MR. STOCKTON: Mr. Chairman, panel, am I close enough to this thing? My name is Gilles Stockton, so you were pretty close. I raise sheep and cattle near Grass Range, Montana. And today I'm representing the Western Organization of Resource Councils, WORK, for short. WORK is an association of six grassroots organizations dedicated to protecting the natural and human resources in North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Montana.

The more I've been thinking about hormones and bananas, the madder I've been getting. Obviously, this country does not export bananas. So why did the Clinton Administration decide to take up the cause for Chiquita? Why, instead, didn't President Clinton move to protect sheep and cattle ranchers who are being hammered by a flood of imports. Instead, our government decided that the Europeans are not eating enough hormones with their beef. USDA secretary Dan Glickman found the solution that we were challenging an unfair, unscientific restriction keeping out American Beef. Perhaps, we're not supposed to notice that Europe has a surplus of beef and actually subsidizes exports.

Hormones implanted in cattle may or may not be safe, but the European consumer is understandably frightened and wary as a result of the Mad Cow Disease scandal. But if the pharmaceutical companies say that Europeans will eat beef raised with synthetic hormones, then Europeans will eat beef raised with synthetic hormones. And, apparently, our government will make sure that they do. The issue here is not whether the Europeans purchase hormone-raised beef, the issue is of democracy and self determination. Has the trade committee superceded the constitution? Do the rights of corporation now come before the rights of the people?

So now we have NAFTA, GATT, and WTO, and we see clearly the disaster that it's caused in Rural America. In the propaganda blitz building up to the adoption of the so-called treaties, agriculture was promised prosperity. Instead, we got the disintegration of competitive markets and the economic depression covering all of Rural America, if not the world. Globalization is proven to be baloney.

One cannot logically separate the anti-democratic and anti-family farm provisions of the trade agreements from the destruction of agriculture caused by the Freedom to Farm Act and combine the above with the institutional failure of the United States Government to enforce the anti-trust laws or to promote competitive markets. And, of course, we see the results has reached crisis proportions. So what to do?

On the domestic side, WORK supports the seven points presented by the Northern Plains Resource Council. And, in particular, to make the trade agreements fair for American producers and consumers, this country must immediately and retroactively enforce the anti-trust laws.

Secondly, the laws and regulations must be enacted mandating competitive markets for all agricultural products, and start by immediatedly implementing the rules proposed by WORK that would require all packer-owned and forward-contracted fat cattle to be priced in an open and competitive market.

And, thirdly, require that all imported agricultural products meet minimum US food safety standard inspection standards, and institute a border inspection system that actually inspects imported food.

As to the WTO talks coming up this fall, we support the points made by the Institute for Agriculture Trade Policy presented on the June 7th listening session in St. Paul, Minnesota. In addition, we feel that the American people have the right to full public disclosure of the US position prior to the WTO talks. And we are particularly interested in proposals to incorporate antimonopoly policies in the global issues.

We absolutely oppose the US Government's proposal to prohibit or limit a country's right to label products according to origin, genetic manipulation, or production methods. And we also will not have much confidence in the outcome of these talks unless you name a cross section of real farmers and ranchers to the WTO negotiating team.

As we see with this trade war with Europe over bananas and hormones, what has been created with NAFTA, GATT, and WTO are the conditions where multinational corporations rate supreme. Now any local, state, or national law in any country that any corporation finds inconvenient can and will be disallowed. And I'm reminded of the prophetic words of the poet, philosopher, and farmer Wendell Barry when he wrote, and I quote, "We are now pretty obviously facing the possibility of a world that the super national corporations and the governments and educational systems that serve them will control entirely for their own convenience, and, incidentally, and inescapably for the inconvenience for all of the rest of us. This world will be a world in which a culture that preserves nature and real life will simply be disallowed. It will be, as our experience already suggests, a post-agricultural world. But as we have been warned, as we begin to see, you cannot have a post-agricultural world that is not also post-democratic, post-religious, and post-natural. In other words, it will be as we have understood ourselves, post-human."

Thank you for the time.

MR. NELSON: Thank you, Gilles. Panel, any comes or questions?

MR. GALVIN: Yes, with regard to your point about the beef hormone issue, not surprising, I guess I would phrase it a bit differently or look at the issue a bit differently. And, in my opinion, it really boils down to are we going to have any sort of rules that govern world trade or should each country be free to keep out products just because they're imported, because they don't like them for whatever reason, because the color or whatever? And if you agree with the basic premise that there ought to be some sort of rules, then I think the question is, how should those rules be constructed? What should the basis be for allowing other countries to restrict or allow imports of some sort.

I think that's sort of where it boils down to in this particular case. And we said that so long as scientists generally agree that a product is safe, then the exporter should have simply the opportunity to market that product in another country. It doesn't mean consumers in that country have to buy it, it's just a question of, can the product even be offered for sale? And, I guess, that's how I view the beef hormone issue, and I certainly respect that others have a different view. But I think we do have to ask ourselves if we don't have some sort of rules for governing trade, then don't we risk having chaos really govern our export and import policies?

MR. STOCKTON: Let me ask you this, in Europe, do the European producers use hormones?

