinchey.
Ms. Kaptur, I will let you conclude, unless there are many
remaining questions today. But Mr. Boyd has one brief question,
and then we will go to Ms. Kaptur to conclude the hearing.
EXOTIC NEWCASTLE DISEASE
Mr. Boyd. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And my question maybe is
for Dr. McKee.
The Exotic Newcastle disease issue in California, I know
you have got FSIS inspectors from all over, including in my
State of Florida, going there to help. Can you tell us about
the protocol for quarantine after those personnel come back to
their States? And there has been some question amongst some of
my folks that it may not be adequate, and I wanted you to
address that.
Mr. McKee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Boyd. I can't go
into exact details of the process, but I was involved in
direction that a protocol would be set up that would be
adequate to prevent any return of or contamination of those
inspectors or veterinarians that were helping to work the
Newcastle outbreak. So I can assure you that the procedures
that we put in place to prevent that was adequate.
I do have information. Seventy-two hours is the
decontamination time that they are required to go through, and
it is a process that we can assure that there will not be
contamination coming back into the plant.
Mr. Boyd. Dr. McKee, there have been some, including a
former ARS director of the Southeast Poultry Research Lab in
Athens, Georgia, who have questioned the adequacy of that
protocol, and I don't understand all of those things. You and
your people, some of whom are sitting behind you, do better
than I do, but if you would personally look at it and be
satisfied those protocols are adequate, I think it would be
very helpful to our people in Florida.
Mr. McKee. Yes, I will certainly do that.
Mr. Bonilla. Thank you, Mr. Boyd.
Mr. Hinchey is going to submit a couple more questions for
the record, to my understanding, but I will let Ms. Kaptur wrap
up the last 5-minute round here that we have.
FOODBORNE ILLNESSES
Ms. Kaptur. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
I just wanted to place on the record, before I conclude,
data from the CDC that food-borne illness this past year has
caused 76 million illnesses in our country, 325,000
hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. In the new data that the CDC
has given to us, they only have summarized the data relating to
the incidence of illnesses, and there is no data on
hospitalizations or death in the newly amended report. The CDC
does discuss the FSIS, however, and HACCP, but they lump
statistics together with the FDA, seafood, juice, HACCP, egg
quality improvements and so forth. One of the statements they
do make in this updated report is that there is a very high
incidence of food-borne illnesses in children; especially
infants remain a major concern.
LISTERIA RECALL
Ms. Kaptur. I would also like to submit for the record in
my own way in defense of a food inspector that I have never met
following on the Wampler plant. It was just one inspection
report submitted midyear last year where he observed the
operations of the chicken roll department and observed several
flies on the chicken salad blending area during operations. He
immediately notified his department supervisor of those
findings and observed noncompliance in the following week. The
preventative measures, as indicated on the previous report,
were not applied or were ineffective as he then did a
subsequent examination. He found no documentation to suggest
that the company had done anything to remediate the problem. He
held a meeting with the second shift plant manager and provided
a written notification of a repetitive facility noncompliance.
I just believe that this set of deaths and illnesses didn't
have to happen because something didn't go right inside of the
inspection process in its relationship to the plant management.
Too many weeks were wasted, Madam Under Secretary, and I am
hoping for the record you would provide for us a detailed
explanation of what happened in all those days that were wasted
before the USDA finally shut that plant down and tried to get
the company to remediate the Listeria and other problems,
health and safety problems, that were there.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
CONSUMER NOTIFICATION OF RECALLS
Ms. Kaptur. I thank you very much for your testimony today,
and in the remaining 2 minutes my final question is I am going
to submit for the record the recall notice that was just issued
on a plant in Ohio, and it basically tells people where the
product was made, American Food's Group, Green Bay Dressed
Beef, 106,000 pounds of fresh and frozen ground beef
contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7. But then they tell you that
some of it was sent to Kroger as beef ground sirloin patties.
