UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

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ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON :

BIOTECHNOLOGY AND 21ST CENTURY :

AGRICULTURE (AC21) :

SIXTEENTH PLENARY MEETING :

:

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A meeting in the above-entitled matter was held on Thursday, August 2,
2007, commencing at 8:30 a.m., at the USDA, 1400 Independence Avenue,
S.W., Washington, D.C. before:

Michael Schechtman, Ph.D., Designated Federal Official

Patricia Layton, Chairperson

[A P P E A R A N C E S]{.underline}

Abby Dilley, RESOLVE

Cynthia Sulton, HW&W

Debbie Lee, RESOLVE

[MEMBERS OF The AC21 PLENARY COMMITTEE]{.underline}

Patricia Layton, Chairperson

Sarah Geisert

Carol Tucker Foreman

Margaret Mellon

Adrian Polansky

Alison VanEenennaam

Kathleen Jones

Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes

Bradley Shurdut

Jerome Slocum

Guy Cardineau

Leon Corzine

Nancy Bryson

Michael Dykes

Greg Jaffe

James Robl

Michael Engler

Fuller Bazer

Bowen Flowers

Paul Saxton

Marcia Holden, Absent

Daryl Buss, Absent

Duane Grant, Absent

Steven Pueppke, Absent

Randy Giroux, Absent

Russell Kremer, Absent

Elizabeth Milewski, Absent

[P R O C E E D I N G S]{.underline}

MS. DILLEY: So, for this morning a couple of things. I just want to go
over the proposed agenda for the day. And in front of you, you should
have a document that\'s four pages long and on the top it says draft,
August 1, 2007. If you skip over the first page and go to the second,
the top starts with the overview. So, that\'s the new section from
yesterday removing all the parens, etc. and then it goes into the
factors enabling coexistence.

And at the very end are other bullets from the executive summary that
had not during the discussion been directly pulled down into that
section. Otherwise, they integrated those into the bullets and I just
tried to organize it a little bit for easier review.

But, we wanted to go over those this morning and what I would suggest is
that we start with the factors enabling section because that was a
little less clear when you left yesterday and to pick up that
conversation and spend a little bit more time making sure what I\'ve
captured there is on the mark.

Also, Nick provided us with some language this morning that Debbie\'s
typed into the computer to be able to look at that language. And then
we\'ll \-- rather than go to the introduction after that I\'d rather
tackle the factors inhibiting and see if we can really work that section
and then make sure that we capture the ending, even if it\'s a section
what would be before, either just a couple of sentences that we\'ve
talked about but we haven\'t pinned down the language; so do that and
then come back to the intro because in that overview section, having
gone through the rest of the document we may want to add something or
refine it slightly differently.

So, that will have given us a thorough going-over in going through the
document. And then I think we need to, after doing the substantive work,
really talk about a work plan to finalize the paper and have it ready to
deliver to the Secretary either electronically or at the next meeting
depending on what our time frame looks like and what work needs to be
accomplished.

And then Michael will introduce the next charge and we\'ll just have a
preliminary discussion about that and then before the end of the day,
before we conclude, have an overall work plan for not only finishing the
paper but then responding to the quality management system questions
that Rebecca brought to the committee yesterday and anything in terms of
setting up for that conversation, responding to those questions, and
then also any work that needs to be done between now and the next
meeting on the new charge so we can organize our work between now and
the next meeting and have work plan in place by the time we leave this
afternoon at four.

So, that\'s what I would propose for the agenda. Any questions about the
overall agenda?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: May I just comment?

MS. DILLEY: Sure.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Okay. Just as we work towards finalizing the paper just
one thought. We have at this meeting a relatively large number of
members absent. We have six members who aren\'t here so we\'re going to
have to think about giving them an opportunity to \-- since those are
people that we want to be able to participate in signing off, be able to
sign off on the paper we\'re going to have to be sure that we\'re
factoring in enough of an opportunity for them to react to all the good
work that\'s going on here now.

MS. DILLEY: So, certainly part of the work plan in terms of having them
review and getting them engaged in finishing up the paper. Any other
questions?

All right. So, if you turn to page 3 then on the document that was
circulated, section 2, what\'s now section 2, factors enabling
coexistence, if you want to take a second to just peruse those bullets
as well as the other bullets from the Executive Summary. Why don\'t we
start there and then Nick also provided some language, but, before we
turn to that why don\'t we just look through the bullets right now.

So, as you can see, the other bullets in the Executive Summary, there\'s
either portions of it or it looks quite similar to some of the things
that are already pulled up there so it\'s probably going to be fairly
straightforward to extract any additional information from those and
leave them up. But, we can just jump in. And, Leon, your card\'s up so
why don\'t you get going here this morning.

MR. CORZINE: Thanks, Abby. I was wondering, if you look at the opening
line I\'d offer a change there because as it reads it really is in
conflict with the other part that we just finished up or just went
through and haven\'t finished, but, \--

MS. DILLEY: The intro you mean?

MR. CORZINE: Yeah. So, I would offer "a number of challenges for
coexistence as" and then strike "it exists in the market bullet today"
and insert "we look to the future."

DR. LAYTON: Where are you? I\'m sorry.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: He\'s going to inhibit.

DR. LAYTON: No, we\'re not on inhibiting. We\'re enabling.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: We\'re on enabling. We\'re on this document enabling.

MS. DILLEY: We\'re reviewing our material from yesterday.

DR. LAYTON: Because we had a couple to finish up and we\'re on enabling.

(Discussion off the record)

MS. DILLEY: Nancy.

MS. BRYSON: This is wordsmithing, but, in the last sentence, since we
got rid of "framework" before maybe we could simplify it by saying "that
contributed to the development of coexistence." Take out the current and
framework.

DR. LAYTON: Is it development or \--

MS. BRYSON: That may not be the right word. Maybe it\'s "contribute to
coexistence".

DR. LAYTON: Level of coexistence, or, I\'m trying to think of the right
word, but, I don\'t think it\'s development. I think it\'s here. It\'s
already developed, but, I don\'t know what it is. Have contributed to
the success of coexistence?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: "...help enabling coexistence?"

MR. CORZINE: We stayed away from the "enabled."

DR. LAYTON: "...Contributed to the success of coexistence" maybe? And
you could even leave "current".

MS. DILLEY: Good morning, Mardi. The piece of paper in front of you was
trying to capture the discussion from yesterday so we\'re in exhibiting
factors enabling coexistence. Bowen.

MR. FLOWERS: On the back page, the very first bullet, demands
co-production, I think you need to add history, crop history on there
too because that\'s important because some chemicals we use on one crop
you\'ll be off label to plant another crop at a certain time. So, it
needs \-- crop needs to be \--

MS. DILLEY: Just so I know which bullet. Are you talking about the
bullet on the top of page \--

MR. FLOWERS: The very first bullet.

DR. LAYTON: The historical ability.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

MR. FLOWERS: And after crop production management and crop history.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. And crop \-- okay.

DR. LAYTON: I want to ask you a question. Is it cropping history or crop
history? I don\'t know how that word works.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: I think it\'s cropping.

MR. CORZINE: Field history.

DR. LAYTON: Cropping history.

MR. FLOWERS: Field history or \--

MR. CORZINE: Field history.

DR. LAYTON: Just field history, Michael?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: "Field history".

MS. DILLEY: Nick and then Alison. Go ahead.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: The way that reads, to me, it sounds like
historically farmers had an ability \-- they currently shamefully lost
it. The bullets on the bottom that\'s expert knowledge and crop
production management tools at the farm level shouldn\'t move up there
as well, phrased and maybe, I don\'t know, wants to replace as far as
ability, etc. So, "Expert knowledge in crop production management skills
at the farm level\..."

DR. LAYTON: I.e.?

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: "...enabling the co-production of different crop
types on their own farm and competing farms."

DR. LAYTON: Okay. So take that as the first phrase instead of \-- she\'s
got it.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Enabling the production. I think it was co-production
was what it originally said, co-production.

MS. DILLEY: That\'ll work.

DR. LAYTON: Yes.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Okay. "...Of different crop types on their farm".

DR. LAYTON: That\'s among farms, not between farms.

MS. DILLEY: Nick.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, I was going to comment and then I found the
first sentence. This certainly is an improvement and I wouldn\'t start
the sentence at on their own farms and on own farms period.

MS. DILLEY: And then \--

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Sort of scratch everything out.

MS. DILLEY: Right, that other \-- then the rest of that bullet is out,
right? So, that replaces that.

MS. BRYSON: Either we should take out there on, or, put in "enabling
co-production by farmers of different crop types on their own farms." We
were missing a grammatical construction. It was on their own initiative.

MS. DILLEY: Nick, do you have another comment?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: (Nodded head in the negative).

DR. LAYTON: Do we need to add the limited number of crops of GE
varieties on the market? Do we need a little bit more about that? We
talked about yesterday about one was mostly \--

MS. DILLEY: Nick has language and we\'re going to go to that. I just
wanted to see if there were any other comments on this. Brad?

MR. SHURDUT: Not on that particular one, but, I\'m just having a hard
time in terms of drawing a distinction between bullet point 2 and then
4, bringing commercial contracts in bullet point 2 and then you have it
in number 3, so, if nothing else, you probably want to juxtapose both of
those and/or split it out so you have two distinct thoughts.

But, it seemed like they kind of bleed into one another.

MS. DILLEY: Two and four?

MR. SHURDUT: Two and four.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah. Do you know how to break them?

MR. SHURDUT: Well, maybe I think it\'s important that based on the
conversation yesterday that commercial grain isn\'t recognized so you
may want that to be salient so you may want to pull the contractual
established standards piece out of number 2 and nail that to number 4.

MS. DILLEY: That\'s a good idea.

DR. LAYTON: So, just take out the "for instance", or, "for example", or,
the whole sentence?

MR. SHURDUT: When you start getting into contractually established
standards that, for example, I would marry that into bullet point number
4 since it gets into contracts and commercial agreements.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, pull that out. I think also on bullet 2 we\'re
still kind of backing what there is there in terms of how it really
relates to coexistence. Leon was next, then Nick, and then Sarah.

MR. CORZINE: I was back to the one we were working on before.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

MR. CORZINE: You could put a period after crop types and just get rid of
some verbiage too, couldn\'t we? I think that kind of covers it.

MS. DILLEY: See what people think. Any objection to that?

MR. CORZINE: Then I had \--

DR. LAYTON: See, Nancy, you and Daryl were really good.

MR. CORZINE: Could we \-- the last bullet on page 3, "ability of seed
industry to date to provide", I don\'t know if we need "to date" in
there or I would put in "as provided".

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Nick and then Sarah.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, I have two comments on two different points.
The first one relates to the second bullet. In my view the issue of
having a regulatory framework which has provided a revised regulatory
environment and certainty in the market at the same time is not overly
intrusive. As an example being the issue of not setting specific
thresholds is a key one.

In my mind, if there was any single point to be made out of all the
document, and this is at the top of my list, to somehow we have to flush
it out and we have in bullets 1 and bullet 5 we have used the word,
market orientation, but, for the stakeholders and for the activities.
So, somehow making that connection that regulatory framework has
provided the proper amount of certainty, but, at the same time has
enabled the market to function I think is really significant in making
the point about thresholds. It\'s also significant.

So, I don\'t have specific verbiage right now to suggest, but, we can
talk about it, but, I think it should be explicitly in there and
probably the first bullet to get started on.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, I guess the question I have for you is that the
e.g. was going to be pulled down to 4, but, it sounds like you really
think it\'s important to be specific about that\'s an example of
regulatory structure being \-- providing \-- it provides structure but
it\'s not being too intrusive and that would be the example. So, I\'m
trying to figure out where we \-- now we\'ve pulled it back up into
that, is that right? No. Okay. So, it\'s different.

DR. DYKES: I think, Abby, the e.g. belongs in 4.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. DYKES: Variable contractually established standards rather than
government regulatory and inspection. I like what he said about he\'s
provided stability in certain markets without being intrusive.

MS. GEISERT: I was going to add "less prescriptive".

MS. DILLEY: "Less prescriptive".

MS. GEISERT: So, therefore, it\'s allowing a bit of an evolution. We had
some experiences where we need to make changes so there\'s that
flexibility that has been allowed to be built in so it\'s \--

DR. LAYTON: Can I suggest maybe "...a legal and regulatory system that
provides stability and certainty for all market participants allowing
participants in all market segments the ability to operate without being
prescriptive." I\'m not sure that\'s grammatically correct. I was trying
to combine and taking out several redundant words.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: In my view this actually is a little bit too vague
and, you know, \--

DR. LAYTON: Okay. So, this one is to eliminate a word.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah.

MS. GEISERT: I would agree that we need to work on that one, but, the
other part I was going to switch to the back was just a consideration. I
think I would add, and maybe this is implied in this, is customers and
consumers. Not all costs are passed along when you\'re in traditional,
GE, and organic and so, customers make decisions and I think that there
are other considerations besides health and wellness and, so, can you
add and other considerations for folks that may choose certain products
that they\'re interested in. So, it\'s not always about health and
wellness.

DR. LAYTON: So, the willingness of customers and consumers and then at
the end add and other considerations?

MS. GEISERT: I would.

MS. DILLEY: Mardi.

DR. MELLON: I agree we need to work more on the legal and regulatory
language. I\'m concerned that we\'re providing too glowing a picture of
the regulatory system. I think it\'s anything but clear. I think people
have been operating with a lot of vagueness and uncertainty and there
are many, many, many things wrong with it so I don\'t want for us to say
that there\'s \-- I don\'t want this to be kind of a general endorsement
of the regulatory system although, as I said yesterday, I think it is
very important to point out the specific place where we\'re not having a
prescriptive threshold has actually enabled us to work through these
practical problems.

And I find that, as I said, it\'s an important insight, but, it\'s
finding a way of kind of pointing out. To me, it\'s because there is not
a lot of certainty to the regulatory system that actually \-- it\'s
actually \-- I don\'t know exactly enabled, but, it\'s the combination
of not being allowed certainty; not having a prescriptive hard edge over
here; and then the ability to make contracts with a lot of testing and
information in between has provided, you know, something really
interesting.

But, so, I want to work on it. I also want to talk \-- I don\'t think
that we can say that "the seed industry... to provide seed inputs to
meet demands" as \-- I mean, we have to qualify that somewhere. When we
tested the seed in this country every bit of the non-GE seed is
contaminated with GE and that is not the kind of industry major crops.
So, to me, that restricts choice for people who hope that in some way
some day to be able to provide crops that are not genetically
engineered, does threaten the contamination of the seed supply itself in
ways that may never \-- so, we need again to kind of just be a little
bit more specific about where it appears to be working, but, not
gushing.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. To me, on that second \-- let\'s take one bullet at a
time. So, that second bullet, to me, it sounds like you\'re saying "a
flexible regulatory system that allows participants the ability to
operate and adapt" or something like that. I mean, it was really you
were emphasizing the flexibility piece of it.

DR. MELLON: Right. And I don\'t think we should talk about the whole
system. I mean, I think a system with sufficient flexibility, you know,
\--

MS. DILLEY: So a regulatory system that allows \--

DR. MELLON: \-- that to somehow accommodate, and I\'m not quite with the
words either, but, \--

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Michael has an introduction for some language.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Tell me if this works: "...a legal and regulatory
framework that has enabled different markets to develop but has not
interfered with the ability of markets to establish standards and
procedures." Is that getting closer? I\'ll read it out again.

"...a legal and regulatory framework that has enabled different markets
to develop but has not interfered with the ability of markets to
establish standards and procedures."

DR. MELLON: Should we mention the fact that by not setting thresholds?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah. We could do an e.g. there.

DR. MELLON: For example.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah, an e.g. Yeah, that\'s excellent.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah, that\'s very good, Mike.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. LAYTON: You got to fill that out for her. She just said e.g.
thresholds. Are you comfortable with e.g. thresholds or you need to give
her the words.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Not setting specific \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Mandatory thresholds.

DR. LAYTON: And you need to say AP thresholds?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah, because otherwise, first of all, \--

DR. LAYTON: I understand. I just want to make sure we \--

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Mandatory AP.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: That could be the first AP in the document so you may
need to spell that out, adventitious presence.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Michael, excellent.

MS. DILLEY: Nick and then Leon.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, now that we\'ve solved bullet number 2 \--

MS. DILLEY: Right.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: \-- let\'s go to bullet number \-- I don\'t know
what number it is, but, it\'s the very last one.

MS. DILLEY: On this page?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yes. And it\'s too bad that Carol\'s not here
because I wanted to make sure that I\'m not saying something that would
go against the grain for Carol, but, in my view this bullet is a truism.
I mean, I cannot think of a single market in any single country that
consumers that are not expressing their willingness to pay when they go
out and buy whatever they buy. That\'s what all of us do depending on
where we are.

So, I\'m not really sure what this bullet says.

DR. MELLON: Would it be better to be more specific and say that they\'re
willing to pay a premium for non-GMO or organic food?

MS. DILLEY: Well, we\'ve added customers and consumers.

DR. MELLON: Well, that\'s what they\'re paying a premium for.

MS. DILLEY: So, part of that \--

DR. MELLON: And that\'s what\'s relevant to this debate.

MS. DILLEY: So, part of what you\'re saying is that\'s how markets get
established in the first place and then are we saying \--

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: That\'s a truism. That\'s what we all do. We all
express willingness to pay, you know, depending on where we are. If
you\'re willing to buy something that\'s your expression of that, so,
\--

DR. MELLON: But, it is true that it helps coexistence work in this
country that people are willing to pay for the non-GMO and the organic
food. They are willing to pay extra and that helps people cover the
extra cost and it makes possible for these things to flourish.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, maybe your suggestion about, you know,
explicitly putting instead of based on individual views and food
development and wellness just say that they\'re paying extra for non-GMO
and \--

DR. LAYTON: Could you different non-GMO\'s?

DR. MELLON: And organic.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: It\'s a premium for non-GMO and organics.

DR. MELLON: What\'s relevant here is that there would be no \-- we
wouldn\'t have a coexistence issue if we didn\'t have some folks willing
to pay extra because the market would just \-- would not make \-- you
know \-- would take the non-GMO and the organic market away.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: And other specialty crops.

DR. MELLON: And other specialty crops.

MS. DILLEY: Leon. Leon, you have a point on this one?

MR. CORZINE: Yes. And I agree with Margaret. I think it\'s "need to be"
in there. You know, what I was going to offer is because it is broader,
I like the language like you had it except I would put a period after
"individual views". And that kind of covers it rather than trying to hit
all these other things.

DR. MELLON: Well, we do need \-- I think we need to say \-- you know \--
it\'s kind of \-- why don\'t we say that people are paying more for
non-GMO and organic and other specialty crops.

MR. CORZINE: Because it\'s broader than that because somebody may want
blue corn chips or red corn chips and not really give a care about
health and wellness.

DR. MELLON: But, that\'s not relevant to this issue.

MR. CORZINE: Sure it is.

