MR. CALLICRATE: Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I have a 12 thousand acre feed lot in St. Francis independent cattle producers. I depend on Tennessee cattle to fill the pens in my feed lot. It's important to me that Tennessee's cattle succeed or continue to produce the feed they do produce to fill the demand for that. I'm also involved with a couple of different organizations. One is the Cattlemens Legal Fund. The Cattlemens Legal Fund is a group of ranchers and cattle producers who have filed a lawsuit against Iowa beef processors, Iowa BP, IBP, in an effort to restore competition back to the industry. We believe that IBP has committed some practices that (inaudible).

The other organization I have been heavily involved with is Archet which addresses unfair trade practices of the Canadian and Mexican cattle that are coming into our country and we're making progress on that. But I have spoken to thousands of cattle producers, spoken and listened to them across the country and I believe their views are in line with what I'm going to present here today. WTO, blessing or curse? Who among us would not agree that world trade should by mutually beneficial? Trade should promote peace, not cause hate and discontent. I believe all countries should be allowed the freedom to develop their own sovereign wealth creating enterprises including sound, diverse and sustainable agriculture.

But in our country the family farm and ranch system cannot survive further deterioration of this balanced concept of trade. Local sovereignty, environmental protection and individual rights cannot survive further trade liberalization which is actually trade distortion.

A fair, equitable and sustainable society requires the balancing of many factors, not just economic, which can only be obtained by achieving a more efficient democratic system that devolves power to the most lower level practical depending upon the issue. Today roughly one half of the world population goes to bed hungry. With talks of increasing exports, the citizens of Brazil are robbing government warehouses for something to eat. China, while suffering mass starvation, is one of the world's biggest exporters of beef. Paradoxically, while unable to meet the growing demand for high quality beef, the United States has liquidated nearly two million cows and is now displacing U.S. production by importing low quality, inferior and noninspected beef, equal to over 20 percent of U.S. beef consumption.

For the week of May 25 to April 1, 1999 total beef imports amounted to over 50 percent. The United States with only four percent of the world's population is the largest importer of beef in the world. Last year, the U.S. cattle producer produced the smallest calf crop since 1951. In view of this why are U.S. livestock producers going broke? Argentina, Mexico, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries in the world are losing agricultural producers to low, below low cost of production commodity prices. Basically, those who produce are losing and those who trade are winning. This has now becoming a disastrous, world economic and human crisis. We must ask, whom does the WTO represent and whom does it benefit?

One answer should be corporate concentration, considered the number one problem in America and world agriculture. Here, four beef packers IBP, ConAgra, Cargill and Farmland control over eight percent of the total cattle slaughtered. As in previous times throughout history these large corporate packers are falsely claiming economies of scale and efficiencies in justifying their size. The truth is, these four big packers have been very efficient in manipulating markets and essentially stealing from all producers. At the same time as the big four firm packer concentration has drawn from 36 percent to over 80 percent, the cattle producers share of the consumer dollar has been reduced by 20 percent. This amounts to over three hundred dollars per head less income to the producer at the same time the big packer and big retailer boast record margins and profits. U.S. meat packers are transnational. Like many other corporations they do business with many other countries. It has been said transnational corporations search the globe for the hungriest people who will work the cheapest and sell the production in the highest consuming markets.

Today the U.S. is that market. These companies leverage people and countries against one another in an effort to maximize their profits. Companies like IBP, ConAgra, Cargill and ADM are global predators guilty of human abuses, price fixing and other anticompetitive prices. For many years U.S. sheep producers have been displaced by low cost of production lamb ports for Australia and New Zealand. Producers from all three countries continue to go bankrupt as the corporations orchestrating the trade grow wealthier. And as with beef the consumers of lamb pay record high prices. Until people around the globe can be assured of protection from the illegal acts transnational corporations, any further liberalization and deterioration of balanced trade should be stopped.

Many view the WTO as being controlled by a consortium of transnational corporations with the intent of colonizing the countries and the peopleof the world. Corporate and monied interests with their centrally planned collective systems have a history of human exploitation. From the 14th century Dark Ages to the Irish Potato Famine to the recent Asian economic collapse. The WTO should not be allowed to be an instrument of human exploitation and instead should promote equal opportunity, economic fairness and social justice. While the concept of multilateral interdependence has been to deter another world war it has not been shown that this new globalism is driven by the aspirations of huge -- it has now been shown that this new globalism is being driven by the aspirations of huge transnationals, not pursuit of beast. The WTO must not continue to ignore, as is the case today, the mandated costs of production and costs of doing business within countries, whether the costs are taxes, minimum wage laws, environmental and health regulations or currency evaluations. Much of our environmental law is intended to preserve the world. I believe that a significant portion of export U.S. industry is brought about to avoid far more than simply U.S. wage destruction, but rather the avoidance of compliant with the spirit intent of U.S. law. A universal effort should be mounted to rid the world of this parasitic nonsustainable behavior. The current establishments, the establishment being the USDA are land grabbing university system. The current establishment's view that big predator corporations are necessary to feed the world is literally fatally flawed, erroneous and destructive. I believe rather than feeding the world, we must allow the world to be fed. Thank you.

MR. MANNING: Anyone on the panel have any comments?

MR. SCHUMACHER: I am going to listen and take comments back, but I do want to say on behalf of the USDA your suggestions about predators, I did visit the farmers market this morning and I am very pleased that we are supporting the small farmers as well. I will comment later on that. Thank you very much. Thank you and we will certainly reflect on that.