Some of it was sent to Meyers as ground beef chuck.
How does the consumer know how to interpret these in order
to protect themselves? It says that these products were
distributed to stores in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky,
Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and
West Virginia. What is the consumer's ability to know that this
is something I don't want to buy? What kind of labeling or
information can you provide to the consumer so they know how to
act on this report? How can you make it consumer-friendly?
Ms. Murano. I understand that, and the difficulty that
sometimes occurs. But in this particular case there is what we
call case-ready product which would have that label. So in this
particular case, this is easy for a consumer to know because it
is case-ready. In other words, it came already packaged. But
what happens a lot of times is that product gets sold to a
supermarket, they open it up, regrind it, mix in some other
trimmings, and then it gets repackaged, and that is the product
that consumers cannot correlate with what might be on a press
release such as this.
In this particular instance, that is not a problem, but
typically it is for that very reason, because of the
repackaging that occurs at the retail store. That is why we
urge people then to simply return the product to the point of
purchase or throw it out or whatever they want to do with it,
because they have that power within them, and I don't
underestimate the intelligence of American consumers. I think
people realize that if you live in one of those States, and you
have ground beef, there is nothing wrong with going to your
point of purchase and saying, is this part of the recall? And
retailers do a very good job of informing their customers
whether it is or it isn't.
But I do share in the concern certainly that what we want
is for consumers to heed these warnings, and that is something
that is a personal concern to me because a lot of times even
when consumers know that a product is contaminated, that it is
exactly what they have in their refrigerator, such as what
happened a few years ago with ice cream from Schwan's company,
31 percent of the people, knowing that the product was
contaminated and they were contacted by Schwan's, still went
ahead and ate it. So it is a difficult situation that even when
they have all the information, sometimes they don't comply, and
that is why our food safety education campaign is so important.
RECOVERY OF RECALLED PRODUCTS
Ms. Kaptur. Madam Under Secretary, I am going to ask you
for recommendations for the record of how bar-coding can be
placed on meat, especially the plants that have been cited in
the past, so the consumer can absolutely know that they
shouldn't buy it, because most of the meat that is recalled is
not recovered.
[The information follows:]
BAR-CODING
All product recalls are voluntary actions undertaken by
companies or institutions. The company conducting the recall
determines the best way to notify their consumers, which may
include the issuance of a press release or some other type of
public information. Currently, FSIS has in place mechanisms to
allow consumers to identify product involved in a voluntary
recall. All labels for products under FSIS' jurisdiction must
list the establishment's name and address. When a company
decides to carry out a voluntary recall, FSIS issues two
documents for the recall of all products under FSIS
inspection--a press release and a Recall Notification Report
(RNR), which lists the company's name and address. The press
release is widely distributed to various news media outlets,
trade associations, consumer groups, and Congressional staff.
The RNR is distributed via e-mail to other Federal agencies and
to over 450 food safety, agricultural, and public health
officials throughout the United States at the Federal, State,
and local levels. Both the FSIS press release and the RNR are
posted on the agency's web site. The agency believes that bar-
coding would not provide any additional benefit over the
agency's current practices for notifying consumers.
What percentage of the meat at Wampler's has been recovered
to date; not recalled, but recovered? Of 27 million pounds, how
much?
Ms. Murano. I don't know the answer to that, but I am sure
it is not anywhere near the full amount. Part of the problem is
that we always conduct recalls going as far back in time as
necessary to err on the side of safety, and most of the time a
lot of that product has already been consumed, too, so for us
to recover it is impossible.
I do agree with you that a lot of times we put down a
figure of a certain amount, and there is no way we can recover
that amount because it has already been consumed. So that is
one of the frustrations that we actually have with people being
very concerned about knowing how much product is there.
Mr. Bonilla. Dr. Murano, thank you for your testimony here
today.
Dr. McKee, Steve, we appreciate your time, and I think that
you sense, every member of this subcommittee, that they have a
tremendous respect and appreciation for the work that you have
done under the leadership of Dr. Murano the last year and a
half.