DR. MELLON: Although we could say and other specialty crops or specialty
crops, for example, organic and non-GMO.

MR. CORZINE: I think we\'re narrowing it too much because our charge
really isn\'t just to address organic or non-GE.

DR. MELLON: Because it is. That is our definition. We define coexistence
as those three things.

MR. CORZINE: It could also include a specific biotech crop. It\'s why
consumers are willing to pay and that allows us and that is really what
drives coexistence because the product wouldn\'t exist if consumers
weren\'t willing to pay no matter what it was, so, \--

MS. DILLEY: Adrian, did you have a comment on this one?

DR. POLANSKY: I guess I agree with what Leon was saying. I think it is
bigger and I don\'t know that it needs to go in here, but, without the
willingness, and I think that\'s what is being said, farmers would not
grow higher production cost type crops, whether they be organic or
whether they be specialty crops, or whether they be, you know, varieties
and there\'s a reason why corn, blue corn or red corn, it\'s a
specialty. It\'s generally not a yield as high, but, it\'s productive,
so, without \-- so that the consumer does drive the ability, being
willing to pay a premium for the producer to be able to produce whatever
this product is and I don\'t know how that fits in here, whether it
needs to, but, it\'s a reality.

MS. DILLEY: Guy, on this one?

DR. CARDINEAU: Yeah. I guess I was thinking that we were supposed to be
writing this document as a review of how things stand today and looking
to the future as well and it occurs to me that at the moment genetically
engineered crops are focused on insect resistance and herbicide products
primarily, and some squash, but, there\'s a lot of work going on towards
nutritional enhancement, oil improvement, and a lot of things that
consumers may actually pay for because there\'s a benefit to the
consumer.

I think if we write this language so that it says the willingness of
consumers to pay for non-GMO and that precludes the future where
consumers may actually want to pay for GMO. So, I don\'t know that I
want to specify that because I think there could be specialty crops that
are genetically engineered that people may pay for.

MS. DILLEY: Michael, go ahead.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Just a thought about how to address this issue. One
possibility might be to say "...for differentiated food products,
including organic, non-GE, or other products" and then -- or "other
characteristics".

DR. LAYTON: Local.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: And leave it at that.

MS. DILLEY: Mardi?

DR. MELLON: But, that would work for me, but, I do want to go back and
point out that we are defining coexistence here, not to be all of the
big coexistence issues, red corn and blue corn and white corn and, you
know, corn versus soy and all of those problems. We\'re defining it to
be conventional, organic, and genetically engineered.

So, we \-- you know \-- so, we don\'t want to \-- I mean, so, it isn\'t
appropriate to kind of take on the whole rest of the world. I\'m happy
to put specialty crops or you could even say specialty biotech crops or
specialty genetically engineered crops. I agree they may come in the
future, but, I think, you know, that\'s not the issue right now. That\'s
not \--

MS. DILLEY: So, Michael\'s got a proposal on the table. I think you said
something that might be other people\'s concerns to make sure that it
anticipates other kinds of products, organic, non-GE, and other traits?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Or other some things.

MS. DILLEY: Other characteristics or other \--

DR. MELLON: You could have other genetically engineered specialty crops.

MS. DILLEY: Other attributes?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah. And I would scratch based on individual
views. I mean, everything we do is based on individual views.

MS. DILLEY: So, just taking differentiated food products and then you\'d
have the e.g., organic, non-GE, and other attributes and leave it at
that?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

MR. CORZINE: I still don\'t understand why we need to start listing all
the specific things because it says it without the e.g. because you\'re
going to start missing stuff. I mean, there are a lot of things out
there.

MS. DILLEY: We do that in a couple of different places where we come
back to the definition specifically to mean GE or non-GE, organic, and
conventional so we\'ve referenced that a couple of times and I think
we\'re just doing that here like we\'ve done it in other sections. I
think that\'s only to kind of remind the reader, I guess, that we have
defined it as the concurrent cultivation of those things and those
products.

So, it seems to \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Would you be helped if there were a "some" before
"customers and consumers"?

MR. CORZINE: Well, my opinion is all customers and consumers, you know,
pay what \-- you know \-- they buy what they want with their \-- and
they sort of vote with their pocketbooks. I mean, it\'s a larger
segment, you know, and it doesn\'t matter what it is. You can go back to
\-- if you want to buy Frito-Lay or do you want to buy the Kroger brand,
you know. You can get that far.

MS. DILLEY: But, we weren\'t talking about that so much as that\'s
unique to the United States. In my mind, it\'s kind of unique to the
United States as opposed to maybe India where people don\'t \-- can\'t
segment the market as much because they don\'t have the resources to pay
a premium. So, I don\'t know, that is what I thought was partly making
the point there.

Jerry, and then Nick, and then Mardi.

MR. SLOCUM: I honestly don\'t \-- I have to agree. I don\'t know what
the \-- if we want to say currently organic and non-GE we pay the
premium for. Let\'s cite that rather than e.g. this, this, and other
attributes because I have no clue what\'s other attributes is. Could be,
might be, will ever be. We want to say currently it\'s organic and
non-GE and in the future it may include, you know, genetically enhanced
crops that has a nutritional value that the customer and consumer \--

DR. LAYTON: How does that sound?

MR. CORZINE: I just don\'t understand.

MR. SLOCUM: I don\'t either. I think it reads pretty well the way it is.

DR. LAYTON: Without the e.g.? Because the definition of coexistence that
we\'re using right now \--

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s right.

DR. LAYTON: \-- is those three cites.

MR. SLOCUM: Exactly. Yeah. People are paying a premium for
differentiated food products regardless of if it\'s GE, non-GE, organic,
whatever it is.

MS. DILLEY: Nick and then Brad.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, my previous comment about truism and the
previous cites was two. In this case, this is not \-- the addition of
Michael of the word "some" is actually important. What this sentence
says is there is some demand for organic products and for non-GE
products. And as long as there is demand there is going to be some
supply. Specifically, that is part of the issue of coexistence. So, what
this sentence says, I think, and I don\'t know, probably e.g. is that
there is some demand.

So, this is actually functioning and in terms of what the market
realities there is as well.

MS. DILLEY: Brad.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So I would add e.g.

MS. DILLEY: Because that\'s what creates the market?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Right.

MS. DILLEY: Brad.

MR. SHURDUT: I\'m wondering also, and it\'s not to that point
specifically, but, where there\'s another component here as well.
Publicly, we talk about the willingness of consumers to pay a premium,
but, how about to the ability. We talked yesterday that in some markets
you don\'t have the choice. You won\'t put certain foods on the shelf in
Europe. They just put it on the shelf so this whole notion of ability to
choose.

MS. DILLEY: So, adding the willingness and ability or something for
consumers to pay?

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: The way that reads it looks like the consumers don\'t
have enough money rather than they are able to choose between the
products.

MR. SHURDUT: Yeah, so freedom to choose so, the whole notion there, it
fits in there somewhere because it is unique in the U.S. that consumers
can have that opportunity.

DR. LAYTON: It\'s availability, not ability.

MR. CORZINE: It\'s both. It\'s both.

DR. MELLON: It is \-- that\'s a two-sided coin and it can be put exactly
the way you put it. There\'s validity to it. It is also the truth that
if you want a truly organic, non-GE product in the U.S. you\'re denied
that. We\'ve already said that, that our system, the way it\'s set up,
does not make that available. So, there are limits on availability in
different context and they\'re both valid and they do both result from
this kind of \-- all these choices and policies set.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: As the sentence is written now is it gets worse in
my view than better, although I \--

DR. MELLON: I wouldn\'t put it. I think it\'s a valid point.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: The ability indicates wealth and, you know, for
available negotiated products indicates that there might actually be a
whole lot that\'s not available which neither one qualifiers is doing
what you had in mind. In fact, if anything is getting worse. I would
take both of them out and maybe look for another place, you know, to
talk about choice and availability.

MS. DILLEY: So, we\'re back to the willingness of some customers and
consumers to pay a premium for differentiated food products and
determining whether or not we have an e.g. or not an e.g.

DR. CARDINEAU: Are we putting the word, "currently", in there, e.g.,
currently or organic, non-GE, or, other attributes?

DR. MELLON: That\'s fine with me.

MR. SLOCUM: What does it mean, currently other attributes?

DR. CARDINEAU: I don\'t know.

MS. DILLEY: Because you\'re right because that\'s a little bit \--

MR. SLOCUM: Awkward.

MS. DILLEY: \-- unclear. It\'s not just awkward. It\'s because other
attributes was looking towards the future and to say currently \--

DR. LAYTON: It was just something that currently was added if you drop
the other attributes. It was just currently GE and non-GE and organic.

MS. DILLEY: It is local.

DR. CARDINEAU: It\'s actually more accurate.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah.

DR. LAYTON: Local isn\'t coexistence though definition.

MS. DILLEY: If you put currently you have to take out other attributes.
If you\'re trying to talk about future then you would put that back in.
All right.

MR. SLOCUM: So, we\'re saying that the only food products that we pay a
premium for today are organic and non-GE?

MS. DILLEY: No.

MR. SLOCUM: Is that what that says?

MS. DILLEY: No. This is a factor enabling coexistence among concurrent
production of conventional, organic, and \--

DR. LAYTON: Yeah. I think the e.g. has to go in there.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: After "currently": "...currently, e.g..."

MR. CORZINE: Take "currently" out.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I think GE, organic, non-GE, and other attributes,
is a fine expression of what it is, Leon.

MR. SLOCUM: It\'s actually meaningless though. Leave it the way it is.
It\'s a truism. This is a truism too.

DR. POLANSKY: I think it does have meaning.

MS. DILLEY: It does have meaning to have the specific \--

MR. SLOCUM: What does attributes mean then?

MS. DILLEY: Other attributes.

DR. POLANSKY: We\'ll leave that to other folks. Really. I mean, there is
\-- just to presume that there are, I think, would speak \-- I think
it\'s really creating \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: There is a limited production of high oleic oil.

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s premium oil.

DR. LAYTON: And it\'s customers and consumers? It\'s not just consumers?

MS. DILLEY: So, other attributes, doesn\'t that cover that or no?

MR. SLOCUM: But, I don\'t think the reader is going to understand what
those other attributes are.

MS. BRYSON: Organic and non-GE are forms of production, not attributes,
isn\'t that right? We\'re concerned with the use of the word
"attributes". Is there another word?

DR. LAYTON: Qualities?

MS. BRYSON: Quality?

DR. LAYTON: Products.

MS. DILLEY: And products.

MR. SLOCUM: Specialty products is what they are.

MS. DILLEY: Specialty products: "...and other specialty products" then?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Or other specialty products?

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Okay. All right. And other specialty products.

(Discussion off the record)

MS. DILLEY: Are there other bullets?

DR. LAYTON: I sort of looked through what we had done, the other bullets
from the Executive Summary. I felt like the bottom three were duplicates
and/or else had been moved up. The only one that worried me was "The
ability of seed varieties to produce a full range of desired
agricultural products" and then I wasn\'t sure where we end up on how
that connected to the bottom bullet on 3 which was "Ability of the seed
industry to provide seed inputs to meet diverse grower needs and
maintain choice."

Are they the same and then have we been taking all the other bullets
out?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: There were still some.

MS. DILLEY: And we need to \-- what bullet?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: No, I meant there were some \-- still some discussion
that Mardi wanted to have on the seed.

DR. LAYTON: Right, on the seed thing. So, I wanted to just make \-- that
was one of my \-- I\'m looking at the clean-up piece that\'s here.

MS. DILLEY: So, seed, we need a bullet on seed.

DR. LAYTON: Yeah, to clean up the seed. Brad and then Fuller.

MR. SHURDUT: Well, just on the seed piece there, because when you look
at the first sentence and it talks about what\'s contributed to the
development of coexistence we\'re talking about the current situation
and although there may be issues where you find AP and seed here
there\'s still nothing that suggests we haven\'t been able to meet that
availability currently, so to modify that or save "to date", to me, that
doesn\'t seem appropriate given the process with which we\'re talking
about the current situation and currently working, so, I think that last
bullet point on the first page, taking out the "to date".

MS. DILLEY: Is gone, you know, from \-- Leon had suggested it "The
ability of the seed industry has provided..."

MR. SHURDUT: I know Mardi had talked about \--

MS. DILLEY: The seed industry has provided.

MR. SHURDUT: Mardi talked about perhaps it needed more modification.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah.

MR. SHURDUT: And, to, me, that\'s very similar to the availability point
so I don\'t think you need that "availability of seed" on the second
page under the other bullets.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. So we can delete that one.

MR. SHURDUT: That\'s my point.

MS. DILLEY: Fuller.

DR. MELLON: I mean, to me it is attributing coexistence but you can\'t
get the good \-- you can\'t get the really pure seed. And with every
passing year you are less and less able to get pure seed; that\'s a
non-GMO seed that\'s available is not going to be, you know,
contaminated. And, I think we have every \-- although we have no data
because we\'ve never looked, we have every reason to believe that our
conventional, non-GMO seed supply is contaminated with all of the over
150 traits, industrial and pharmaceutical traits that we field tested
over the last 15 years, and I think that\'s an inhibiting factor.

MS. DILLEY: Fuller?

MR. SHURDUT: You can put that on the inhibiting side as well. I mean,
I\'m just stating because we\'re focusing on things that enable
coexistence thus far is the actual availability. In the future maybe
it\'s a question of the possible availability in the future, but, so, to
me, it\'s a different point and you may want to look at that in the next
section as appropriate.

MS. DILLEY: Fuller.

DR. BAZER: Yeah. I was just wondering about the other bullets and some
of the wording, what you wanted to take out or what you wanted to leave
in there. I think the farmers markets and the local markets do provide a
lot of specialty items.

MS. DILLEY: I think that second bullet down on page 4, the
infrastructure, it\'s pretty close to that bullet. So, the question is,
are we missing anything from the bullet at the bottom of the page, the
bullet you\'re referring to in that statement, slightly different
statement?

DR. LAYTON: Yeah, I thought those were duplicates. The second one at the
top of page 4 and the second one from the bottom on page 4 is
duplicative to me.

MR. SLOCUM: But, the other bullets in the Executive Summary, they\'re
justified, they\'re not part of the case?

DR. LAYTON: We were just trying to \--

MS. DILLEY: That was what was requested yesterday before we broke is
that could you please put the remaining bullets from the Executive
Summary on the page so that we can review them.

DR. LAYTON: Make sure we didn\'t leave anything out if it was an
enabling factor. That\'s all.

MS. DILLEY: So, I\'m not sure we\'ve resolved this seed. You have a
suggestion?

MS. BRYSON: What if we modified the bullet to say "...the ability of the
seed industry to provide seed to meet a wide range of grower demands and
maintain choice" because, Mardi, when we get to inhibiting factors
there\'s a bullet there on the question about availability of organic
seed and I think, you know, given what we\'ve said about how coexistence
is working, if we modified it in this way there would be an agreement
that you\'re meeting a wide range of grower demands and maintain choice
as a factor that supports coexistence and the rest of the point gets
made on how, you know, what inhibition is.

MS. DILLEY: Can you read that again so that we can at least put it up
there?

DR. MELLON: I like the idea of including it. The line that\'s included
is disadvantages. So, there\'s some way of doing \-- as Brad has pointed
out, it is very much like the kind of choice issue in Europe. People use
the seed they have because they haven\'t gotten any choice. If they had
a choice you can be blooming sure that they would \-- you know \-- they
would take it, but, they\'re constrained to simply take stuff that is
pervasively contaminated with GE.

But, I think it is \-- I liked the modification and I think if we have
the kind of \-- I mean, I like it and I see what you\'re doing.

MS. DILLEY: Good. Leon.

MR. CORZINE: I was just going to reaffirm what Nancy said. I think
we\'re looking at things that enable coexistence and I think there were
statements made that maybe I don\'t believe really are factual and, you
know, of all the presenters nobody said that the seed was an issue or
meeting demands. We addressed the AP and contractual part, so, you know,
this does it. We can continue, you know, as far as when we look to the
future, as far as things that could inhibit, you know, we put a
statement in there about seeds, Margaret, and that\'s fine.

MS. DILLEY: I think we\'ve got a statement that works for people. I\'m
sure we\'ll have the discussion on inhibiting, so, stay tuned. Are there
any other on the page? And, then, we need to go to next language because
you had an additional bullet and I\'m not sure if we\'ve looked at that.

DR. LAYTON: And we need to \-- he\'s got the GE crops, the GE variety.

MS. DILLEY: Right, and that\'s not on your paper because that was an
assignment that he finished up this morning on some of the language.

DR. LAYTON: Yeah, this is size, not variety. There are two things. So,
we\'ve got one that\'s got \-- so this is the one that Nick offered
that\'s already out. This is the size.

MS. DILLEY: Greg, did you have a point on another before we turn to
that?

DR. JAFFE: Yes.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. JAFFE: And I apologize for not being here later in the afternoon. I
just wanted to sort of know where we\'re at or what we\'re doing.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. JAFFE: As to these bullets.

MS. DILLEY: Let me tell you what we\'re doing. We took, based on the
discussion yesterday, tried to pull all the bullets on enabling
coexistence together. As we just mentioned, the five bullets, other
bullets in the Executive Summary that were there as kind of placeholders
to make sure we didn\'t leave anything off, it\'s just a reminder. So,
the bullets above that, between that and the Factors Enabling
Coexistence, that\'s what we\'re reviewing to make sure that they\'ve
captured what we had talked about yesterday.

DR. JAFFE: I have a comment on bullet number 5. And it sort of relates
to bullet number 2 which looks like you guys worked on yesterday
afternoon on the legal and regulatory things and, so, both of those \--

MS. DILLEY: We\'ve modified two again.

DR. JAFFE: What?

MS. DILLEY: We\'ve modified two again so I don\'t know if you were here
for that discussion or not.

DR. JAFFE: Since this draft?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yes, just before you came in.

DR. LAYTON: For Greg\'s sake, can you put that back up there? Here\'s
where we are on 2.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: It was at the point of flexibility.

DR. JAFFE: Is that the new bullet?

MS. DILLEY: That\'s the new bullet 2.

DR. JAFFE: And then on bullet 5 \-- because one of my concerns was that
they both seemed to talk about thresholds so that\'s why I thought they
were duplicative.

MS. DILLEY: Well, bullet 2 talks about the regulatory system while the
bullet 5 is more of the market piece but it may be duplicative once you
look at it that way so you have to adopt it through.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: There is a little bit of overlap of the AP part.
Bullet number 5 talks more broadly about market systems, including AP
standards that are set by the market, you know, but, you know, testing
and so on and the ability of the market to set all of those standards
and then bullet number 2 kind of sets the tone for this in the sense
that there is a more flexible regulatory and legal system that is not
developing prescriptive AP thresholds but other.

DR. JAFFE: I mean, I guess it\'s better. I still think there\'s a little
bit of duplication there. I think it\'s much better now than what I saw
before. But, I am concerned still. I mean, I guess I would prefer to
take out the e.g. and just say that we\'re talking about non-threatening
"specific standards". I\'m not trying to develop anything else specific
to coexistence other than not having mandatory labeling and you can put
that in.