MR. GALVIN: Let me say this, they don't legally. In fact, that's a big problem, and I think we learned some of those lessons ourselves with our own experiment with prohibition. In fact, I recall I was in Brussels about three years ago and an inspection veterinarian was actually shot and killed on a farm in Brussels because he was looking around for illegal hormone use. And I think there's a general understanding that today there's a terrible problem with illegal hormones use in Europe. And not only do they use so-called hormone cocktails, which are quite dangerous hormones, but often times they inject those hormones not with an implant in the ear, but directly into the muscle tissue of the cattle so they can't as easily be detected. So I think that raises a whole other range of risks for consumers in Europe, and I think that's unfortunate in terms of their own welfare.

MR. STOCKTON: Well, I think you've answered the question because if it is being used illegally in manners not prescribed by the label, then the European consumer definitely has a worry there. Are they used always as the label directs in this country?

MR. GALVIN: In this country? I think we have very little problem in this country with illegal hormone use. I think by and large, from what I've seen, it's used responsibly and there's no economic incentive for farmers to use more than the prescribed amount because you don't get additional gains and efficiencies.

MR. STOCKTON: I personally don't put hormones in my calves for a variety of reasons, including one where most of it seemed to be wasted money. But certainly they do in the feedlots, and I don't know who is going out there and checking and inspecting in the feedlots or in the packing plants because we definitely have virtually no inspection in packing plants these days.

MR. GALVIN: The USDA do the checking in the packing plants to --

MR. STOCKTON: It's called passive, and passive means let the companies do whatever they want to.

MR. GALVIN: I don't think it quite means that.

MR. SCHROEDER: I just want to say one word as a sometime lawyer. Largely due to our insistence, there's no power. The WTO cannot do one thing to change the laws of the United States of America or the State of Montana. What we have is a treaty, and as Tim said, a set of rules. And if somebody doesn't obey the rules and we have this dispute settlement ability, as with bananas, as with hormones, if you don't play by the rules, then you have several choices. One is to change whatever you've been doing and come into compliance with the rules, change your law, change your regulation, whatever you want to do. But you can't be forced to do that.

We're talking about sovereign governments here. So what happens if you don't do that? Then there's two choices, the country that is the loser can say, "Nope, we're not going to do anything different, but, okay, we will pay you." In other words, we lost the case, we'll pay. If they don't do that, then the winner has the final choice which is to say, "Okay, we're going to do something because you've lost. You haven't changed your laws and rules, and you won't pay us. So we're going to do something." And that's where we are with bananas and hormones. We're finally going to do something, we're going to retaliate.

And what can we do? We can increase tariffs on other products or something as we are going to do. But nothing can force the government of the United States or of France to change its law if it doesn't want to.

MR. STOCKTON: But you are certainly willing to make it uncomfortable for them. And we could turn the argument around, what if it was the citizens of Montana to create that in the market, we do not want hormone-implanted beef, and Canada came down here and said, "On behalf of the pharmaceuticals companies in Canada, we say that you will use hormones in this country?" You know, I've got to say over the years, I've made a little bit of a transition, I'm an illustrious graduate of this institution, I have a degree in Animal Nutrition, and I had at those days a lot of confidence in the scientific process. But since then, the scientific process has become corrupted, our agricultural scientists are basically working for Monsanto, Novartis, Roche, et cetera. I don't know that we are getting the true scientific results on things like hormones, genetically.

MR. SCHROEDER: Scientists work for the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Department of Agriculture, as well as, the international bodies located in Vienna and Rome. As far as I know, they are only on one payroll, and that is of an international or national organization. And those bodies consistently six or seven times held that there is no evidence that these hormones -- by the way, six hormones, three are already in the cow, three are artificial -- I don't want to get into that. The point is, we have to rely on somebody.

MR. STOCKTON: We have to rely on somebody, and we usually rely on our government. But at this point, when we look at the issue of bananas, which you brought up, was our government bought and paid for to take up that issue? Because I certainly don't raise bananas, I did see a banana plant once in New Orleans. And the issue from the European point of view is their banana quotas go to former colonies, which they develop aid to.

MR. SCHROEDER: No problem, no problem. Ambassador Barshefsky, and I've heard her say it in front of Latin American groups, the issue in the banana case was never the low-made convention special relationship and system that was put into place to help those countries. We do that with the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the GSP Program. The issue was the licensing system in Europe, that was the issue, and an international body made up of a Mexican, a Ty, held it was illegal. And Ecuador were on our side --

MR. STOCKTON: Why was it so important for the United States?

MR. SCHROEDER: Because it was a licensing system which was in the banana case, but it was a threat to any product in Europe.

MR. STOCKTON: And Mr. Donald of R-CALF and McDonald there asked you why didn't you take up the cause of the imports of cattle into this country? Why was that considered unimportant? I mean, we're just mere citizens of this country.

MR. NELSON: I think I'm going to get in this because we've got a lot of other folks who want to speak. And, Gilles, I think I'll let that be the last word, for now, until Lloyd talks. So thank you very much. Lloyd DeBruycker, who is the owner of DeBruycker Charolais, followed by Tom Camerlo, who is president of the National Milk Producers.