Ms. Kaptur has a letter she would like to submit for the
record.
Is that correct, Ms. Kaptur?
Ms. Kaptur. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is.
Mr. Bonilla. Without objection, it will be entered into the
record.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Bonilla. Again, we thank you for your testimony. The
subcommittee will stand in recess until 1:30 this afternoon.
[Recess.]
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S)NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF]
W I T N E S S E S
----------
Page
Davidson, R. J., Jr.............................................. 1
Dewhurst, S. B...................................................1, 771
Little, J. R..................................................... 1
McKee, G. L...................................................... 771
Miller, W. K..................................................... 1
Murano, E. A..................................................... 771
Penn, J. B....................................................... 1
Terpstra, A. E................................................... 1
I N D E X
----------
Farm Service Agency
Page
ADP Expenditures................................................. 135
Administrative Support, Tobacco Program.......................... 178
Bio-Energy................................................126, 220, 228
Biographical Sketch:
Administrator, FSA........................................... 70
Under Secretary Penn......................................... 69
Boll Weevil Eradication Loans.............................138, 210, 212
Civil Rights..................................................... 238
Coffee Prices.................................................... 118
Commodity Credit Corporation:
Borrowing Authority.......................................... 175
Contractual Services......................................... 157
Export Credit Guarantees..................................... 157
Foreign Debt................................................. 118
Interest Rate on Borrowings.................................. 160
Inventory..................................................160, 162
Leasing Costs................................................ 143
Sales to Iraq...............................................75, 125
Surplus Commodities.......................................... 229
TEFAP Donations.............................................. 164
Commodity Programs Signup........................................ 74
Conservation Programs............................................ 141
Conservation Reserve Program:
Administrative Costs......................................... 150
Cover........................................................ 147
Enrollment................................................... 206
Estimates.................................................... 152
Farmable Wetlands Pilot Project.............................. 209
Signups and Eligibility Criteria...........................148, 209
Technical Assistance.......................................150, 152
Cotton........................................................... 210
County Offices.................................................145, 214
Employees.................................................... 168
Location...................................................144, 214
Staffing...................................................115, 123
Workload..................................................... 205
Dairy Price Support Program....................................234, 236
Discrimination Lawsuit Settlement................................ 135
E-Government:
E-Filing of Forms............................................ 125
E-LDP's...................................................... 219
Emergency Conservation Program:
Allocations................................................154, 155
Needs......................................................154, 209
Practices.................................................... 156
Emergency Disaster Loans......................................... 193
Emerson Trust.............................................116, 120, 129
Equipment Purchases.............................................. 136
Explanatory Notes:
Commodity Credit Corporation................................. 321
Farm Service Agency.......................................... 242
Farm Bill:
Implementation............................................... 216
Signup.....................................................222, 226
Farm Loans.....................................................222, 227
Activity..................................................... 180
Budget Request............................................... 180
Costs........................................................ 209
Credit Sales of Acquired Property............................ 200
Debt Write-Off............................................... 179
Delinquencies..............................................185, 227
Economic Assumptions......................................... 179
Inventory Property.........................................187, 230
Loans to FSA Employees....................................... 204
Rescheduling................................................. 182
Socially Disadvantaged Farmer Targets........................ 196
Status.....................................................209, 210
Farm Operating Loans............................................. 189
Farm Ownership Loans............................................. 190
Farm Storage Facility Loan Program............................... 206
Farming, Costs of................................................ 227
Future Farmers of America........................................ 241
GAO Report: Iraq's Participation in U.S. Agricultural Export
Programs....................................................... 77
Geographic Information System.................................... 212
Hazardous Waste Management Program............................... 175
Indian Tribe Land Acquisition Loan Program....................... 203