But, my view is that unless we have other options other than what we\'re
talking about in the legal and regulatory system that allows people to
operate that\'s no different for coexistence than anything else. I think
it\'s unique to coexistence. I don\'t think it\'s specifically relating
to coexistence; I mean, the not having AP\'s. And, I guess my comment
was we should be as specific about those as possible. I don\'t think
other people are going to understand us being sort of cryptic about it
so it\'s more specific here than it was in the past, but, better.

But, my view would be, unless we have other examples, and the only other
example I have is not having mandatory labeling, then we should just put
in those two things and I think those are the two things that are unique
to our legal and regulatory system that make it different and that have
supported coexistence.

All the other stuff, I think, supports everything, coexistence, and all
kinds of other things. I\'m not so comfortable with just sort of \--

MS. DILLEY: So, leading with a specificity, that\'s what you\'re
wanting?

DR. JAFFE: Right.

DR. MELLON: You couldn\'t move it up and say a legal and regulatory
framework that, you know, does not establish mandatory AP thresholds or
mandate labeling thereby enabling.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: We can add process versus product procedures for
organics is as important.

DR. MELLON: But, isn\'t that true everywhere?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: No, quite the opposite.

DR. MELLON: In organic?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Absolutely. I mean, in Europe we don\'t have a
process-based regulation. We have a product-based regulation by and
large and that creates a very different way of coexisting.

DR. MELLON: But, that\'s how the legal and regulatory framework work.
Organics are a voluntary system that people set up. There\'s no legal
penalty if you don\'t \-- I mean, you\'re not sure it\'s legal.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, there is very specific legal and regulatory
framework for organics in Europe.

DR. MELLON: Yeah, but, you choose to avail yourself of it. I mean, it
seems to me it\'s a different \-- I mean, I understand that there \--
you know \-- that we\'ve now established a government backed label, but,
that\'s not the same as a mandatory requirement on everybody who \--
whether, you know, you\'ve chosen to kind of enter into that part of the
system or not.

MS. DILLEY: So, Greg, and I guess going back to the differences, you
could either leave the specificity but then the question is, do you get
all the specifics that people think are relevant to that or do you go
with a little bit more broad but give particular examples like the AP
threshold and labeling and \--

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: We can add process versus product.

DR. MELLON: We can. It\'s a good point. Certainly a lot of people won\'t
understand it unless we follow it up.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yes, I mean, we can add that part into the \--
good point.

DR. JAFFE: Add a little bit more specificity and give more than one
example. The only example we have \--

MS. DILLEY: That\'s what you were saying.

DR. JAFFE: \-- is we talked about it.

MS. DILLEY: I think your point\'s well taken and I think since we\'ve
come up with three examples maybe that\'s best just to do the e.g. and
leave it a little bit more broad.

DR. JAFFE: That\'s fine.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. And then you \-- so I don\'t know about 5, whether
we\'re still \--

DR. LAYTON: Process-based organic standards.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I would probably take required labeling out if I
was going to \-- required labeling because that\'s going to be confusing
to most people.

MS. BRYSON: The "or" should go too. It should be a comma. The "or" is
another example.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: The "or", yeah, take "or" out and if you wanted to
contrast it with something say "process-based rather than product-based
organic standards".

MS. DILLEY: Okay. How does that work? Michael, did you have a comment?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: It was on the \--

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Let\'s not go \--

DR. MELLON: Are people going to know what a product-based organic
standard is?

DR. LAYTON: USDA.

DR. MELLON: I mean, a product-based organic standard is one that would
define GE on the basis of \-- I mean, the organic on the amount it sets
a threshold.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: That\'s right.

DR. MELLON: That\'s a requirement for organic.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: That\'s right.

DR. MELLON: And we can\'t \-- maybe that is too difficult to get across.

MS. DILLEY: Can we move it to bullet 5 then? You have a suggestion,
Michael?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I have a suggestion to maybe slightly focus fine a
little bit to make it seem a little bit less redundant and that would be
just say "...development and availability of identity preservation
systems and standardized test methods to meet flexible market-based
thresholds...", etc. And then the rest of it. Does that make sense?

MS. DILLEY: Development and availability.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: All the rest of it.

MS. DILLEY: Alison, did you have a comment too?

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Yeah. I guess I wasn\'t here for the other report on
traceability, but, I thought my recollection was that this committee
said that one of the problems was there are no standardized test methods
and so\--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: "Standardized" should be replaced with "workable" or
"usable".

MS. DILLEY: That\'s a good point.

DR. LAYTON: Accepted. A contract that accepts methods that aren\'t
standardized. It\'s we will decide to use this particular test at this
particular lab and that\'s the contract agreement, not an ISO-type
standard, this lab does it all for us in this manner.

MS. DILLEY: That\'s a good point, Alison.

DR. LAYTON: Good point, Alison.

MS. DILLEY: Leon.

MR. CORZINE: Abby, I would think \-- to Greg\'s point, I think it was a
little bit redundant. I assume the final document \-- can we get that 5
moved up to say number 3 so we kind of address these two things together
rather than leave it and come back to it?

DR. CARDINEAU: He is changing the order.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah, just so that they\'re next to each other so that,
yeah, continue the point. Okay. Anything else on this on factors
enabling coexistence? Oh, we\'ve got to come back to the language of
Nick\'s.

(Discussion off the record)

MS. DILLEY: All right. Okay. So then the size piece, the other language
that Nick provided, "...a limited number of crops with GE on the market"
and then I think that takes it in, doesn\'t it? Nick?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Well, it depends. It depends on the argument \--

MS. DILLEY: It always does.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: This is about how flexible \-- how much
flexibility do you have to produce non-GE, organics, and other specialty
products when their acreage is small relative to the rest mostly because
you have to put them in many different places at low cost, seaports and
so on.

MS. DILLEY: All right.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: In the case of the small number of \-- what is
called, what is the next bullet, let me see the statement we are making
\--

MS. DILLEY: Well, the one that we had we kind of had a placeholder from
the previous discussion was the limited number of crops with GE
varieties on the market. This is more \--

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Right, so the limited overlap between, it\'s about
market complexity, and, so, there is an overlap in those two arguments
but not a perfect one, so, my suggestion would be let\'s resolve the
language for that bullet that we are working on and then let\'s ask the
question.

MS. DILLEY: Is there something else to add? Okay. Can people read it?

DR. LAYTON: I don\'t know the difference between a non-GE crop acreage
compared to conventional.

DR. CARDINEAU: That was my question.

DR. LAYTON: Because we were talking about conventional being a non-GE.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Can I make a suggestion about how to reword that so that
maybe it becomes clearer?

MS. DILLEY: Sure. Go ahead.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: You might say "the relatively small size of identity
preserved organic and non-GE crop acreages compared to those of
commodity, conventional, and GE" ones or whatever but just to make the
distinction clearer.

DR. MELLON: It\'s "organic and identity preserved non-GE crop acreages
compared to GE", "commodity" or "GE".

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Take out the comma after "identity preserved".

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah, I think that\'s a good suggestion, "organic
and identity preserved non-GE". So, in other words, "identity preserved"
should go after.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: We had that as "identity preserved and non-GE".

DR. LAYTON: I think it\'s identified both.

DR. MELLON: No, I don\'t think organic is identity preserved, but, I do
think what we\'re talking about is the identity preserved non-GE and
we\'re really trying to serve a special market.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: You can take out "these identity preserved crops".

DR. LAYTON: You\'ve got to have something there. You\'re not going back
and referring back to the organic and non-identity preserved and non-GE.

MS. DILLEY: I think it may say easier access. I don\'t know if you want
to say it\'s because we have small amounts of each of these because
that\'s the only way we can enable coexistence. That\'s a little odd. Am
I reading that wrong?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: What we\'re saying is there has been easily \-- it
easily exists because it\'s easier to manage.

DR. MELLON: It\'s easier to accommodate the needs for isolation.

DR. LAYTON: How about "easier accommodation of" or "with".

DR. SCHECHTMAN: "Production needs".

DR. MELLON: "Needs for isolation". That\'s one of the major ones is that
as long as your acreage is small it\'s easier to find places that are
isolated, but, as the acreage becomes larger it becomes very difficult
to find that kind of \-- yeah.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. So, how\'s that?

MS. DILLEY: Okay, right. Okay. Is that better? "The relatively small
organic and identity preserved non-GE crop acreages compared to those of
commodity, conventional, and GE acreages has allowed easier
accommodation and production needs, easy isolation distances, land
management, storage".

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Of their production.

MS. DILLEY: Their production. "Of their production needs at a small
incremental cost".

DR. LAYTON: Okay.

MR. SLOCUM: Well, maybe relatively small costs.

MS. DILLEY: At incremental costs?

MR. SLOCUM: Relatively small.

MS. DILLEY: At "relatively small\..."

(Discussion off the record)

MS. DILLEY: Good? And then drop down. The next bullet is "The limited
number of crops with GE varieties".

DR. LAYTON: It\'s not a commodity acreage.

MS. DILLEY: This is a point that\'s in corn and soybeans but it\'s not
in fruits and vegetables where there\'s organic. That is a different
point.

DR. MELLON: Right. Currently there is a small overlap between
genetically engineered varieties and organic because the organic
primarily is fruits and vegetables and GE is primarily \--

DR. LAYTON: Is it genetically engineered species?

DR. MELLON: I would say crops, but, I mean, it\'s the crops that I \--

DR. CARDINEAU: Well, you could say "the limited overlap" might actually
be a better way to say it than a significant number.

MS. DILLEY: Limited overlap. Okay. Limited overlap. That\'s a good
point. Does that work, limited overlap?

DR. LAYTON: Yes, I like that better.

DR. MELLON: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, could we just say that genetically
engineered varieties are primarily commodity crops and organic \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Oh, absolutely.

DR. MELLON: \-- you know, organic crops are primarily fruits and
vegetables?

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Nick.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I personally don\'t understand science. In other
words, how does coexistence facilitate commodity overlap? In my view
I\'m not actually sure that there is sufficient evidence to say that
because we only have \"x\" commodities we have succeeded and we had two
\"x\" commodities and I\'m not really sure \--

DR. MELLON: It would be more difficult if we had \-- I mean, if there
were basically market conflict and concern about ten different crops
rather than just two that we would have at least a bigger political
problem if not a bigger \--

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I don\'t know about political. I mean, my question
is this. There is limited accessibility between crops, in my view, in
infrastructure and, so, as long as that accessibility is limited, I\'m
not really sure whether you had two, five, ten, it would make any
difference. In other words, you\'re still riding the same type of
infrastructure so if you can manage it in one, or, two, or, three why
would you be able to manage it in four and five if there\'s no \--

DR. MELLON: That\'s a good point, but, like, for example, on seed
supply, right now we don\'t have the problem of the contamination of the
seed supply of all the fruits and vegetables because we\'re not growing
GE varieties of fruits and vegetables. If we do begin to have that then
we\'re going to have to, I would say, confront the inevitability of all
of those seed stocks being contaminated and it becoming concomitantly
more difficult for people to supply an organic market.

And that it would be a bigger problem with more crops than the fewer.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I\'m still not getting it.

MS. DILLEY: A couple of more cards have gone up so let\'s \--

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I\'m still not getting it.

MS. DILLEY: That\'s Guy, and then Jerry, the Leon, then Nancy.

DR. CARDINEAU: The reason that I think I agree with Mardi is that you
have both the pollinated crops and you have GE and organic. The
potential of crossing those open pollinated crops increases the more you
have. Right now we have corn as an open pollinated crop and the organic
production for corn is fairly small so it really has, I think, fostered
less of a problem because of it.

If we had tomatoes and lots of squash and lots of lettuce and lots of
broccoli and everything, if we had all of these vegetable crops or fruit
crops, GE as one that\'s organic, then the potential for bees to
cross-pollinate, for instance, would be heightened. We don\'t have that
situation. So, it reduces, I think, the potential for cross
contamination and that\'s helped us as far as coexistence is concerned.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, maybe an e.g. with something like \--

MS. DILLEY: That\'ll help. Okay. Jerry.

MR. SLOCUM: I share Nick\'s concern that the way the statement reads
today it suggests that we should presume that we can manage a system
where the overlap is not limited. Obviously, if you can\'t meet that
system then it\'s going to stay limited. So, I share Nick\'s concerns so
obviously we need a better \-- we need a better definition here.

But, right now \--

MS. DILLEY: Say "limited overlap" and then put the e.g. Does that not
help?

MR. SLOCUM: What\'s e.g. going to say?

MS. DILLEY: That\'s the, what, what Guy just said, and you could say a
lot better than I\'m paraphrasing it which is about more the biology of
just being open-pollinated, multiple, open-pollinated.

MR. SLOCUM: To me, I listen to the discussion and this has almost become
two bullets and, God knows, I don\'t want another bullet point. I mean,
part of this is a production issue and part of it is a market issue.

MS. DILLEY: Right.

MR. SLOCUM: Market meaning the distribution of the supply chain. Do we
need to capture both in one bullet?

MS. DILLEY: No, that\'s a good point because the previous bullet was
about the production part of it so this is trying to be the market piece
of it, market point of it.

MR. SLOCUM: So, are we going to have to \--

MS. DILLEY: I don\'t know.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: No. We won\'t do that.

MS. DILLEY: Nancy, do you have a suggestion, suggested language?

MS. BRYSON: Well, I was just going to say to clarify the thinking Daryl
and I had, in points that inhibit coexistence, when you get into
infrastructure we had a significant point about storage capacity being
reached by having to manage more separate kinds of products so I thought
the discussion we had about limited overlap of crops facilitating the
coexistence we have right now was because we had enough storage capacity
to manage the different products and distribution, but, that we could
run out as you begin to see more crops with GE varieties.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Leon.

MR. CORZINE: I think we\'ve kind of gotten off the mark here a little
bit because we\'re talking about things that have enabled coexistence.
We\'ve got the point above. I really have trouble with the statement, a
limited number. I mean, that\'s kind of counter coexistence really,
isn\'t it? And we do address it, as Nancy said, in factors that inhibit
when we do have maybe other things come ahead, but, we\'ve had
presenters and what we see in the marketplace today I don\'t think we
need, and I would suggest, Guy, that your comments, I mean, okay, we get
more things.

We do address that and things that could inhibit coexistence in the
future, but, we\'re talking about things that have enabled. When you
really take a look at our language where it ended up in the bullet
ahead, I suggest we just strike this bullet. We\'re trying to rework and
\--

MS. DILLEY: Michael?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yes. Just another possible suggestion, again, thinking
that this is trying to point to the future, that we might state it
something along the lines of the relatively small number of crops for
which coexistence has needed to be managed thus far because of the
limited overlap. Is that not? It\'s not saying that it can\'t be done,
but, we\'ve been able to get off the ground on doing this because it
started with just a few things.

MR. CORZINE: I have yet to see really, Michael, where we even need the
bullet really.

DR. POLANSKY: I think it could be addressed in the next session in the
way that from what I\'m hearing here \--

MS. DILLEY: Any argument with you in the next section?

DR. LAYTON: Drop it?

(Discussion off the record)

MS. DILLEY: Was there anything else in this section after enabling? I
think we\'ve worked through them all on the bullet points.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: With that point then. Are you saying that there is
logic to that "...that is managing coexistence in corn"? Does that run
counter to that fact that we\'re saying that everything is little
acreage and you have produced it easily?

DR. HOLDEN: It\'s true with organic versus GE, but, conventional versus
GE, that has to be maintained also and there\'s a lot of conventional
cropping grown.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: That\'s the identity preserved conventional.

DR. LAYTON: Which is the bullet above.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Right. We\'re saying relatively small size acreage.

DR. LAYTON: Of identity preserved non-GE.

DR. CARDINEAU: Yeah, but, corn\'s about 55 percent of the corn or
something like that, currently GE either. It\'s resistant, herbicide
tolerant, or a combination. Maybe it\'s 60 percent.

MR. SLOCUM: It\'s only in select markets. Is it considered \--

DR. MELLON: That\'s the identity preserved which is very small.

MR. CORZINE: I would say in the field today biotech crops are considered
conventional. Now, when you get to that identity preserved, non-GE,
that\'s another issue and that is a relatively small market and really
gets back to what consumer and customer demands are. So, where it\'s not
identity preserved it is, you know, commodity or the conventional is the
GE corn really and that is a large amount. I had a little trouble with
that relatively small size thing, but, that is where it is today.

My neighbors that grow organic, they don\'t have to have \-- I mean, big
isolation distances and those kinds of things really aren\'t an issue.
It\'s done with temporal differences, but, we\'ve got to have e.g.\'s
and I\'ve already made enough statements about e.g.\'s probably. So, you
know, I\'m willing to let that one go, but, to answer your question,
Alison, maybe that does.

MS. DILLEY: So we\'ll start with that bullet then and we\'ll take up the
other issue from the other bullet in the inhibiting? All right. Why
don\'t we take about a 15 minute break and come back at 10:15 and if you
would please after you check your voice mail and come back and we\'ll
start with the discussion.

DR. LAYTON: At that point in time we\'re going back to the 7/22 list so
that\'s the document you\'ll need is the 7/22 document.

(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken)

MS. DILLEY: Nancy, do you want to provide what we were thinking, etc.
before we get going on this discussion?

MS. BRYSON: All I would say about this is that we didn\'t spend nearly
as much time on this section because the same thing happened also
that\'s happened to this committee and, so, we don\'t have ownership
about any of these factors. We just looked at the report, tried to pull
up the points that seemed to be there while eliminating redundancy and
tried to bracket them, you know, so they could be discussed further.

We didn\'t really refine any of these.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Leon?

MR. CORZINE: Well, maybe my point is making when I was jumping the gun,
jumping the green flag a little bit. In that entry line I think it might
be more relevant or read better if we had a number of challenges to
coexistence as we look to the future were also identified and then go
on.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Instead of today.

DR. CARDINEAU: Don\'t some of these things just get added?

MR. CORZINE: But we\'re going to inhibit as we were kind of looking
forward.

DR. LAYTON: How about just leaving a number of challenges to coexistence
were also identified.

MR. CORZINE: Yeah.

MS. BRYSON: That works.

MS. DILLEY: It\'s a little better, isn\'t it?

DR. LAYTON: Yes.

MS. DILLEY: Does that make sense? In other words, in addition to
coexistence we\'re also identified.

DR. LAYTON: If it\'s futuristic you can put it in the bullet. If they
exist today it\'s there.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah.

MR. CORZINE: Yeah.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, before we tackle the bullets on 4 and 5, which are
a little bit lengthier, do we want to \-- why don\'t we take the first
page?

DR. CARDINEAU: Bullet number 2, adventitious presence, I have a question
as to whether or not that doesn\'t overlap with the second bullet on
page 4. Because we said the first section levels allowed in products
outside of specifications. I think the second half of that or the second
and third half may be different than adventitious presence. That section
and the bullet seem to be pretty similar.

