**Robert Pike**

**Vice President/General Manager**

**Braswell Foods/Glenwood Foods**

**PO Box 669**

**Nashville NC 27856**

**Testimony before the United States House of Representatives**

**Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture**

**4/18/07**

**Good Morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about
organic egg and feed production. My name is Bob Pike and I am the
General Manager of Braswell Foods family of companies.**

**Braswell Foods is a family owned company that produces, processes, and
distributes eggs and feed in the mid Atlantic region. We are owned by
Scott Braswell, who is the third generation. The company's heritage can
be dated back to 1834 to a small water powered corn milling operation in
Nash County North Carolina.**

**From that small beginning, the Braswell Family has grown the company
to one of the largest egg and feed producers in the mid Atlantic region.
Our current operations consist of 5 operating companies with over 150
employees and contracts with 23 family owned organic farming
operations.**

**In 1996 Braswell acquired Glenwood Foods in Jetersville Virginia,
which was an established egg producer and market to the Virginia region.
Just prior to our acquisition, the previous owners had seen the need to
start producing and marketing organic eggs. They were true pioneers
because this was before it was cool to be organic and long before the
USDA certification requirements that prevented fraudulent marketing of
organic products.**

**Beginning with a flock of 15,000 birds, our flock size is approaching
400,000 birds producing 10,000,000 dozen eggs per year under the
Eggland's Best and other branded labels that can be found in most retail
and natural food stores from Maine to Florida. We also export product
into Canada and Bermuda. Braswell is a fully integrated organic egg
producer with our own feed milling, pullet growing, liquid egg product
and distribution operations. All of our operations have been certified
by QAI (Quality Assurance International) from day one. The Braswell
Family of companies enjoy a reputation of being one of the country's
premier organic egg and feed providers with sales of over \$20,000,000
per year.**

**Our feed milling operations not only supplies feed to our own birds
but to other organic livestock operations. We purchase organic corn from
7,000 acres and soybeans from 6,000 acres of certified land. Most of the
grain that we buy is from the mid west. We have established buying
programs to encourage grain farmers in our local area to convert to
organic production by paying premiums for their grain during the
transition period of three years in exchange for the following three
years crops.**

**We traditionally pay from 50 to 100% premiums for these crops over
regular commodity crops; with today's pricing for Organic Corn being
over \$9.00 per bushel and bean meal over \$600 per ton.**

**Organic production has also had a great influence on our conventional
operations. We have implemented many of the third party certification
principles in our food safety, animal welfare, and environmental
programs. Brawell is the first and only ISO 14001 certified egg company
which shows the continued commitment to produce the best products while
striving to improve our environment.**

**As a part of the rapid growing organic community, we have seen many
changes and challenges as we strive to serve the customers demand for
organic products. One key event that has helped committed organic
producers such as Braswell was the implementation of the USDA certified
organic program. For the most part this program has leveled the playing
field for fair competition and has provided assurance to the consumer
that organic products are what they say they are.**

**This program has been government at its best but still needs
Congress's support as the demand for more certification both domestic
and foreign suppliers increase. For example, China is making Organic
Soybean meal available to our North Carolina feed mill at a price that
is 25% less than we are paying for Midwest meal. As the US demand
increases and if the US farmer does not put in more acres of organic
grains, supplies of organic products will be needed to fill the gap from
off shore sources. These sources will need to be held to the same high
standards that our domestic suppliers are and USDA will need more
resources to do this.**

**Another area of concern and challenge and some what of a paradox is
the use of organic fertilizers (livestock waste) on our crop lands while
some of environmentalist friends have targeted this practice as not good
for the environment. Some even have said that this organic material
should be classified as "Hazard Waste" and treated as other waste that
would fall under the Superfund law. If our laws prevent the use of this
natural product which has been used to grow crops since the beginning of
time, the organic food industry would collapse.**

**The Braswell family would hope that if you have not tried some of our
eggs that you will in the future and invite you to see our operations in
North Carolina and Virginia. Thank you for the privilege to appear
before you this day.**