Iraq.......................................................75, 115, 125
Livestock Compensation Program................................... 122
Loan Service Fees................................................ 146
Loan Deficiency Payments......................................... 219
Milk Protein Concentrate......................................... 235
Nonfat Dry Milk.................................................. 229
Object Classes:
25........................................................... 205
41........................................................... 140
Opening Statement, Under Secretary, FFAS......................... 2
Questions Submitted for the Record:
Mr. Bishop................................................... 238
Mr. Bonilla, Chairman........................................ 135
Ms. Emerson.................................................. 222
Mr. Hinchey.................................................. 230
Ms. Kaptur, Ranking Member................................... 226
Mr. Latham................................................... 216
Mr. Obey..................................................... 234
Salaries and Expenses:
Advances and Reimbursements.................................. 138
Budget Request............................................... 208
Leasing Costs................................................ 143
Salaries and Benefits, Average............................... 174
Travel Costs................................................. 140
Signup:
Commodity Programs........................................... 74
Conservation Reserve Program................................. 209
Small Farms...................................................... 240
Staffing:
County Offices.............................................115, 123
Employees on Detail.......................................... 208
Farm Loan Program Administration............................. 204
Levels................................................225, 226, 236
State Offices................................................ 172
State Mediation Grants........................................... 197
Tobacco Administrative Costs..................................... 178
Warehouse Act Implementation..................................... 124
Written Testimony:
Administrator, Farm Service Agency........................... 21
Under Secretary, Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services...... 6
Foreign Agricultural Service
Agricultural Trade Offices................................471, 593, 594
Arrearages....................................................... 510
Azores Collaborative Research and Education Program.............. 625
Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust.................................. 615
Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund............ 598
Biographical Sketch:
Ellen Terpstra............................................... 72
W. Kirk Miller............................................... 73
Biosafety Protocol............................................... 621
Biotechnology..................................................629, 634
Buyouts.......................................................... 613
China WTO Accession.............................................. 614
Cochran Fellowship Program.....................................596, 627
Commodity Assistance Decisions................................... 625
Conferences...................................................... 595
Countries Graduating from Food Aid............................... 613
Dairy Export Incentives Program.................................. 586
Development Assistance........................................... 666
E.U. Negotiations................................................ 614
E-Government..................................................... 626
Explanatory Notes................................................ 701
Export Credit Guarantees......................................... 498
Export Enhancement Program.....................................493, 619
Export Incentive Program......................................... 498
Export Loan Guarantee Programs................................... 615
Facilities Guarantee Program..................................... 614
Food Security Commodity Reserve.................................. 613
Foreign Currency................................................. 625
Foreign Market Development Cooperator Program...599, 601, 611, 625, 628
Free Trade Agreement of the Americas............................. 692
Global Food for Education Initiative............585, 619, 628, 637, 696
Global Marketing Strategy........................................ 638
HIV/AIDS......................................................... 638
Homeland Security................................................ 700
Information Technology........................................... 626
International Cooperation and Development........................ 471
International Food Shows......................................... 587
International Housing............................................ 627
Iraq...........................................................642, 650
Landsat.......................................................... 594
Language Training................................................ 594
Local Currency................................................... 614
Management Retreats.............................................. 595
Market Access Compliance......................................... 614
Market Access Program..........................................473, 627
McGovern-Dole Global Food Program................................ 668
Methyl Bromide............................................622, 624, 636
Montreal Protocol..............................................622, 624
Nat. Advisory Council on International Monetary and Financial
Policies.....................................................640, 656
Ocean Freight Differential.....................................514, 599
Overseas Rental Expenses......................................... 624