DR. LAYTON: So, maybe just for right now we could pull it over and look
at them all together?

DR. CARDINEAU: Yeah. I think the second part of bullet, what is it, six,
that occurrences of trace levels of transgenic events is not a clear
U.S. regulatory is different than the adventitious presence part, but,
that first one, occurrence of trace levels of allowed GE products, that
is adventitious presence, isn\'t it? And that sort of corresponds to \--
so, do we merge that into bullet 2 or just take it out?

DR. LAYTON: So, tell me what \-- you would suggest taking it out first,
tell me what you would take out exactly because I wasn\'t \-- on page 4?

DR. CARDINEAU: Page 4 of that bottom paragraph that covers over to the
next one. There may be components of it that we want to move into bullet
2. I don\'t know.

MS. BRYSON: I would just say that bullet 2 is the one that I was
pointing to as addressing markets.

MS. DILLEY: Specific to the seeds?

MS. BRYSON: To the seeds, yeah. And the first sentence may not be
necessary or relevant or do it, but, \--

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Sorry, I didn\'t see where the cards went up so I\'m
going to take them out of line. Alison, and then Nick, and then Greg.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: I have a couple of questions with regard to the one
actually questions stated in there and I guess that second bullet point,
if we just stuck it in our expectation and take out kind of the question
at the end does that address the point you were raising earlier and then
I guess, although number 3 too. I\'m not really sure how farm labor is
affecting coexistence. I see a problem with organic production, but, if
there\'s plenty of labor is it easier? I don\'t see that point is
relevant to coexistence discussion.

MS. DILLEY: So, we should probably take your first question which is
three questions.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Okay.

MS. DILLEY: The question about a question.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: So, my suggestion is to remove the question mark at
the end of two out of there and just have it say that first sentence
which is "Adventitious presence of unintended materials, whether GE,
non-GE, or organic foods limit the particular ability of the food supply
to meet expectations..."

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, then my question is, and it\'s a formatting thing,
we want to take out questions, but, do we lose any content that we may
want to hold onto but it\'s not in question form?

Nick, did you want to talk about this bullet, the second bullet?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Well, in some sense my question is a comment and,
but, it\'s a bit broader in the sense that the writing of factors
inhibiting coexistence is distinctly different from the rest of the
document as it\'s shaping up.

MS. DILLEY: Right.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: You know, it\'s a lot more extensive. It\'s a lot
more detailed.

MS. DILLEY: Right.

DR. LAYTON: She said they didn\'t edit it as much.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Of course. I understand. I understand why it is,
but, the fact is, it is. And, so, my sense is that somehow it should be
slimmed down and become a lot more specific and more consistent in style
and writing.

MS. DILLEY: I don\'t think there\'s any disagreement on that.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: And, so, I think if we start wordsmithing to the
very extensive document as it is right now we would not get very far,
so, what we might want to do is talk about the substance of the issues
that are being addressed \--

MS. DILLEY: Right.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: \-- and then maybe allow somebody to or a small
group to slim it down and then take another shot at it. So, I would
encourage us to take a look at the substance of what is being posed more
than start talking about specific questions.

MS. DILLEY: Good point. So, we\'re trying to tease out the primary point
in each of the bullets. Greg.

DR. JAFFE: A couple of points. I would agree with Nick that this section
is too long and should be trimmed down to make it somewhat more
proportionate to it. I looked at this section primarily as the future
stuff because we have a lot of things that are inhibiting coexistence
now are complete with our initial discussion where we say generally we
have coexistence here.

So, there may be a few things of these things that exist today, but,
primarily this was a where do we see the pinch point, you called it, in
the future. Where are my \-- I mean, we had a whole discussion on
infrastructure. We say that infrastructure\'s at its capacity now so
it\'s not a problem now but we anticipate it will be a problem in the
future. So, I think we should keep that in mind that although some of
these things may also be starting today I looked at this as primarily a
future looking section.

With that in mind, I think the future looking text should have more
language or more text than current because it takes a little more than
explaining something that\'s going to happen in the future, why we think
it\'s going to happen in the future, although I agree with Nick that it
should be smaller, it\'s not going to be completely proportionate to the
other sections. It takes a little longer to, one thing, just describe
the current problems, so, it may take longer to explain why you think
there\'s going to be a problem in the future.

But, I do think the text should be shorter. Then I also agree with
Alison on the third bullet. I don\'t really see how it relates to
coexistence. I think there are a number of bullets here where, again,
there are points, there are good points, but, they\'re not \-- unless we
lengthen them to specific things about coexistence, I\'m not sure that
they should be \--

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, what are the bullets? There\'s number 3.

DR. JAFFE: Number 3, there\'s a section on page 5 on lack of
harmonization of global approvals and the significance of, there\'s more
complexity in, both grains and processed products. I said this many
times before that we said that in other reports that we don\'t have lack
of harmonization of approvals, but, again, I don\'t know how that
relates specifically to domestic. We\'re talking about domestic
coexistence here. We\'re not talking about \-- we primarily said we\'re
talking about domestic stuff, but, clearly also I\'m not sure that
relates to coexistence issues. It could be.

The next one on biological differences between crops. The next one on
the market becoming more complex as it matures. Again, I think they
could be coexistence issues, but, my reading of those currently don\'t
suggest that they\'re linked enough to coexistence. And the first
bullet, again, I guess I don\'t really understand the first bullet,
insufficient attention to crop biology and product management
requirement can have significant upstream and downstream effects and
create commercial risk. I\'m not sure I understand that. I don\'t think
I understand that part of that to begin with at all.

The second part, as I understand, the unilateral decisions by the
stakeholder can have significant upstream and downstream effects, I\'m
not sure, again, how that\'s specific to coexistence. I guess my comment
on this one is that, and it\'s similar to the comment I had on
regulatory thing in the last thing is let\'s not beat around the bush.
If we\'re saying here the problem is if WalMart or McDonald\'s says
something that affects everybody else let\'s just say that.

But, to sort of make this unilateral decisions by single stakeholders
and whatever, I guess I get the feeling we\'re sort of talking code for
people in this room. I think we just ought to say what the problem is if
there\'s a problem. So, I think my comment would be this one, one, I
think we\'ve got two different ideas here. The first one I don\'t
understand at all. The second one I didn\'t understand. I\'m not sure
it\'s a coexistence issue.

I think if we want to talk about that point we should make it more
explicit.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Guy.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I had interpreted that as going to be talking more about
problems that, again, may be obliquely talking about unexpected
occurrences or someone who decides to plant something that had not
cleared all of the \-- and I wonder if that general issue might be part
and whether that\'s something that general fact goes back to what the
description of the current situation is as opposed to something that is
a factor inhibiting coexistence. Just a thought.

MS. DILLEY: Guy.

DR. CARDINEAU: I thought the "insufficient attention to the crop
biology" part leans on Leon\'s comment about temporal growth of crops
versus if you\'re growing corn. If you understand the crop biology, corn
pollinates over a 14 day period, I\'m growing conventional corn or
organic corn over here, Leon\'s growing GE corn over there. We plant the
corn so that the pollen doesn\'t overlap so that we can\'t have
cross-contamination. That\'s what I thought was the point being made.
Maybe I\'m wrong.

But, that would impact coexistence because if we\'re neighbors and
we\'re planting, managing our crops appropriately, we shouldn\'t have a
problem going through some of the things Bowen said too about farmers
managing their crops. That\'s how I read that and I think it is a
critically important point.

MS. DILLEY: And that\'s the one on page 5, the biological differences,
or, that\'s the \--

DR. CARDINEAU: No, it\'s bullet number 1.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. CARDINEAU: "Insufficient attention to crop biology and product
management..." I think coexistence, if farm neighbors are talking to
each other and farmers on their own land, they plant their crops
appropriately they can eliminate issues because of temporal growth
patterns. And that\'s a crop biology, crop management issue. That\'s
what I thought that point was.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. JAFFE: I was not getting that from that.

DR. LAYTON: Oh, yeah, that\'s what I read it as.

MS. DILLEY: So we need better language for that one then. Guy, I know
you said some stuff, but, you have specific language you can \-- to fix
that?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Can I make a comment about this very specific
point? To me, that again sounds like a truism. Yes, insufficient
attention to crop biology will get you trouble or issues of coexistence
seven days of the week and the example, that\'s what they\'re saying.
That\'s true. But, how is that a future problem inhibiting coexistence
in the future? I don\'t understand.

DR. CARDINEAU: It could be a problem today.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah. It was a problem yesterday. It will be a
problem today. It will be a problem in the future. It\'s a truism. It\'s
true, if you are not paying to pollen issues and when your crops are
flowering and all that stuff.

MS. DILLEY: Aren\'t we talking a lot and we have one person talking at a
time and I think Pat was next.

DR. LAYTON: I will wait because I don\'t want to interfere with this
issue. Mine was on a whole different thing so I will wait for Nick to
finish his discussion.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Well, some other cards went up particular to this
point. Jerry.

MR. SLOCUM: Let me ask you this.

MS. DILLEY: Wait a minute, Nick. Jerry.

MR. SLOCUM: The danger we\'re about to get into is that we addressed
this and what enables when we say expert knowledge and crop production
management skills at the farm level, yada, yada, yada. If we\'re not
careful what we\'re going to do is inhibiting we\'re going to go back
and say if we don\'t do expert knowledge of crop production management
and that\'s what this statement actually is saying. That\'s what it
says. If we don\'t pay attention, if we become less expert and we don\'t
use good crop production management skills then it will be a problem and
that is a truism maybe.

DR. JAFFE: Right. So, unless we have some reason to believe that this is
not going to happen with greater frequency in the future, more farmers
are growing something or something like that we probably shouldn\'t
include it.

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s right. You should say.

MS. DILLEY: What example of risk management tools \-- I guess there are
points to be made under risk management tools that are more specific to
coexistence, not necessarily crop biology but other risk management
tools because, to me, that seems like that the main point at this point.
Nancy?

MS. BRYSON: This may go to the structure of the paper generally, but,
this was sort of the \-- each of the factors that supports coexistence,
it seems to me, has a flip side that has been discussed here. And one of
the things that was discussed that, to me, relates to something that
USDA could think about as an issue is a fairly constant refrain for
continued education, outreach, extension, people like Russ Kramer\'s
farmers to provide more information and it doesn\'t seem to me that you
really can convey \-- I mean, we\'ve agreed that we want to convey that
coexistence works well now. Great.

But, we did hear a bunch of other stuff and a bunch of other stuff that
related to that was let\'s make it possible and facilitate the ability
of people to do more of what\'s happening very well. And at least one
example of that, it seems to me, is more education and outreach for
farmers on this kind of thing.

I mean, if we don\'t \-- how else do we deal with the flip side or
future aspects of how do we continue to make what we have now flourish?

DR. LAYTON: My point was similar to that so could I pick up on that? I
started going back and reading what was our charge and I know that we
had dropped the \-- we thought about potentially dropping the key issues
to consider, so, my thought ran to, okay, we\'ve listed the things that
make coexistence work today, so, I specifically wondered if we had a few
things that weren\'t working today that we needed to list out of all of
this that weren\'t the flip side of things that could go wrong.

And then you sort of need to answer the question for USDA. It does come
back to some \-- if it is the flip side of everything we\'ve said that
could go wrong and mess up then I do think we have to say something \--
I\'m backing off of you got to have \-- you might have to add that key
issues thing in there. And then the other \-- so I wondered whether
maybe factors inhibiting coexistence should be a very short thing of
what\'s not working today and then everything else is if anything
tinkers with the system that we\'ve said works or we don\'t fix what\'s
working today that\'s what you got to consider.

So, I guess that was it. So, I guess the question piece was sort of I
think a way of teasing out this is working but if you don\'t do this
it\'s sort of the what to consider kind of thing. And, so, I didn\'t
know if the questions were in the issues that USDA should think about
and we\'ve done that document where we look at futuristic things and we
said you got to ask yourself these questions and play these scenarios
out.

So, I don\'t have a problem saying that to USDA or at least giving them
some questions to think about, so, maybe the issues for USDA, you know,
if we name the things that work and we name the things that don\'t work
and then here are the things that could tear this system apart and they
may be in the form of questions so I guess that\'s where I was going on
this was I don\'t want to throw the questions out unless we decided how
we want for USDA, what issues they should consider because we\'ve got to
answer that specific charge.

We don\'t like to tell them what to do, but, I think we have to make a
list.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, the question is whether we\'re shifting focus
slightly in that the factors inhibiting coexistence is not a
future-looking piece. It\'s a currently there are factors inhibiting
coexistence and that would be in trying to extract out of what\'s here
now or comments that people want to make about that and then the latter
part would be issues to consider.

You\'re putting that back in there, the possibility?

DR. LAYTON: I definitely think we have to ask that question as we look
at this list is if they\'re just flip sides of the things that work
today I\'m not necessarily comfortable in the everything we said worked
well today could go wrong quick thing. Does that make sense? I\'m not
being very articulate.

MS. DILLEY: So, Mardi, and then Michael, Alison, and then Nick.

DR. MELLON: Well, I am not quite sure. I don\'t think we want to just
have the flip side of all the things that are working. I think that
along those lines I think that this point, which is kind of
farmer-to-farmer interaction, expertise, information exchange, and kind
of working together is the substance of the kind of \-- I would think of
the current \-- of the last bullet on page 5, current initiatives for
encouraging coexistence are basically at the state level and they may
not have enough resources.

So, in some ways I would like to either fold it into that or assume that
that would be the substance of those kinds of initiatives. It also seems
to me that we don\'t want to pay too much attention to crop biology. I
mean, we know, for example, there\'s very little pollination between
soybeans and soybeans are just as contaminated as corn. So, there are,
in fact, lots and lots of ways of mixing seeds and bringing traits into
what we consider the non-organic supplier of commodity identitied \--
identity preserved supply.

So, we don\'t want people to think that if you isolate distances are all
you have to do. That\'s one of about 50 things that you have to do to
really accomplish the goal. So, I would \-- I mean, it does seem to me
that we have several really big issues identified in the factors
inhibiting coexistence. One is the issue of the overlap between crops
and the acreage of organic and identity preserved non-GE crops becoming
much larger and, therefore, kind of pushing on the system in a way
that\'s not right now.

I think that, you know, this continued problem with adventitious
presence is one that we should identify for the future because it\'s
going to be there. I think the idea that we\'re really not doing enough
to encourage the farmer-to-farmer initiatives with education, there must
be lots and lots of ways of doing that. Those are things that are not
just the flip side that I think we ought to focus on.

And I would agree that we should take up the farm labor and the
biological differences between crops on page 5 bullet and perhaps the
first bullet here.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Michael, you had a comment and Alison was next.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yes. This is going back a little bit to what I was
saying earlier about this first bullet. I mean, I think this is an
important point that was raised that talks about the fact that now the
whole supply chain is linked together in such a way that one small screw
up has bigger effects than it has necessarily had in the past because
\--

MS. DILLEY: So, is this on bullet 1?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yes, this is on bullet 1. But, that\'s not a factor
inhibiting coexistence. It\'s part of the current state of affairs that
everyone has had to worry about being hyper-vigilant because the chain
is so much more together and I don\'t know if that thought was captured
in our most recent version of the introduction, but, that strikes me as
one bit of characterization.

Leon, you\'re not comfortable with that?

MR. CORZINE: I\'m not, Michael, if I could jump in there. I\'m not sure
that that has changed and is specific to coexistence. It is more an old
food supply issue, I think, than this necessarily.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Certainly it\'s one of the things that we\'ve noticed
when there have been instances of products not being where they were
intended to be was that the meetings that resulted after those things
that got the food chain together to figure out how they were going to
get it out got people together in a room that didn\'t \-- weren\'t
accustomed to all sitting together in a room.

DR. LAYTON: Are you talking StarLink, rice chains?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Exactly.

MR. CORZINE: Maybe that\'s a positive for coexistence, Michael, at the
end of the day.

MR. SLOCUM: Isn\'t that the flip side to number one of the fact that \--

MS. DILLEY: Cooperation.

MR. SLOCUM: \-- it enables coexistence when we talk about cooperation
and orientation among stakeholders.

MS. DILLEY: So the question whether there\'s a separate and distinct
point to be made here. That\'s not the flip side of the previous act of
enabling.

MR. SLOCUM: Right.

MS. DILLEY: Alison, Nick.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: I guess like my point about the flip side thing is
that generally you\'ve got good stewardship and good production
practices but one bad player causes a problem that then, for example,
bans GE rice in California just straight out. And, so, that really
inhibits coexistence because it\'s now banned. So, I don\'t know that
you could avoid it being a flip side at the beginning. It\'s just that
generally it\'s working well, but, occasionally there\'s a problem and
that has huge ramifications.

DR. LAYTON: And that\'s a definite statement that should be made
somewhere.

MR. SLOCUM: Well, then let\'s make this first point that statement.
That\'s not what this first point says.

MS. DILLEY: Because that\'s a different point than what\'s being made
here in terms of a unilateral decision. It\'s really that you generally
have good practices but one \--

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: I guess my point is ramification.

DR. MELLON: But, it\'s not the flip side. I mean, it\'s because people
are market oriented they respond to that uncontrollable problem.

MS. DILLEY: Alison, I think that\'s a good point.

MS. SULTON: Abby, her language was occasional problems have huge
ramifications.

MS. DILLEY: I don\'t know if it was occasional though than that. It was
\-- it is, that\'s the right word?

MS. SULTON: And occasional problems can have huge ramifications.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: I don\'t know if you want to say inefficient
attention to product management requirements by single participants in
the food production chain have huge ramifications or errors.

MS. DILLEY: But, you still need to link it with your initial statement,
generally good practices, because I think that\'s \-- no? Jerry?

MR. SLOCUM: No, no, you beat me to it.

MS. DILLEY: All right. Nick.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, I\'m going to go back to the issue of
structure. So, I actually liked Pat\'s suggestion because I think it
helps with both structure of the document and also separating a few
things from \-- so, the idea of taking today\'s circumstances and saying
what is not working as an example one could easily go to the levels of
transgenic events, Bt10, LL601 as an example where this has happened in
the past and in terms of it is an event that it gives some things not
working.

Then make those nice and succinct much like the factors that have
fostered coexistence and then look at another section that does talk
about what might change from what is working already and what other
issues are futuristic aspects that might be important and I think it
will help the structure. It might actually help the discussion that we
had right now on these individual bullets.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Sarah and then Leon.

MS. GEISERT: I might agree with Nick, but, one of the other factors I
think of, and, again, I\'m thinking of China right now, and whether
it\'s really different than coexistence issues, you know, you have,
again, a player, if not the entire country of China, if not every
supplier of wheat gluten has been problematic. And we call those the
unintended consequences.

And I think what we\'re in is more of a socially robust, media,
consumer, knowledge environment where what happens is those events used
to be able to be managed outside of the public domain which allowed us,
pro or con, the ability to work our way through it in a different
manner. And I think we\'re not in that environment anymore. We\'re in an
environment where that greater transparency has forces, creates parties
to come together more quickly to support the market and to work the
issues, and it\'s not just about organic, traditional.

It is about every issue we can think about. But, it is a relevant point,
I think, to capture in this globalized marketplace and a media-driven
marketplace and a socially robust need for knowledge marketplace that
has an impact on what we\'re trying to do here. So, I think that\'s why
an event gets so much more attention these days and allows us a
different level of scrutiny that comes into play.

And, you know, I can argue that that\'s a factor that actually enhances
coexistence because we get somewhat to the root cause and try to work
our way through it in a much more expedited to your point fashion than
what we would traditionally do to have it lag and it\'s really not an
issue, so, you know, as you\'re talking about it, to me, it\'s almost
the environment that we\'re in can some way help facilitate it because
these issues are no longer swept under and the whole supply chain\'s
involved.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: We\'re both facilitating and then the market
becomes a lot larger, right? And the cost of it becomes a lot larger.
So, you tend to drive yourself to corner a solution so to speak. You
know, is there some places sometimes, but, you know, globalization,
information access, use of media, all of those things are part of the
environment. We can describe it into, this is, you know, in the
futuristic outlook, you know. It is just how that environment might
affect \--

MS. DILLEY: Future trends, driver types.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: With the issue \--

MS. DILLEY: Driver issues. So, Leon, and then we need to come back to
\-- okay. I want to come back to the proposal which is a slight
adjustment on the overall structure of the report. We need to wrestle
with that because otherwise it\'s hard to do any editing if we\'re not
clear about what structure we\'re working with.

Leon, I\'ll take your comment first and then we\'ll \--

MR. CORZINE: Well, I was just going to go back to maybe a first bullet
under or whether in the intro maybe to the Factors Inhibiting. Should we
have a statement that says lack of attention to the factors enabling
will become factors inhibiting? Does that kind of keep us from, you
know, having to have accountability?

MS. DILLEY: Right. I think we\'ve agreed that people don\'t want just
the mirror image of the previous section in the inhibiting part.

MR. CORZINE: So, that\'s my point. So, maybe we need a statement in that
regard right there at the beginning, either in the intro or as a bullet
1 one way or the other. Does that help us?

MS. DILLEY: Well, you know, maybe what it would be, not a section 3 now
or what\'s proposed is these Factors Inhibiting Coexistence now. I mean,
if there\'s anything to be extracted out and say this is really \--
these are creating problems with coexistence, that that needs to be
stated there. So, what I think you\'re saying, Leon, is to add to that
to say we identified some challenges to coexistence in addition to, you
know, not continuing or doing the opposite of what we just said as
actually facilitating coexistence.

So, we need something. That\'s not necessarily the right language, but,
I think that\'s your point is that we can make that statement explicitly
that the things that we said up there by the way we should keep doing
because they\'re for the good and if we don\'t then it\'s going to be
potentially be problems and then here are some additional things that we
talked about that are inhibiting coexistence.

And, so, that\'s what this section then would be, would be section 3.
And then section 4, from the conversation I think that Nick and Sarah
just had and Greg had mentioned is that the future such as the
infrastructure we talked about we\'re seeing glimmers of it being taxed
and we could imagine it being even further taxed and that\'s going to be
a problem for coexistence.

So, that would be done in section 4 from what you\'ve suggested. Is that
correct and are people comfortable with that structure? Okay. And then
obviously that was in the details and then we actually to figure out
where it is in those sections, but, that seems to be the structure that
people feel sorts out the report a little bit better in terms of how we
want to talk about coexistence and factors inhibiting or enabling. Okay.
All right.

So, then at this point I would suggest going through this section then
and pulling out anything that is inhibiting coexistence currently that,
again, does not say the mirror image of what we said before, but, just
making a distinct point about inhibiting coexistence now and that\'s
what we need to take \-- yes?

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s what it says, a number of challenges to coexistence
as it exists and that\'s what we want to do.

MS. DILLEY: So we took that language out.

MR. SLOCUM: Well, what you\'re saying is we\'ll put it back in.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: In the title.

MS. SULTON: Yes, but, for the sense of what we\'re doing now.

MR. SLOCUM: For what we\'re doing now. She said put it back in. If
everybody thinks it threatens coexistence as it exists \--

MS. DILLEY: As it exists today.

MR. SLOCUM: Right. The original first sentence.

DR. LAYTON: Right. But, that wasn\'t what was in the first sections and
this section. That\'s why.

MS. DILLEY: We put it back in there and that\'s what we can say along
with Leon\'s \-- something along the lines of what Leon suggested which
is \--

DR. LAYTON: Messing up anything we just said but \--

MR. SLOCUM: And I agree. Why would we put that at the end of section 2
that we talked about \--

MS. DILLEY: We can do that.

MR. SLOCUM: \-- enabling coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: We can do that.

MR. SLOCUM: That would be bullet 3.

MS. DILLEY: Right, right.

DR. LAYTON: Anything you do that doesn\'t follow these it becomes then
an inhibitor to coexistence.

MR. SLOCUM: I don\'t know if I\'d word it that broadly but something to
that nature.

DR. LAYTON: One of the ones that I thought probably \--

MR. SLOCUM: Can we strike number 1 then?

DR. LAYTON: Yeah.

MR. SLOCUM: Strike that one.

DR. LAYTON: Because that\'s already in the other side.

MR. SLOCUM: The flip side.

MS. DILLEY: So, is there anything in terms of risk management tools
currently? I thought we had modified to get Alison\'s point.

MR. SLOCUM: But, bad player.

MS. DILLEY: Right. Yes. Okay. So, that\'s just a sum up point. What you
want to see out of here is the insufficient attention to crop biology.
Okay.

DR. LAYTON: Alison\'s point, I think, was valid.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Can I offer just an amendment? Note of the fact that
the single stakeholder decision is included in number 1. If we strike 1.

DR. LAYTON: You had, generally we have good practices but an occasional
problem can have huge ramifications.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Right, right. But, if you strike 1, I just want to
make the point that single stakeholders \--

DR. LAYTON: Unilateral decisions by single stakeholders.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: \-- would be removed also and do we want to do that?

MR. SLOCUM: I thought we were striking 1 and we\'re going to generally
add good practice.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: There\'s two points in number 1. I think that was
proposing the crop biology point. There\'s another point in 1 which was
the McDonald\'s point like, you know, \--

MR. SLOCUM: That should be a separate point as a statement.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: I think it should be.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: It\'s an existence.

DR. LAYTON: But, it\'s not coexistence.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: No, but, I can think of at least an example where
a unilateral decision of a single decision maker can make \-- can be a
coexistence issue. So, for example, bringing a trait to market without
approval in every market. It used to be that we had \--

MR. SLOCUM: In that example.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: What\'s that?

MR. SLOCUM: In that example you generally had good practices but there
was a problem with identification.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. But, isn\'t that the threat. I mean, that point is
about risk of good management works.

DR. MELLON: No, that\'s a decision on the part of the customer to
violate the policy of the country to \-- we have a commercial policy
that we\'re not \--

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: An individual decision.

DR. LAYTON: An individual decision. It\'s not an occasional problem.
It\'s an individual decision is the point I think we\'re trying to make.

DR. CARDINEAU: It\'s a bad decision on the part of individual
stakeholder can have a negative impact on coexistence.

DR. LAYTON: Okay.

DR. MELLON: But, articulate how it has an effect on coexistence. I mean,
I see that, you know, if someone introduces a product that\'s not
approved in other markets that\'s a problem, but, is it a coexistence
problem?

DR. LAYTON: Mardi, I\'ll give you an example. If McDonald\'s chooses not
to have GE potatoes that have that fat gene in it, you know, they keep
it from uptaking fat, that is limiting coexistence and my ability to buy
that product in the marketplace. That is a unilateral decision by an
individual, but, that does not promote coexistence. That inhibits
coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: But, I didn\'t think we were serving all the people all the
time.

DR. MELLON: No, but, are we suggesting the solution to that that
McDonald\'s has to offer both a non-GE and a GE option in each of its
\-- for each of its products?

MS. DILLEY: That\'s more a coexistence issue. I think one of the things
we kind of heard through in several of our conversations was that we
can\'t please all of the people all of the time. We even talked about it
yesterday.

DR. MELLON: Exactly. Markets aren\'t perfect.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: But, as an example, back to the issue. So, for
instance, the Corn Growers Association had heartburn, you know, every
season when Syngenta decided to bring an unapproved trait to the market.

DR. CARDINEAU: "The entry of new GE products onto the market before
regulatory clearances have been obtained in key market countries to
potentially place at risk exports in the entire crop of the GE, organic,
and non-GE."

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Right.

DR. CARDINEAU: That\'s on page 5.

DR. MELLON: But, why is that a coexistence problem?

DR. CARDINEAU: It\'s the little line of lack of harmonization. And I
think that\'s what you\'re talking about.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah, that\'s right. And, so, I actually would
very much prefer this text rather than the abstract.

MS. DILLEY: "The entry of new GE products..." So, you\'re looking at
page 5 in the middle of the page under lack of harmonization. That\'s
the text that you think is most appropriate here in terms of factors
inhibiting coexistence? Is that what you said?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: It\'s been a problem in the past. We can put in
the factors that might be a problem in the future. I don\'t know. I
mean, again, you know, it\'s subject to conversation to decide whether,
in fact, we all agree that it\'s an issue, but, I was just trying to say
that this is an example of a unilateral decision that becomes a
coexistence issue and it becomes a coexistence issue because I have, for
example, traces of an unapproved event. It does affect my practices, my
marketing, and so on, so, my market access.

DR. MELLON: But, I mean, to me, it\'s a problem for anybody who\'s
trying to market a non-GE product. Those folks now have to contend not
only with approved GE elements or seeds in their products, but now also
unapproved. And, so, they\'re, you know, kind of doubly in jeopardy.
I\'m not sure that just because it\'s a problem for the GE folks that
that\'s a coexistence problem.

I mean, the organic people have a lot of their own individual problems
and so does a lot of folks. So do a lot of folks.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: But, it would be equally to the exporters who are
going into markets that doesn\'t have clearance.

MR. SLOCUM: See, I think the entry of new GE products on the marketplace
for regulatory clearance falls under the bullet that was up there,
generally had good practices but occasional problem and have
ramifications.

MS. DILLEY: I think this is a different point.

MR. SLOCUM: It\'s not a different point. The point is, is that when the
company decided to introduce this product before it was widely accepted
by importing countries it\'s not a market orientation, okay. It\'s an
act by a single company to get a product into the marketplace for their
benefit. And the rest of the industry, corn growers and exporters and
everybody else says, whoa, wait a minute, we need to be more
responsible.

So, I think that falls under the category of what Alison\'s talking
about, that single bad act. It may not turn out to be a bad act because
you may get approvals in place in time, but, I think those are the kind
of acts that that\'s the bad apple in the barrel.

DR. CARDINEAU: So that\'s an e.g.?

MR. SLOCUM: I think that\'s an e.g., yeah. Generally a good practice but
an occasional problem can have ramifications to coexistence. And the
e.g., one of the e.g.\'s, an occasional problem, would be that entry
before regulatory clearance.

MS. DILLEY: Brad.

MR. SHURDUT: I think if you had an occasional problem or an adverse
decision or however you want to do it which is that an occasional
problem or decision or, you know, just put that in there so maybe
occasional problem or decision that someone makes that has future
ramifications to coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: Nancy and then Leon.

MS. BRYSON: I think they\'re actually two separate bullets because the
first bullet talks about on farm production practices really. It seems
to me things that are going on here where you\'re not paying attention
to coexistence in the U.S. and managing your crops correctly.

The second one is equally an issue, but, I think the way it\'s phrased
is a separate idea. And, so, if we\'re going to, you know, agree that it
goes in this section it seems as though phrasing it the way it is
identifies something different. It\'s a unilateral decision by a market
player but it\'s \-- you know \-- it relates to \-- well, it relates to
a lack of \--

MS. DILLEY: We\'ll take the McDonald\'s point off, but, I thought we
were talking about the \--

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: We\'re talking about a unilateral decision.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah, but, we talked about that kind of decision is not
specific to coexistence, I thought, on this one.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: The decision we\'re talking about now is \--

MS. DILLEY: Right, is putting something out there before regulatory
clearance. That\'s the one I thought. And, so, are those two different
points? Okay. So, I don\'t think we have \--

DR. CARDINEAU: Well, I think you also have to put regulatory clearance
in key market countries because the difference is that you get
regulatory clearance here for the marketplace here, but, now a lot of
that stuff is exported to other places and if it\'s not accepted in
those places that will create huge problems within the marketplace and
that\'s why it\'s a coexistence problem.

MS. DILLEY: So that is different than the point that Alison was making.
Those are two separate points. Does that make sense to you, Jerry?

MR. SLOCUM: No.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Let\'s get the points up there because I\'m not sure
we\'re talking about the same points. Why don\'t we get language up
there and we\'ll see.

MR. SLOCUM: Give me an e.g. for that statement, Alison.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: "The unilateral decisions" or "The general good
practices"?

MR. SLOCUM: The general good practices. Well, explain to me what you
mean by that.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: I mean that there\'s one person that gets some
product like the rice. A little bit of the rice gets in there and has
this huge ramification for long grain, short grain, for everybody
throughout the whole system.

MR. SLOCUM: I think she\'s right. Yeah, it is.

DR. LAYTON: Actually, I think it\'s entry before regulatory clearance
period is the example Alison gave which was the example of rice this
year.

MR. SLOCUM: For corn export it doesn\'t make a bit of difference.

DR. LAYTON: Right, but, it does make a difference if you\'re a rice
grower and coexistence within the rice market.

MR. SLOCUM: But, the same thing\'s true for the corn situation. Same
thing would be true for the soybean situation if Liberty Link gets in
place.

DR. LAYTON: Okay.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I mean, the rice situation initially was different
because it was a product that had received all of the clearances, but,
all of the market decisions that the rice industry was working on were
based on the idea that they were supplying \-- that they could tell
folks that they were supplying specifically not genetically engineered
rice because the markets weren\'t ready for that.

DR. LAYTON: Yeah, I think the one is I think the rice thing wasn\'t
Liberty Link to the herbicide gene and to other varieties. It was so \--

MR. SLOCUM: It\'s still a bad action on somebody\'s part.

DR. LAYTON: No, I think it was a non \-- somehow or another a practice
didn\'t get \-- it was a stewardship issue.

MR. SLOCUM: So it wasn\'t a good practice.

DR. LAYTON: It wasn\'t a good practice.

MR. SLOCUM: Okay. So, why wouldn\'t it be captured in that?

DR. LAYTON: The rice thing is. I don\'t think your corn thing is a good
practice. That\'s a unilateral decision. I think that\'s what Sarah
wanted us to break out. There are things that are an accident and then
there are unilateral decisions that aren\'t accidents. They are truly
\--

MR. SLOCUM: But, accidents don\'t happen because of good practices,
right?

DR. LAYTON: No. Accidents happen I think if you break a practice. All
right. Maybe there\'s skirt around the practices. They\'re accidents.

DR. MELLON: These are not accidents. These are absolutely predictable
outgrowths of the way we do seed production. So, they\'re not accidents
and I\'m struggling for the word whether they\'re negligence, but, maybe
it\'s really insufficiently stringent practices.

MS. DILLEY: But, I thought the rice example that Michael gave was \--
they got regulatory clearance but the market didn\'t want that so it
wasn\'t necessarily a bad decision, it\'s just that they weren\'t lined
up in terms of following the appropriate behavior but not what the
market ultimately wanted. So, I think that\'s a different point.

MR. SLOCUM: I don\'t see how it\'s a different point. I mean, \--

MS. DILLEY: Because it wasn\'t an act of bad faith or bad practices. It
was the market didn\'t want what ultimately \--

MR. SLOCUM: But, the provider of that technology that the market didn\'t
want didn\'t get it out of the marketplace.

DR. LAYTON: That\'s a bad practice.

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s a bad practice.

MS. DILLEY: It\'s a bad practice or a unilateral decision? Leon, and
then Adrian, and then Sarah.

MR. CORZINE: I\'m having a little trouble with some of these examples
we\'re using. I\'m not sure they are really coexistence issues.

MR. SLOCUM: They exist.

MR. CORZINE: Yeah, they\'re marketing issues that affect across the
board. Now, I wonder too, the example that Nick used as far as the
AgriSure issue in not having \-- and maybe something about approvals
around the world could be construed because it first affects the
commodity corn or the conventional and biotech, if you will, before it
would, say, the organic because the organic market is kind of off to the
sides so it\'s that other first.

So, maybe that gets it to a coexistence issue. Otherwise, I\'m not sure.
It\'s a big enough issue. Maybe we do need to put it there, but, I still
have \-- it\'s still a bit of a stretch. You could make that stretch
with the example I just used as far as the approval for wide approvals
or major market approvals or something like that.

DR. LAYTON: I wasn\'t here when you all had several of the speakers. One
day I missed and then another day. What were the key problems that your
speakers brought up inhibiting coexistence? Did anybody name something
that said \--

MR. SLOCUM: There was a concern about contistent purity of seed supply.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. Purity of seed supply.

MR. SLOCUM: There\'s that concern. There was concern about \--
Clarkson\'s concern was not definitive AP but rather agreed-to testing
methods and procedures so if he loaded that barge at his facility and it
got to the Gulf and got off-loaded that when it got to Europe it would
be the same. That was about how he phrased that, but, it wasn\'t \--

DR. LAYTON: So, it was testing at both ends. It was common testing
methods at both ends.

MR. CORZINE: Yeah, it was testing methodology was the issue.

MS. GEISERT: There was transportation. There were discussions on
potential in transportation. Kind of we talked about the aging
infrastructure, the availability. There was an OTA. They talked about
\--

DR. LAYTON: We have one question already that is out there that says we
have enough infrastructure but what I think we heard was that limit,
that infrastructure is at its absolute limit and anything new was going
to kick it over.

MS. GEISERT: Correct. What differentiation stresses the infrastructure
to bring it to its capacity.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. So, I heard purity of seed supply, common testing
methodology, and infrastructure piece and there was a fourth piece I
thought I heard.

MS. GEISERT: From OT I think we heard again a little bit about
information, outreach and information.

DR. LAYTON: And that\'s a coexistence issue?

DR. MELLON: Now we\'re backing into existence issues.

DR. LAYTON: Right. Back into existence issues. What was the other?

DR. MELLON: If you are going to have that\'s an existence issue. But,
you do need information. People \--

DR. LAYTON: But, that\'s something that we should do. That\'s an issue
for USDA. So, the three things that we made points on for problems of
coexistence today were a purity of the seed supply and there is one that
we can maybe do; common testing methodology, and can somebody look
through and see if there\'s something that does that one; and then the
infrastructure bullet; and there\'s one that gets up after we look at
that one.