Overseas Travel by Under Secretary Penn.......................... 632
Pay Cost......................................................... 624
PL 480 Explanatory Notes......................................... 324
PL 480 Title I Agreements.................................513, 614, 616
PL 480 Title II............................514, 585, 626, 628, 636, 694
PL 480 Title II External Transportation.......................... 585
PL 480 Title II Internal Transportation.......................... 585
PL 480 Title III................................................. 585
Quality Samples Program........................................620, 628
Relations with USTR and USAID.................................... 620
Representation................................................... 595
Restrictions on AID Programs..................................... 473
Rice............................................................. 620
Russian Poultry.................................................. 631
Section 416(b) Commodities......................587, 617, 627, 637, 696
Section 416(b) Transportation Costs.............................. 586
Staffing Needs................................................... 666
State Department Reimbursements................................613, 624
Supplier Credit Guarantee Program................................ 471
Telecommunications............................................... 619
Testimony of Ellen Terpstra...................................... 48
Trade Adjustment Assistance for Farmers.......................... 693
Trade Capacity Building.......................................... 621
Trade Surplus.................................................... 669
US-Australia Trade............................................... 626
World Trade Organization.......................................614, 619
Risk Management Agency
A & O Reimbursement Rate.......................................435, 437
Administrative & Operating Costs................................. 410
Administrative Expense Reimbursement Legislative Proposal......372, 434
Biographical Sketch, Ross J. Davidson............................ 71
Borrowings....................................................... 421
Commercial and Assigned Risk Funds............................... 408
Congressional Affairs............................................ 433
Crop Insurance Industry Annual Meetings.......................... 414
Dairy Options Pilot Program...................................... 382
Delivery Expenses................................................ 414
Explanatory Notes................................................ 439
Group Risk Plan................................................384, 401
Hotline Investigations........................................... 433
Information Technology........................................... 433
Insured Crops.................................................... 418
Loss Ratio....................................................... 401
Other Services................................................... 370
Participation.............................................370, 373, 422
Payments to Companies and Producers.............................. 367
Profits and Losses.............................................367, 406
Program Delivery................................................. 373
Program Indicators............................................... 425
Reinsured Companies............................................409, 416
Revenue Assurance................................................ 403
Risk Management Education........................................ 426
Staffing Plans................................................... 369
Testimony of Ross J. Davidson.................................... 34
Unobligated Balances--FCIC Fund.................................. 424
Food Safety and Inspection Service
Audits:
Foreign..........................850-851, 856-857, 910-913, 965-967
GAO/OIG.....................................................987-988
Automated Corporate Technology Suite (FACTS)....................952-953
Bar-Coding....................................................... 879
Biographies:
Administrator, Food Safety and Inspection Service, Garry L.
McKee, Ph.D................................................ 835
Under Secretary, Food Safety, Elsa A. Murano, Ph.D........... 799
Budget Request:
Baseline Studies............................................. 868
Equivalency Review Trips....................................965-967
Food Safety and Inspection Service.....................848, 864-866
Public Relations Campaign...................................959-961
Scientists, Additional Funding for........................... 856
State Inspection Programs...................................956-957
Campylobacter Prevalence......................................... 988
Codex Alimentarius................................947-948, 953-954, 971
Condemned Product...............................................919-920
Consumption, Food in the U.S....................................848-849
Data Quality Requirements.....................................1004-1005
E. coli O157:H7 Policy......................................983-984
Egg Products:
Inspection and Salmonella Enteritidis........................ 942
Inspection Training Program.................................. 944
Organic...................................................... 970
Electronic Export Certificates................................... 946
Enforcement Activities.......................866-867, 940, 962, 980-982
Equivalency Determinations, Foreign Country...........909, 914-917, 965
Exotic Newcastle Disease........................................868-869
Explanatory Notes.............................................1013-1054
Export:
Countries..........................................896-908, 974-975
Electronic Export Certificates............................... 946
Field Automation and Information Management (FAIM).............944, 949
Financial and Accounting Procedures, External Review of.......... 950
Food Safety:
Coordination...............................................996, 997