MS. GEISERT: When you have the lack of agreements, a totally recognized
stewardship practices, you make the market skittish and, so, General
Mills does not want wheat, McDonald\'s does not want potatoes because
you have created a skittish market that we would say, no thank you, we
just don\'t want to deal with that complexity right now. And, so,
that\'s kind of what we\'ve been talking about, the unintended
consequences of these marketplace failures, however small they may seem
to us have these unintended consequences that parts of you don\'t
appreciate that we make decisions. So, that\'s the other parts that kind
of \--

DR. MELLON: And the other part is the regulatory piece which is that the
regulatory system cannot stop adventitious presence and cannot assure
the purity of the seed supply. And, so, people are acting in \-- you
know \-- in many ways in reaction to that reality.

DR. LAYTON: I have a market bullet and I have a regulatory bullet which
I heard. Okay. You didn\'t agree with that. So, the first three,
everybody\'s good on. Purity, testing, and infrastructure everybody
agrees on, right? We just need to write bullets on those.

MR. CORZINE: Are these supposed to be current?

DR. LAYTON: Current, today. Inhibitors to coexistence today. Purity of
seed supply, common testing methodology, and any stretch to
infrastructure.

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s not what you asked.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. What did I \--

MR. SLOCUM: What you asked was what those presenters identified as their
problems.

DR. LAYTON: As their problems.

MR. SLOCUM: They didn\'t say those were existing problems.

DR. LAYTON: Oh.

MR. SLOCUM: We asked them what is it you want us \-- what should we
consider. What do you think could give you problems.

DR. LAYTON: Okay.

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s what they talked about. Those are the three things.
I agree entirely with what Sarah says and that\'s my intention to turn
the broad enforceability to do whatever, unilateral bad practice. It
matters not where it comes from. And it matters not if it\'s factual.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. So, \--

MR. SLOCUM: It matters not that it\'s real. It just matters that
consumers may perceive it and General Mills ain\'t gonna put their name
on the box.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. So market issues are a current existence problem,
coexistence problem.

MR. SLOCUM: Market issues?

DR. LAYTON: Whatever she said.

MR. SLOCUM: No.

DR. POLANSKY: If I could follow up on that and that\'s what I wanted to
address. I understand what Sarah\'s saying in terms of General Mills\'
reluctance or McDonald\'s reluctance, but, we\'re talking about more in
some instances one that was pointed out, and there are others, that
it\'s not necessarily market driven in terms of demand. It\'s that
there\'s a concern that there\'s an element of the population that would
do whatever, demonstrate in front of McDonald\'s or whatever so it\'s
not McDonald\'s decision and a GE decision that\'s inhibiting, it\'s
what pressure points or pinpoints are pressured onto the decision maker
company that drives that decision.

But, it doesn\'t inhibit coexistence.

DR. LAYTON: Does it inhibit coexistence or is it inhibiting existence?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Existence.

DR. LAYTON: I could say that it\'s inhibiting the existence of a GE
wheat crop, but, we don\'t have coexistence of wheat crops of those
types of wheat crops right now and they\'re making an organic wheat crop
and a conventional wheat crop because there\'s something there.

DR. POLANSKY: I understand that, but, at one point in time, not that
long ago, there wasn\'t much organic wheat, if any, that was grown. So,
then I think you can make the same argument then that that was an
existence issue in the beginning when that organic certified program
started and so on and so forth. So, I don\'t know that I totally buy
that issue. I still think it comes down to you can\'t have coexistence
without existence. So, they\'re pretty much tied together in my view.

DR. LAYTON: Okay.

DR. CARDINEAU: If we think about what happened with StarLink^®^, the
coexistence issue, there because not only did it impact genetically
modified corn, but, it also impacted conventional corn too. If you look
at the export of corn from the U.S. into other countries after the
StarLink^®^ event occurred, thousands of exports dropped across the
board, not just GE. So, that clearly impacted coexistence because of a
bad action on the part of the organization with the GE crop had a
negative impact on all corn markets.

So, somehow we have to think about how to word that. I don\'t want to
pick on StarLink^®^ necessarily, but, there are other potential examples
of that.

DR. LAYTON: And that wasn\'t purity of seed.

DR. CARDINEAU: Oh, no, no, no.

DR. LAYTON: So, I just \--

DR. CARDINEAU: And I think that\'s really like the compartmentalization
one. You know, if you don\'t have regulatory approval in all of your
markets then you could have a negative impact because then other markets
are going to go, wait a minute, we\'re going to take a closer look at
all of this stuff now because we want to make sure we don\'t have this
problem and that could have a negative impact on conventional crops or
other specialty crops or whatever.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. Go ahead, Michael.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yeah, I mean, I\'m wondering if what you\'re saying is
somehow linking predictable \-- relatively predictable markets to
coexistence. Coexistence, you know, requires relatively predictable
markets and anything that upsets the predictability of markets has an
impact on how coexistence is carried out.

MR. SLOCUM: For a product to exist it\'s got to be able to coexist and
that\'s the point that Adrian was making. For a product to exist it must
be able to coexist.

DR. LAYTON: I like that.

MR. SLOCUM: And that\'s what \-- we struggle with this every time we
come to this topic because, you know, General Mills is afraid the
consumer doesn\'t want it, it can\'t exist.

DR. POLANSKY: Not all consumers, just some, and some may quit buying
their product. I mean, that\'s \--

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s a decision they make. And all their peers in the
industry make essentially the same decision.

DR. POLANSKY: Right. Right.

DR. MELLON: But, I doubt we would have \-- I would hear people saying we
have a coexistence problem if McDonald\'s had accepted the Bt potato. I
mean, \--

DR. DYKES: Why would you say that? Why would you not have all the same
\--

DR. MELLON: Because I mean I think we\'re missing existence and
coexistence and I think it\'s because they are intertwined. But, to me,
the issue of whether or not McDonald\'s or even General Mills is going
to buy wheat or buy the potatoes that really isn\'t the issue before us
today. That is an issue of the success of the technology. We\'re trying
to kind of focus on a narrower issue where there is a kind of \-- where
there is a difficulty of the coexistence between these three identified
kinds of agriculture and I think that that really does usually hang on
the physical, unintended, physical contamination and is a narrower set
of issues than just, you know, acceptance.

DR. POLANSKY: Although I don\'t buy that. There are some consumers that
would accept it if it was available someplace and there\'s pressure
points that doesn\'t allow that to happen and that inhibits coexistence
from occurring.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. But, Adrian, let me ask you this. Physically
coexistence could occur in wheat if the market were buying both organic,
conventional, and GE wheat because coexistence exists right now between
organic wheat and conventional wheat. So, coexistence works in wheat.
It\'s just that we don\'t have a third choice in wheat right now because
of market issues. But, that\'s not a coexistence failure because I think
that if you can work it in corn you can work it in wheat and if you
could work it in corn you could work it in potatoes.

If we have organic potatoes and conventional potatoes and there was a
Bt, resistant potato we would be able to manage that. So, \--

DR. MELLON: You\'re focusing in the right place.

DR. LAYTON: So, what is not working today in coexistence and the only
thing I think I\'ve heard is that if somebody screws up you get \--
that\'s why it doesn\'t work. And that\'s a huge \-- that\'s the thing
that doesn\'t work. If somebody screws up, coexistence doesn\'t work.

DR. MELLON: It isn\'t just screwing up.

DR. LAYTON: Right.

DR. MELLON: It\'s the inevitability of there being wheat, adventitious
or low levels in the marketplace and it\'s the \-- no one is going to
have to screw up for that to happen. And it\'s that inevitability and
the market reaction to that which will be enormous. Trust me.

DR. LAYTON: And this is the issue that\'s at the bottom of the page 4.
So, the question I have for you is, is the issue on the bottom of page
4, which I think it is, and I didn\'t read it, I\'m not as good as you
all at trace things, but, is that the one issue that right now, today,
is the inhibitor of coexistence or is problematic to coexistence?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: That\'s right. I actually have taken all the
bullets that we have, page 3 all the way to page 5, and I\'ve put
what\'s past, what\'s future, and what I should strike out and the only
thing that I have current is that point as in what\'s not working today.

MS. DILLEY: The occurrence of trace levels. That whole bullet or just
that section?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: The whole bullet from 4 to 5, page 4 to 5.
Anything else in my view goes to issues to be addressed, to be
discussed.

MS. DILLEY: So, all three of the underlying, that whole thing?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Right.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. DYKES: I wanted to raise a question pertaining to on the part about
if something happened and they screw up. This comes back to how much you
limit coexistence. All this discussion here is limiting coexistence to
the production or perhaps the production. Go back to Bt potato, the
problem was that from some of these other things that were in here for
the folks who wanted to grow. By the time you got the footprint of
McDonald\'s and the one major purchaser, McCain, of potatoes you were in
such isolated pockets that there wasn\'t enough infrastructure to
sustain business. And, so, that\'s why we exited the Btpotato business.

MS. DILLEY: So, there isn\'t \--

DR. DYKES: So it depends on where you want to talk about it. If you want
to talk about it at the grower level and there wasn\'t a screw up.

DR. MELLON: I had never heard that before.

DR. DYKES: When you\'re talking about potatoes and you look at the
market on Fench fries and potatoes, by the time you get the McDonald\'s
footprint in the marketplace and the one major buyer out of Canada,
McCain\'s, who is the major supplier of McDonald\'s, the places that are
kind of left where you can grow potatoes and you have other outlets,
there\'s not that many of them. You run into \-- because of different
times of the year you\'re going to want to be able to stay open to those
people.

If you got something you can\'t sell there then you got limited options.
You can go on step ahead.

MS. DILLEY: The demand isn\'t big enough, is basically what you\'re
saying or is it the access?

DR. DYKES: Well, it\'s more of the market access question than it is \--
I mean, people like potatoes and potatoes work. They make production of
potatoes easier. You\'ve got to be able to have enough infrastructure
that you\'ve got options of where you can sell your potatoes. So, if you
periodically sell some portion of your potatoes to McCain\'s for
McDonald French fries you don\'t want to have the Bt potatoes and they
are such a huge dollar to the marketplace that most everybody wants to
preserve that kind of option for an outlet so, therefore, the people who
can grow and have a clear outlet year after year for the potatoes it\'s
a very small set.

MS. DILLEY: But, Michael, that\'s a typical market dynamic though,
isn\'t it, that we\'ve got a coexistence issue?

DR. DYKES: I\'m just saying what we want again is coexistence. If you
want it at the production level that\'s one thing. But, you want it
coexistence.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: We\'re trying to deal exactly with that, you know,
whether we want to \-- what those issues are for this discussion.

MS. GEISERT: I was just going to say the counter would be that organic
started out years back as very small and so organic potatoes managed to
find infrastructure and created the market pull to allow that to however
you want to go. So, the same thing, you\'re getting that competing
infrastructure that if there was a desire for a segment of the market to
move forward with Bt potatoes you need to look at that kind of at the
evolution of what organic did to create that market availability or
market access to it to differentiate them, the marketplace, just as
organic potatoes have.

DR. DYKES: Yeah, and you don\'t have the market demand for Bt potatoes.
I agree with that. But, it\'s also the other reason you\'re seeing a
conformance of local with organic is you can resolve some of those
infrastructure issues. Also, if you don\'t sell \-- if you have \-- if
you\'re growing organic potatoes and all of a sudden you don\'t have a
market for organic potatoes they can be sold to McCain\'s as regular
potatoes for French fries.

But, if you\'re out there with someone who\'s \-- if McCain\'s said they
would not buy organic potatoes for McDonald\'s, they will not accept
them, you\'d have the same problem growing organic potatoes. You\'d have
to sell them to the local markets and preclude your option of selling
them on another type of market and then you\'d have the exact same
issue.

So, it\'s not about that issue. The market works. It\'s not a biotech
issue. This time it was. But, it could have been anything like they said
they\'re not going to purchase.

DR. LAYTON: But that\'s not a coexistence issue.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So that seems to fall off in terms because it\'s not a
specific to coexistence.

DR. DYKES: It\'s not specific to coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: Right. And, Nick, coming back to your list in terms of your
going through what\'s under inhibiting right now and if you were to
stick with what are the things that affect or inhibit coexistence right
now your suggestion is that it\'s those three segments under the last
bullet that go from 4 to 5 which is trace levels and lack of
harmonization.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Right. And there might be an argument to be made
for bullet 1, 2, 3, 4 as a possibility, but, other than that, I can\'t
see another bullet that is an issue about the current situation, the
current circumstance. Everything else \--

DR. LAYTON: The lack of transparency bullet?

DR. DYKES: One, two, three, four, he said.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: No, no, no, there are four. Four.

DR. DYKES: The number 4.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: A perceived lack of transparency.

MS. DILLEY: Yes.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Okay. So, there is today a perceived lack of
transparency. So, there might \-- this might fall into the current issue
and then bullet \-- and then meeting regulatory requirements and market
specifications within the following areas.

DR. LAYTON: So, the big bullet that\'s meeting regulatory requirements
and market specifications, \--

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Right.

DR. LAYTON: \-- anything under that is a possibility?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: That\'s right.

DR. LAYTON: And then you stop before you get to biological differences.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah, and I \--

DR. LAYTON: Right, because we\'ve already said that\'s sort of the flip
side.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Right. I mean, to me, that\'s a strike out along
with bullet 3, for example.

DR. LAYTON: Okay.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: There are examples and pull the bullet down and
just take it out, but, the only ones that I would consider are the
current factors.

DR. LAYTON: What did you do with kind of initiatives for encouraging
coexistence? That\'s the very last one on page 5.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Again, I put this into the future. In other words,
maybe something \-- and, again, I\'m not taking those as even that
everybody else \--

MS. DILLEY: Disagrees with it.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: \-- that this is an issue, right. I mean, I\'m
taking this as issues discussed. But, where would I put them in terms of
organizing. I see this as an issue about the future.

MS. DILLEY: That\'s Nick\'s first cut at the list that fits into what
now is section 3 on what\'s currently inhibiting coexistence. Alison,
did you have a comment?

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Yeah. I\'m not clear what\'s meant by the
transparency about the product markets and artificial constraints. I\'m
not really sure what it means and I\'m not sure about the coexistence.

DR. DYKES: I don\'t understand any of that.

MS. DILLEY: Anybody have a run in explaining that? Nancy?

MS. BRYSON: Yeah. I\'d say it was an effort to try to capture the
presentation from OTA and comments about people not really understanding
the European program. That\'s why it\'s phrased as perceived lack of
transparency and the factors, those were things that were identified
that we pulled out of the things that were in the report and there were
four, the certification process for U.S. and overseas producers. People
don\'t understand that. At least that was something that was discussed,
the management contract specs, the availability of marketing information
and education.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: I remember the presentation but the coexistence is
where I \--

DR. LAYTON: What I think I heard it is, it is a constraint on the
development of the organic system, but, it\'s not necessarily a
constraint on coexistence. So, therefore, it\'s not a coexistence issue.
It\'s just what\'s needed to enable the organic market to grow. So, it
really isn\'t a factor inhibiting coexistence.

Okay. So, while it\'s a good point, take it out, factor inhibiting
coexistence for right this moment. So, now we\'re down to \-- sorry,
Abby \-- page 4.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Can I go back for a second because I remember that we
had discussions on this idea that the factor inhibiting coexistence was
that some folks believed that coexistence was not possible and that was
in part due to this perceived lack of transparency or this lack of
information. So, I wonder if that was one of the pieces that was
considered via if you want to leave it in or not \--

MS. DILLEY: So it\'s a broader point than just this particular example,
is that what you\'re saying? It\'s transparency information.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Well, calling it transparency, it\'s been sort of \-- it
was this sort of question around adequacy and accuracy of information
that is available to everyone. I\'m just trying to make sure \--

DR. LAYTON: But, you said coexistence works so why would we say that?

MS. DILLEY: Because while we said it works we\'re still struggling with
there are certain things where there are snags in the system and that\'s
what we\'re trying to identify.

DR. LAYTON: Okay.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: There are inhibiting factors nonetheless.

DR. CARDINEAU: My problem with it is that if we\'re talking about
coexistence we\'re talking about the three things, conventional, GE, and
organic. This is an organic-related problem. I don\'t see how it impacts
conventional or GE, so, I don\'t see how it impacts the coexistence
issue. It may impact how people perceive the organic markets, but, that
doesn\'t reflect itself under any one of the other two markets.

MS. DILLEY: Mardi.

DR. CARDINEAU: That\'s the point.

DR. MELLON: Well, I mean, I \-- you know \-- I tend to agree. I think
we\'ve struggled all along with the notion of, you know, what issues
we\'re really dealing with. As I said yesterday, there is certainly a
fear on the part of the organic community that the way the biotech folks
are going to deal with coexistence is to simply contaminate them right
out of existence and that they\'re not going to try to avoid
contamination, they are going to allow as much of it to happen as
possible so that people will have to say, oops, there\'s nothing you can
do. You can\'t supply a market that desires a non-GE product.

MS. DILLEY: But, at this point, I thought your point on seed supply was
that particular piece in terms of purity in the seed supply but
transparency \--

DR. MELLON: Well, but, all I would say is that if we\'re not \-- and,
so, I felt, and there was some need to address the existence problems in
the way that Leon has and Brad has about GE and also some of the
existence problems about organic, but, if we\'re not going \-- I\'m
comfortable with not discussing this as an existence problem, but, then
I would also say we would want to discuss the existence problems that
confront the \--

MS. DILLEY: Right, it\'s an existence issue.

DR. MELLON: You know, we\'re still struggling with that and making sure
that we cut those away.

MS. DILLEY: I think where we\'re struggling is that we haven\'t decided
whether or not \-- at least I didn\'t hear anybody arguing for putting
an existence section back in. What we\'re struggling with is what we
have here and trying to pare it down into what we\'re trying to do which
is factors inhibiting coexistence now and that\'s what we\'re struggling
with is when we look at the bullet and say well, is that really \--

DR. MELLON: My proposal would be that we can take this one out, but, I
want somewhere in the beginning that\'s the explicit statement that
we\'re going \-- that USDA should support the three kinds of
agriculture.

MS. DILLEY: And we have that.

DR. MELLON: Not just the coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: Right. I thought we\'re not only doing that in the beginning
but also at the end.

DR. MELLON: Well, I still don\'t see it so I will be looking for that.

MS. DILLEY: It should be in the introduction. I thought that we had that
language.

DR. MELLON: We just keep talking about supporting coexistence.
Coexistence is a process. It is not \-- it does not \-- it really
doesn\'t imply as perhaps people think it does that these three things
will necessarily continue to be able to flourish.

MS. DILLEY: Right. So, I have not heard anybody \-- I think we had at
the beginning, and I don\'t want to shift to the overview right now,
you\'re going to be looking for that and we haven\'t gotten to the end
part, but, we talked yesterday about putting that statement at the end
as well in terms of continuing to support and hopefully this
conversation helps USDA to continue to support all three types of
agriculture.