Education..................................................857, 959
Labeling..................................................... 979
Modernize Meat Inspection Authorities.......................886-887
Organic Standards............................................ 970
Single Agency....................................851, 855-856, 1000
Technology.........................................846-847, 971-972
United States, in the........................................ 847
Foodborne:
Illnesses.................................................... 869
Pathogens.................................................... 867
Relationship Between Foodborne Illness, HACCP, and Recalls..845-846
Grants to States...............................................938, 945
Guidance Documents............................................... 989
HACCP:
Implementation..............................................986-987
Plants....................................................... 943
Relationship Between Foodborne Illness, HACCP, and Recalls..845-846
Homeland Security.................................844-845, 954-956, 991
Hotline, Meat and Poultry.................................... 943
Humane Slaughter....................................976-978, 1009, 1012
Import:
Condemned product...........................................919-920
Inspection..............................................908-917-986
Product Safety............................................... 845
Reinspection................................................. 985
Surveillance Liaison Inspector............................... 991
Violation.................................................... 957
Inspection:
Establishments.........................................895, 910-914
Exemptions................................................... 936
Exporting Countries.........................................896-898
Inspectors and Consumer Safety O838-839, 948, 982, 984-985, 991-992
Modernize Meat Inspection Authorities..................886-887, 990
Product Inspection:
Egg Products............................................. 942
Livestock Inspected, Amount of........................... 942
Poultry Inspected, Amount of............................. 941
Volume and Cost of Meat an Poultry Inspection at
Slaughter.............................................. 939
State Equivalency..................................918-919, 956-957
Training.................................944, 963-964, 973, 984-984
Violations................................................... 973
Voluntary Inspection......................................... 937
Irradiation.....................................................950-951
Laboratory Accreditations...................................935-936
Laboratories, `Surge Response' Capacity.......................... 975
Listeria:
Directive...................................................837-838
Ready-to-Eat (RTE) Products..................836-837, 957-958, 1001
Recall.................................................858, 869-877
Regulations.................................................957-958
Microbiological Performance Standards..........................951, 962
Microbiological Testing, Outsourcing............................. 960
Microtesting..................................................... 1002
Mobile Slaughter Units...............................849-850, 1010-1012
Nebraska Beef................................853-854, 967-969, 998-1000
Nonambulatory Animals............................................ 976
Opening Statements:
Administrator, Food Safety and Inspection Service, Garry L.
McKee, Ph.D...............................................800-801
Under Secretary, Food Safety, Elsa A. Murano, PhD...........772-776
Organic Standards for Egg Products............................... 970
Outreach, Small and Very Small Plant............................. 994
Pathogen Testing.......................................958-959, 990-991
Pilot Programs..................................................889-894
Public Meetings.................................................. 952
Questions Submitted for the Record:
Chairman Bonilla............................................. 889
Ms. DeLauro.................................................. 998
Mr. Farr..................................................... 1009
Ms. Kaptur................................................... 976
Mr. Kingston................................................. 970
Mr. Latham................................................... 973
Recalls:
Con Agra....................................880-884, 995, 1005-1008
Consumer Notification of...............................878, 932-934
Distribution Lists..........................................851-854
Listeria...........................................858-864, 869-877
Products from 2000-2002.....................................920-932
Rate of.....................................................839-843
Recovery of Product.......................................... 879
Review of Process............................................ 989
Relationship Between Foodborne Illness, HACCP, and Recalls... 845
Recovery Tests, Advanced Meat.................................... 962
Research Projects...............................................894-895
Residue Tests.................................................... 937
Salmonella Enteritidis:
Egg Products................................................. 942
In Flocks.................................................... 978
Testing...................................................995, 1003
Sanitary and Phytosanitary Cooperative Efforts..................917-918
Sentinel Sites................................................... 943
User Fees:
Proposed Legislation...................................857-858, 954
Whistleblower Complaints........................................982-983
Written Statements:
Administrator, Food Safety and Inspection Service, Garry L.
McKee, Ph.D...............................................802-834
Under Secretary, Food Safety, Elsa A. Murano, Ph.D..........777-798