What we\'re struggling with, and I think we\'re just getting really too
close to low blood sugar and lunch, is that we\'re trying in this
section what we decided so far is that this is we\'re trying to
highlight factors inhibiting coexistence now so that what we\'re
struggling with I think is parsing out these bullets into that specific
category.

This has been a fruit salad up to now and we\'re trying to make it just
watermelon, for example. So, Nick has suggested \-- Nick had suggested
and I think we still need to \-- I\'m using food analogies because I\'m
obviously hungry \-- that we deleted the fourth bullet but we still have
the second bullet, if I heard him correctly, the second bullet on
adventitious presence and seed purity issues basically, I believe at
that point, and then the other \-- let me get this out and then we can
talk about it \-- and then the point under that start on page 4 and go
to the middle of page 5, the three underlying things in terms of trace
levels. Trace levels are the first two points and then the lack of
harmonization.

Nick, am I\'m at least paraphrasing what you said correctly?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yes, with the exception of bullet number 2.

MS. DILLEY: I thought you said 1, 2, and 4.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: No, no. I was just counting out loud. I\'m sorry.
It was 4 and that\'s taken out so the only ones I would include is
bullet, whatever the number is, it starts at the bottom of page 4 and
goes to 5.

It\'s GE, organic, and non-GE, the three underlying bullets.

DR. CARDINEAU: That really sort of pulls into that first bullet on the
bottom of page 4, I think, trace levels, doesn\'t it? Does it relate to
number 4?

MS. DILLEY: That falls into that first of number 4, the trace level. So,
that\'s not necessarily what we\'re going with. I just want to be sure
we\'re talking about the same thing at the same time. Sarah?

MS. GEISERT: I have an information question. So, one of the challenges
that we\'ve experienced is the lack of maybe simplified, summarized
information about all production systems and, so, last night we were
talking about if you go to China for organic it doesn\'t have any of the
same rules that USDA applies to the U.S. That\'s not true.

We have developed information recently on sugar beets and, so, you know
what, the only challenge we have is in this market. Okay. So, when
you\'re dealing with conventional, you know, what level \-- I mean, what
is the market. And, so, while I don\'t think it\'s specific to organic,
and I agree that\'s very \-- you know \-- it shouldn\'t be there, I do
think this arena to help foster coexistence that work against us is this
lack of clarity or summarized or simplified information to help decision
makers wherever you are in the supply chain operate with fact-based
data.

And I think that has been a challenge whether you\'re in conventional or
you\'re with GE or you\'re with organic. We have a tendency to hear what
we want to hear. Certainly I do. It takes a while to drive through and
say my assumptions are wrong. I thought about it differently. I didn\'t
know, and here\'s a reference, you know, many of you helped with that.
So, I do think there is something on those factors that inhibit is this
lack of or, you know, preponderance of misinformation and
misunderstanding that doesn\'t help people make good decisions whether
you want to go conventional and organic together, conventional and
biotech, or all three of them and I think that was a little bit of what
organic was saying.

If there\'s something that could help facilitate, and, again, that may
be more than existence. It may not be a factor that inhibits it. But,
often I enjoy these discussions because I learn a lot and I go, oh, I
didn\'t realize that, you know, cut that assumption off. I was wrong
again. So, I do think that information availability is an important or
even in the future it\'s important and that\'s why we benefit from it
here, and, so, I think that there is something in even listening to
these discussions that does inhibit us because we make uninformed
decisions and we perpetuate uninformed decisions or misinformation out
there.

And we know this better than anybody else would. So, I just \--

MS. DILLEY: I think that\'s \-- I saw a lot of people nodding their
heads and basically \--

DR. LAYTON: I was trying to jot down and I said a lack of and so it\'s a
lack of throughout the supply chain that fact-based information about
markets, products, and production systems.

MS. GEISERT: Something along those lines.

DR. LAYTON: A lack of throughout the production system, throughout the
supply chain, throughout the supply chain.

DR. CARDINEAU: Lack throughout the supply chain of.

DR. LAYTON: The lack throughout the supply chain of fact-based
information about markets, products, and production systems. And it\'s
global. I mean, Leon wanted to know what it was to sell into China that
he needed to know. It would be really helpful for Leon if he could go to
one place and find the information he needs to know whose dealing what
and what are the requirements. If China wanted to sell to us if they
needed to know what it was.

MR. CORZINE: I think she\'s talking about understanding through the
chain of what the various agriculture systems are or food delivery
systems are and actually I think some of that lack of transparency or
clarity we do have instances that enables coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: Sarah, did you still have an additional point on there? You
had your card up. Okay. So, Jim and then Nick.

DR. ROBL: This may be kind of an inappropriate question. It seems to me
as we go through this and we talk about coexistence it is if you\'re
looking at something like corn it is looking at these three different
production systems for something like corn and that for each different
kind of crop you have different coexistence issue and what we\'re trying
to do is to lump these all together into something that then makes some
sense.

But, it sounds like for many of the crops there really is no coexistence
issue because there might not be alternatives. There really are some GE
crops where there might be coexistence issues and is it worthwhile to
identify those particular crops and look at this on a crop by crop
basis.

MS. DILLEY: Nick.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, I very rarely find myself disagreeing with
Sarah about something. But, I believe that we can always argue for more
information and there is no question that markets and actors are always
going to be partly informed, but, as individuals, every day we make
thousands of decisions that either are informed or only partly informed
about a whole bunch of things.

And we have absolutely no problem doing it. And we need to say to see
the next day and, in fact, most market participants made their living by
the fact that they have better information than the rest of us. And
that\'s what they\'re servicing us with. And, finally, information is
costly. Even if I give all information that\'s out there I would not
want to get into the time cost of actually learning. As a consumer I go
to the supermarket and I never look at a single label or at the single
product price and the reason is not because I\'m not wealthy but because
time is my bigger constraint and so I end up having ten minutes to shop
and so I go in and I only shop for products I know what I want and then
look at single label or price.

So, information is costly. Therefore, to say we need more information
for markets to function better, I think, you know, that generally falls
into my truism category. Yes, it\'s true. However, I don\'t think that
necessarily more information is going to solve an existence or
coexistence problem. And, so, yeah, I\'m going to go along with let\'s
wish for more information from USDA if that\'s what we want to do, but,
certainly I don\'t see why this should \--

DR. LAYTON: It\'s not a coexistence problem today.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. So back to occurrences of trace levels that\'s allowed
in GE products.

MS. DILLEY: So, I think, Nick, you had done \-- what I understand right
now, we have on trying to pull out from this section the points under
meeting regulatory requirements and market specifications. Right?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: (Nods head in the affirmative).

MS. DILLEY: Looking at those briefly, are there any other points? I\'m
debating because it\'s ten to twelve and I wonder whether we just dig
into these or start digging into these.

DR. DYKES: Are we thinking we\'re going to keep this one in here at the
bottom of page 4, top of page 5?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: At a minimum for discussion.

DR. DYKES: Okay.

MS. DILLEY: But, it\'s not necessarily the only ones, just what we\'ve
started and trimmed down so after discussion there may be other things
that pop up. We\'re trying to start from a narrower base here. Right now
infrastructure\'s out right now.

DR. LAYTON: It\'s future.

MS. DILLEY: Correct. This is just existing. The base levels. It\'s
basically the \--

DR. CARDINEAU: I\'m going to ask this for the third time. Is that
adventitious presence which is bullet 2?

MS. DILLEY: Well, we have a whole report on defining adventitious
presence.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: There\'s adventitious presence, there\'s the seed issue,
and then there\'s the product issue.

DR. MELLON: USDA isn\'t even using the word, right? I mean, I don\'t
think it ever has, so, now it\'s talking about low level presence, LLP.

MS. DILLEY: Which is what Rebecca used yesterday.

MR. SHURDUT: Is the second bullet point still in or out?

MS. DILLEY: Which second bullet point are we were talking about?

MR. SHURDUT: AP was referenced in a couple of different sets.

MR. CORZINE: That was future.

MR. SHURDUT: To me that\'s future, so, \--

MS. DILLEY: I thought we took that out.

DR. LAYTON: How about factors inhibiting coexistence today, not that
it\'s out of the document.

MR. SHURDUT: Okay. Because there\'s a reference on the next page too.

MS. DILLEY: Correct.

DR. LAYTON: Or an issue for USDA to consider. Does anybody think \-- I
mean, I\'m asking, does anybody think that this one currently is a
problem to coexistence today at the bottom of page 4?

MR. SHURDUT: Don\'t we state in the first section that it\'s working and
it\'s not a problem after that with available seed and everything else
so contextually I\'m not sure how this fits in as a problem inhibiting
coexistence.

DR. MELLON: It certainly makes it difficult for conventional and GE to
coexist.

MR. SHURDUT: It may make it an issue in the future, but, \--

DR. MELLON: No, right now.

MR. SLOCUM: I mean, isn\'t that the rice example? I mean, isn\'t it
occurrences at trace levels affected the marketplace? Isn\'t that the
rice example? Obviously it belongs. And it\'s the rice example.

MR. SHURDUT: Is that allowed GE products? The question is, that fits in
the category of the unapproved.

MR. SLOCUM: I thought it was approved. It just wasn\'t accepted in the
marketplace.

DR. CARDINEAU: Yeah. The rice got approved by the USDA. The market
didn\'t want it.

MR. SHURDUT: First bullet. First bullet.

MR. CORZINE: I\'m not sure the rice example is good because that\'s more
of an existence issue. I mean, I\'m not sure, Jerry, that that has
anything to do with coexistence.

MR. SLOCUM: Of that variety. But, those guys, those rice growers that
were growing rice that couldn\'t sell it for those two months would
argue \--

MR. CORZINE: Sure, certainly it affected them. It\'s a big deal, huge
deal, but, for what our discussion of coexistence of the conventional
and organic I don\'t \-- I\'m not \--

DR. MELLON: Isn\'t that an example of the coexistence between the
conventional rice growers who in other words want to just keep \--
pardon?

MR. CORZINE: They are all. I mean conventional and organic existence
really.

DR. LAYTON: Well, it\'s coexistence. It\'s just between two of the
three.

MR. CORZINE: Yeah.

DR. MELLON: Between two of the three? I mean, so there is no coexistence
issue illuminated by the rice between folks who just want to continue to
sell non-GE rice into markets that want it and those growers who would
like to start using the BT or the \-- whatever it is, 601 rice. There is
no coexistence. Those folks are happy with one another.

MR. CORZINE: I\'m not sure it has anything to do with trace levels of
allowed GE products.

DR. MELLON: I thought it did, but, I am very willing to learn.

MR. SLOCUM: I\'m not a rice farmer, but, I live in rice country. The
ramifications of the rice case last fall had a direct impact on seed
supplies this spring and there were a number of rice farmers this spring
who could not buy seed varieties that they would plant because they
weren\'t \-- there were economic reasons.

So, they planted their rice acreage, soybeans, or they planted rice
acreage to corn at a reduced price. So, it had \-- what happened last
fall had a direct impact on rice plantings in the Mississippi Delta.
Both sides of the river in the spring. Now, I don\'t know if that\'s a
coexistence or if it\'s an existence. I have no idea what it is, but,
I\'m afraid if we ignore that in this kind of report, you know, we\'re
going to be criticized for it.

DR. MELLON: I would agree.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I mean, maybe another way to characterized the issue is
that the rice farmers didn\'t think beforehand that there was any
coexistence issue for them to be thinking about at all and \--

MR. SLOCUM: They had no reason to think about that.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: That\'s right. And all of a sudden \--

DR. LAYTON: A problem.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: The reality hit them.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yeah.

DR. MELLON: And it\'s going to keep entering over and over and over
again in the future because we don\'t have any way of stopping this. So,
we\'re all just waiting for the next one.

MS. DILLEY: Nick.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Which probably raises a very interesting question
to ponder which is can we leave with the regulatory system that
considers zero an an acceptable threshold.

DR. MELLON: Not a regulatory system. Can you live with a marketing
system.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: And/or. Either one.

DR. MELLON: The market will supply that feed. It will.

MS. DILLEY: Nick, now you want threshold?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I\'m sorry?

MS. DILLEY: Now you want threshold?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: No, no, my question \--

DR. MELLON: But, it does exist in places where they don\'t grow GE they
have zero contamination with GE elements.

MS. DILLEY: Why don\'t we come back after lunch because I don\'t think
we\'re going to solve that question.

DR. MELLON: It\'s regulatory. I agree. That\'s not the issue. The issue
is market.

MS. DILLEY: All right. Can we pick it up after? All right. It\'s noon
and I think we have a break until 1:15. Can we come back at 1:00.

(Whereupon, a luncheon recess was taken at 11:58 p.m.)

[A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N]{.underline} 1:13 p.m.

MS. DILLEY: We\'ll try and wrap up around 3:30. So, a little over two
hours that we have. And what we need to accomplish in that amount of
time is have a substantive discussion about the document and we can have
some work plan to finish it up depending on where we are at the
conclusion of the discussion and we need to talk about the work plan.

Also, Michael wants to introduce preliminarily the next topic or charge
for the group and then we need to take a step back from all of that and
not only talk about the work plan but finish the document but also
responding to questions that Rebecca brought to the committee yesterday
and setting up for the new charge.

So, we\'ve got some moving pieces just in order to have a good game plan
for work between now and the next meeting. It would be helpful to touch
each of those topics before we conclude the meeting.

I think we said at lunch and we were talking about a couple of things.
One is I think we want to pick up where we left off in having the
factors enabling coexistence \-- inhibiting coexistence specifically to
the current situation and one of the things we\'re struggling with, I
think, my assessment, is that in the overview we had developed language
yesterday just after the bullet saying it appears to the committee that
generally that the United States today is generally supporting
coexistence among different agricultural systems and while the system
works well overall the concurrent use of different production systems
sometimes limits the choices available to individual farmers or
consumers.

And I think it\'s that time to put some context around that last piece
of where are the holes in the fabric, if you will. Generally we think
it\'s going well and we\'ve highlighted what we think is contributing to
it going well. Then what are the places where it\'s a little bit more
difficult. And part of that is our back and forth on is it existence, is
it coexistence and the piece that keeps coming up in my mind is that
because cooperation is so key it\'s some of those things that kind of
threaten.

It\'s the tension between cooperation and competition and is that an
existence issue. If it\'s something that\'s affecting that trust that\'s
built up or the cooperation aspect of it you have kind of inklings of
that can affect coexistence. So, I\'m not at all \-- that doesn\'t
necessarily shed any light on the situation, but, for me, it\'s trying
to put some words to that that may not fit, particularly in those
categories, but, we\'re trying to articulate something that we haven\'t
quite gotten to yet.

And I don\'t know where it goes or if it\'s in inhibiting coexistence,
but, that\'s a notion out there that I think we keep struggling with.
What I suggest, having said that, I don\'t have any particular
suggestion as to how to capture that a little bit better, but, I would
go back to where we left off at lunch which was to Nick and to our
conversation.

(Discussion off the record)

MS. DILLEY: That where we left off just before we broke for lunch was
the page 5 of page 4 and the top of page 5 in picking up some suggested
specifics for inclusion in working out factors inhibiting coexistence
currently and that\'s where we started. We just started having that
conversation about these sections or these points and we can pick up
where we left off when we ended for lunch.

So, with that rather lengthy introduction we can start in on it. So, any
epiphanies over lunch besides hopefully?

MR. CORZINE: Abby, is this that I got as I listed in number 6 the one
that starts at the bottom of page 4, is that the one? Are we still in
\-- we\'ve got current and then we\'re going to the future.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah.

MR. CORZINE: This is the one? Is this the only one that we\'ve got as
far as the current?

DR. CARDINEAU: There are three.

MR. CORZINE: Kind of sub-bullets or whatever.

MS. DILLEY: There are three points under that, so, yes, that\'s where we
are right now. Guy.

DR. CARDINEAU: Sort of be more in line with descriptive text that we
have for the enabling ones, instead of these underlined single sentences
it seems to me that in every case the follow along sentence might
actually be better so, for instance, trace levels of GE events that have
cleared U.S. regulatory requirements down through that to the first
period and then the next one, the escape of regulated GE events. It\'s
more descriptive. It\'s more information. It\'s a little bit longer,
but, I think that I don\'t know that we want to put all of this stuff in
there, but, maybe that first sentence.

MS. DILLEY: So, maybe that first sentence gives a little bit more
specific.

DR. CARDINEAU: Yeah, a little bit more than the underlining sort of
bullet. It captures the thought of the underlining and it gives you a
little bit more information. And I brought up this issue about point 2
but I guess we\'re going to move the point 2, the future, because it
does address the future availability. I think that overlaps with the
subs, but, it\'s a current thing but it\'s also a future potential
thing.

MS. DILLEY: Right. So, Guy, when you said that we were going to take
some of this point into that one but we also need to talk about the
future, is that what you said?

DR. CARDINEAU: Well, bullet 2, I think, I\'ve raised this several times,
but, in reading it, if we\'re going to divide it up, you know, things
that are enabling this today and then things that might have affected
the future it isn\'t an effect today but it\'s also that adventitious
presence may impact seed supply and Mardi\'s comments too, so, I think
that can be moved to the future better.

I think we want to avoid over-descriptiveness right now with one of the
issues here. So, I just feel like that first sentence on each of these
sections, the first, complete underlined sentence probably describes the
heading.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: The first sentence after the underlining?

DR. CARDINEAU: Right. So, trace levels of GE events that have cleared
U.S. regulatory requirements sometimes can be found in certified
organic, conventional, etc., etc. and the next would be escape from
regulated GE events from breeding programs and field trials associated
with product development can cause market disruptions and erosions of
this domestic confidence which I think is absolutely correct.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah.

DR. CARDINEAU: And then the last one I think is clearly important and
was raised by one of our previous speakers as an issue.

DR. LAYTON: Just the not underlined sentence.

DR. CARDINEAU: New GE products in the market before regulatory clearance
had been obtained. That whole \-- and we\'ve seen that recently in the
StarLink^®^ or not the StarLink^®^, the Liberty Link^®^ rice. I know
when I was at Dow we had an issue with bringing Herculex^®^ into the
marketplace. We waited a year and we had the registration and we were
waiting for the Asian markets to approve it before we went forward.

And I know that the agricultural associations are really concerned with
that sort of thing because of the impact on export markets.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Michael.

DR. DYKES: I don\'t want to muddy the waters, but, it seems to me like
maybe we still need all three of these bullets go to different
manifestations of AP that we had in the previous report. Really, if you
think about it, these are three detailed explanations of three different
occurrences of adventitious presence. Approved in the U.S., not approved
elsewhere, not approved elsewhere, or basic disapproval. That\'s the
three that are here.

So, I don\'t know. I guess the question in my mind, I think the bullet
point number 2 compared to these three things, these three things are
just a further expounding on bullet point 2. Bullet point 2 is a summary
of these three. Adventitious presence of unintended materials whether GE
or non-GE or organic seed.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: That\'s seed. I thought that\'s all about seed though.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Seed supply.

DR. DYKES: I think you can delete the seed reference and it would be the
summary of these three bullets. These are just more detailed and more
specific examples.

MR. SHURDUT: Just remove the reference to supply in bullet point 2 and
make it more specific?

DR. DYKES: I guess the question was \-- I guess, to me, the question is,
how \-- what level detail do you want to go into because I think we
could do it with one paragraph summary of what number 2 is. You can
delete the seed. But, we need to describe it as one paragraph or we can
go into great detail with three separate paragraphs.

DR. LAYTON: So, what you\'re saying is the one key factor inhibiting
coexistence today is adventitious presence?

DR. DYKES: Exactly.

DR. LAYTON: The one key factor inhibiting coexistence today is
adventitious presence?

DR. DYKES: Well, the recognition is non zero, which I think we talked
about yesterday. I think recognizing the different markets will in
contracts, in clear specifications, and different prices are attached to
different levels of scrutiny and closer and closer to zero at an
additional cost. Those are all snippets of conversations we\'ve had
about this whole topic.

MS. DILLEY: Alison and then Mardi.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: I guess I agree but I do see differences between a
company bringing on a product conventionally and an approved product
being organic. I guess one of my suggestions might be to follow Guy in
taking that sentence and just make that sentence three bullet points and
then remove the rest of the text from the section.

DR. CARDINEAU: Yeah, that\'s what I said.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah, that\'s what he was saying.

DR. DYKES: What are you talking about doing?

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Basically take the first sentence off the underline
and make these three separate.

DR. DYKES: Okay.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: And just make that three separate bullet points
because there are nuances in talking about adventitious presence.

DR. CARDINEAU: And that\'s exactly what I thought I said. Maybe I
didn\'t say it very well.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah. I don\'t think people \--

DR. CARDINEAU: Maybe say it a couple of times.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah. I don\'t think people caught onto the fact that you
were saying not only eliminate those sentences underlined but also what
comes after it. So, it comes down to that.

DR. CARDINEAU: They\'re single sentence bullets but they\'re a little
bit more descriptive than the other ones.

MS. DILLEY: Mardi.

DR. MELLON: I have to read them. I mean, I don\'t \-- I don\'t \-- I
kind of like the way these are written. If all we\'re going to have in
terms of adventitious \-- in terms of current problems. I mean, I think
it\'s certainly helpful to have the detail. I think we can abstract
these things to the point that it doesn\'t \-- that they\'re not very
helpful. They\'re not even understandable. So, I\'m not sure why we
wouldn\'t just want to keep them the way they are.

Maybe, you know, I really thought Guy\'s suggestion was just to take
away the initial sentence on each one and leave the rest. But, and I
would say that although we have talked about adventitious presence
before it was mostly in the trade context and in the biotech context.
Some of the detail here does make it clear that there are implications
for organic as well, which I think that\'s making those implications
clear.

MS. DILLEY: We\'ve been kind of walking this line of providing enough
detail to really link it specifically to coexistence but not so much
that it\'s too much. That\'s a struggle. Kathleen?

MS. JONES: Thank you. This is just a small word-smithing issue for the
accuracy and consistency of language issues. The sentence beginning
trace levels of GE events, I think here you are referring to U.S.
regulatory requirements and if that is referring to FDA\'s consultation
procedures that is not a requirement and, so, perhaps using language
that is mirrored in one of the other bullets: "trace levels of GE events
that have obtained U.S. regulatory clearance".

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, we need to come back to this issue of less is more
and more is more. And we have right now for sure people would like to
see the second sentence in each of those bullet points on 4 and top of
5. Leave that lead sentence. And the question is do we want to have more
of that so it flushes out each of those sentences out of it?

And it gives examples in terms of how the different \-- I guess it\'s a
more elaborate e.g. It\'s a written out e.g. is really what it is.
Actually, complete sentences. Nancy?

MS. BRYSON: I wonder if maybe for purposes of trying to get through the
document we should park this. There seems to be \-- I may be wrong \--
there seems to be general agreement that these are the three points we
want to have in this section. Maybe if we could put the points in the
future section and sort of move towards a draft.

MS. DILLEY: Working through the whole draft. I think that\'s a good
suggestion. We don\'t necessarily have to close down on it right now and
go through the rest of the bullet points and see which ones we still
want to retain for the future piece and some we might \-- we can get rid
of. I think we\'ve pretty much agreed that labor, for example, can be
deleted, but, future \-- so, that\'s a suggestion.

I think it\'s a pretty good one in order to get through the whole
document at least one go around. Leon and then Michael.

MR. CORZINE: I would suggest on the bottom of page 4, that sentence that
Guy suggested we leave, when you read through that sentence I think it
really speaks to where we\'re trying to go if you \-- when it says "can
be found in either certified, organic, or conventional commodity crops"
it should say "certified organic, or non-GE or certified non-GE" because
it really to the point if it is just conventional seed it doesn\'t
matter if there are those low levels. It is when you get into certified
or an ID

You would agree with that, wouldn\'t you, Margaret?

DR. MELLON: Yeah. I think that that\'s \-- I mean, I think that that is
certainly one instance where it\'s true and I guess it just raises the
question of whether, say, the rice samples has that AP problem even if
you\'re not talking about an IP-certified non-GE or just in the general
context people have an expectation that say rice or wheat isn\'t GE so
there it would have.

If you were to find even approved elements it might have \-- you know
\-- it might have a coexistence or existence implication.

MS. DILLEY: All right. So can we move off this section? We\'ve got the
three bullet points for the current or inhibiting coexistence currently
and look back through this section for the ones you wanted to move to
future.

DR. DYKES: You said somebody took labor out. I didn\'t know if we had
taken labor out.

DR. MELLON: Yeah, I think we did.

DR. DYKES: But, I thought it was a hallmark of what the first set of
presenters gave us was different things in production and we don\'t
consider labor costs and their concern was that organic needed to grow
and to be grown outside the U.S. because of an increase in labor costs.
So, to me, it is a huge factor and whether these crops coexist or not
because if you\'ve got different labor costs.

MS. DILLEY: So that sounds like a future issue for one, so, let\'s talk
about it in the future and then the question is, does it fit in the
future slot or not.

DR. DYKES: Because that was what Don Cameron\'s point was. We\'re not
going to be growing organic here as a part of the mix because labor
costs are going to be prohibitive.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: I guess the reason it was taken out was it\'s really
not really coexistence. It\'s part of the whole dynamics of agriculture
and it\'s agriculture issues but it\'s not \-- it doesn\'t affect \-- if
it wasn\'t labor it wouldn\'t help GE or conventional crops grow.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I think this is another of the cases where there\'s not
some acknowledgement that there are existence problems and that it\'s
hard to talk about coexistence without acknowledging that there are \--
at least saying something that, you know, there\'s a lot of general
things that sort of underlie this stuff. I don\'t know if we have that
in there in some sentence somewhere that, you know, there are major
problems for each of the production systems and for the prospering of
them and it\'s sometimes hard to tease the stuff.

DR. DYKES: I guess that\'s where I was going. So, if you look at \-- if
you go back and you look at what\'s happened over time and realize what
the drivers were there may have been a lot of things that caused
different things to happen and they\'re not all straightforward which I
think if we look at this where we came to this community I think we
started on this coexistence thing in the committee over-generalized but
largely was what\'s the impact on biotech and organic.

I think that\'s what we had the presentations and we\'ve listened to the
discussion I think we have realized that coexistence is a whole lot more
than just that simple equation and coexistence, as Bowen mentioned
yesterday, which I think has been coexistence of corn next to cotton,
there\'s all kinds of coexistence issues and we also have been dealing
with them for a long, long time.

So, I think if we \-- somehow or another we\'ve got to capture that.
This issue is multi-dimensional and will have many different
ramifications over time.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah. I think the question, Michael, is what are we trying
to capture? I think we\'ve tried to capture some of what you\'ve said in
the overview, in the introduction, and we\'ve captured some of it in
other segments of it. Whether we were all varied, but, I\'m not sure,
but, I think we\'re trying to take a couple of stabs at that without
getting so into the existence and coexistence stuff that we lose the
point of the points of the paper. So, we\'re probably not completely
there but we\'re working on it.

So, let\'s look at the factors inhibiting coexistence and see if there
are any things we particularly want to pull into the future to consider
for that. We talked a little bit about the labor one and it sounds like
\-- so, are there others that people want to put in there?

I think that number 2 was a future one.

DR. LAYTON: The purity of seed?

MS. DILLEY: Yes. Purity of seed issue.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Infrastructure.

MS. DILLEY: Right. So, purity of seed, the infrastructure. The last
bullet on 5. And that\'s future.

DR. CARDINEAU: Abby?

MS. DILLEY: Yes.

DR. CARDINEAU: On number 2, do we want to add the word purity? We say
future availability of a diverse seed supply. Do we want to say diverse
pure seed supply or do you want to put that word, purity, in there?

MS. DILLEY: We keep using that shorthand, don\'t we, so I don\'t know.

DR. CARDINEAU: Well, you keep saying purity of seed supply, but, it\'s
not actually in this statement.

MS. DILLEY: Right. Exactly.

DR. CARDINEAU: Do we want to put the word in there?

MS. DILLEY: It\'s a question to the group. Yeah, Mardi?

DR. CARDINEAU: So, I don\'t know how you want future availability. A
diverse and pure seed supply? Or, I don\'t know how you want to say it.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Anybody have some language that would work? Because
it\'s not only diversity, but, it\'s also finding specific kinds. It\'s
quantity and quality, isn\'t it? Is it or not?

DR. MELLON: Ideally you want \-- I mean, my question is just what pure
would mean to most people. I\'m not sure what that is. I think we\'re
talking about a continued availability of non-GE, of a seed supply that
doesn\'t contain genetically engineered elements. And I mean, that\'s
what you really need in order to assure coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: Would it be a diverse seed supply that includes non-GE, GE,
or, I mean, I don\'t know. I\'m struggling with what \-- I think I
understand what you\'re saying.

DR. MELLON: Well, then you can say diverse that includes GE and GE-free
supply of seed.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. CARDINEAU: I guess from my perspective you could have GE seed that
might be considered intentionally GE but not pure because you can have a
trait in a crop and inadvertently get a second trait in there that you
didn\'t want so I think purity of seed supply is supposed to indicate it
is what it\'s supposed to be. It doesn\'t have some extraneous material
in there that you don\'t intend to occur with GE, or, organic, or,
conventional, whatever simply because you may not want herbicide
tolerance in insect resistance or you may not want two different
herbicide tolerances in the same plant or whatever.

So, I think it may be problematic because with \--

DR. LAYTON: Is there a purity of seed definition?

MR. SLOCUM: Yes. There\'s standards for all kinds of seeds.

MS. DILLEY: Brad, go ahead.

MR. SHURDUT: It\'s not one standard. There are many, many standards.

MS. DILLEY: Go ahead, Brad.

MR. SHURDUT: I was just saying we\'re talking about purity and all that,
but, don\'t you touch that by saying that a diverse seed supply that
meets customer expectations, the purity in what a customer needs or
expects, I mean, purity would be tied into that expectation.

DR. LAYTON: Okay.

MR. SHURDUT: So I don\'t know whether we have to be as specific as to
pure.

MR. SLOCUM: The purity does not imply zero. It\'s not meant to imply or
infer zero. So, pure seed supply is not zero.

MS. DILLEY: No, but, that meets growers\' expectations so I think that
strikes a balance, doesn\'t it, in terms of saying if I want to grow
GE-free.

DR. CARDINEAU: GE is not free. Trust me.

DR. DYKES: That, to me, is the four million dollar question around the
entire section. What Jerry just say, you\'re talking about zero or not.
If you\'re talking about zero you change the dynamics of all. If you\'re
talking about zero you\'re talking about a whole other dynamic.

DR. CARDINEAU: And we\'re not talking about zero because we already said
that some of the things that enables coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: The way Brad phrased it, doesn\'t that get to what you\'re
trying to say which is you\'ve got a seed supply that meets
customer/grower expectations where they can meet those market demands. I
don\'t think you have to qualify it by saying and it\'s not zero by the
way.

DR. CARDINEAU: I just asked the question about purity because we kept
using the word.

MS. DILLEY: No, you\'re right. I think you\'re right.

DR. CARDINEAU: And I don\'t think you necessarily need it, but, I just
want to make sure that you decided.

MS. DILLEY: Well, I kind of like the way Brad \-- I thought Brad\'s
language was good in that it says \--

MR. SHURDUT: I mean, the purity standards were developed and aligned to
meet specific customer\'s expectations and needs.

MS. DILLEY: Right.

MR. SHURDUT: So, I don\'t think you need to be explicit about purity.

MS. DILLEY: Nick?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah. I would exclude specifically the word purity
because it means different things to different people. It\'s not just an
issue about GE or non-GE. These standards about purity out there for all
kinds of issues, so, I would specifically exclude it.

MS. DILLEY: Yup. Okay. So, I think we\'ve got that one. That was number
2 and we pulled that into the future and then, Michael, did you have
another one?

DR. DYKES: I just want to make a comment on the first seed supply. I
don\'t know what we\'re \-- necessarily what we mean by that, but, I
think we\'re missing the fact that in the GE world where you\'ve got
traits that simultaneous with that is improvements in germplasm and the
first seed supply. I don\'t think we always have those two things in
mind.

So, I think there\'s a feeling that we\'re getting a less and less
diverse seed supply somehow in biotech.

MS. DILLEY: And I don\'t \-- I think the language that Brad came up with
navigates that issue. I think that we\'re talking about a diverse seed
supply that meets growers\' and customers\' expectations.

DR. DYKES: Our seed supply is more diverse today than it has been in the
past.

MS. DILLEY: But, I \--

DR. DYKES: With the traits, genetic and \--

MS. DILLEY: This is future.

DR. LAYTON: This is future.

DR. LAYTON: Jerry?

MR. SLOCUM: Isn\'t the grower the customer of seed supply? I mean,
customer and grower are the same.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Is it just grower or customer? Grower and consumer?

DR. MELLON: I like grower and consumer.

MS. DILLEY: Grower and consumer.

MR. SLOCUM: Is the consumer going to realize then that it\'s not going
to be GE-free?

DR. LAYTON: If the consumer is Sarah, or, customer. It\'s a question.

MR. SLOCUM: Look, I\'m the grower, I\'m the customer. I buy the seed
from Monsanto or Syngenta, whoever. I buy it. I\'m the seed customer.
So, is it customer and grower or is it consumer and grower?

DR. MELLON: The expectations \-- I mean, I think both consumer and
grower expectations are important and there certainly is a set of
consumers who given their preference would have no GE elements in the
food that they consume. And they are going to, with all the limits that
Nick described, they are not having information, they\'re going to keep
seeking that product and they\'re going to keep pushing the definition
of purity in this context, this very specific context, toward less and
less GE elements.

I agree that there is a biological reality that people, if we grow
enough GE they\'ll run up against, but, that\'s the pressure, that\'s
the direction, and there is a real danger in not acknowledging that and
saying, well, people just have to get used to it. Five percent GE
doesn\'t matter to us so it won\'t matter to them.

I mean, that does not address either their needs or what are real market
forces.

MS. DILLEY: Nancy, Guy, Alison, Nick.

MS. BRYSON: I was just going to raise the question. I know, Jerry, you
think you of the grower as the customer, but, doesn\'t customer cover
those three categories? The grower is the customer of seed, but, the
person who\'s really the customer is the consumer so why aren\'t they
all customers? Why couldn\'t we just simplify that?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: We historically made the distinction.

MS. BRYSON: Oh, okay. I see.

MR. CORZINE: You\'re being a little too rational too.

MS. DILLEY: Guy.

DR. CARDINEAU: This particular bullet is directed at seeds and I think
the seeds are more focused on, first, who grows the seed which is the
farmer and another bullet that addresses what Mardi\'s talking about,
it\'s on page 5, talks about the subset of consumers, so, I would
propose that we separate the people who purchase the seeds and plant
them from the people who, you know, who are the consumers that eat the
food that\'s produced from those plants that are grown and, so, we leave
this just with the grower or customer, however you want to say that
here, and we address the consumer separately with people that you\'re
talking about, Mardi, who are actually buying the products.

MS. DILLEY: Which bullet was that again?

DR. CARDINEAU: It\'s the second from the bottom on page 5.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. The market is \--

DR. CARDINEAU: The market is more complex. It\'s a subset of consumers
who have expressed a desire to completely avoid GE. That\'s what Mardi
said.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. CARDINEAU: And Jerry\'s point is well taken. We did leave it as
customer and maybe that leaves it more open-ended. I don\'t know. People
could interpret that any way they want all the way down the supply
chain.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Leave that as customer and leave that as focused on
the grower\'s side of things.

DR. CARDINEAU: Right.

MS. DILLEY: And then for the consumer side that would be \-- we\'d pick
that up and let\'s look at the second to the last bullet on page 5. Take
a look at that and see what you all think. Alison, your card went down?

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Uh-hmm.

MS. DILLEY: Michael?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yeah. I don\'t know if my point has been overtaken by
Guy\'s comment. But, I was wondering if the point that you most want to
make is that the seed supply is diverse or that it\'s meeting the needs
of diverse growers, growers and consumers. I didn\'t know where the
diverse was best placed.

DR. LAYTON: The seed supply has to be diverse in order to meet diverse
grower expectations.

MR. SLOCUM: The seed has to be diverse.

DR. LAYTON: Yes.

MR. SLOCUM: Period.

DR. MELLON: Whether it meets the needs of diverse growers.

MS. DILLEY: And I think we went back to customer for that.

DR. CARDINEAU: Right.

MS. DILLEY: And then the consumer piece would come up in that other
bullet.

DR. DYKES: It\'s written as a diverse modified seed supply.

MS. DILLEY: Yes.

DR. DYKES: Not the expectations.

MS. DILLEY: You don\'t want diverse seed supply or you like diverse
expectations?

MR. SLOCUM: Diverse supply needs to meet the needs of diverse growers.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. MELLON: It\'s going to be diverse. I agree.

MR. SLOCUM: The seed supply is going to be diverse.

DR. MELLON: It\'s going to be diverse.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: It\'s a big country. The question is it diverse enough
for particular \--

MS. DILLEY: So, what\'s diverse now?

DR. LAYTON: Customer expectations.

MS. DILLEY: Customer expectation? So, we got it? All right. Do I move to
that bullet on page 5 then, the second bullet? Market is becoming more
complex. So, this is typically focused on kind of consumer \-- the range
of consumer expectations?

This does not seem to indicate large consumer but it\'s more a
particular part of the consumer population that\'s looking for GE-free
and that organic has become the *de facto*, so, that\'s a particular
dimension of this. So, the particular point you want to make? Sarah?

MS. GEISERT: Well, I think the market, you know, as you look to the
future you want to be able to set the market up and you want to be
thoughtful about how the market continues to fragment because, you know,
there\'s many things that consumers tell what they want and there are
times when the market can\'t meet it yet until it reaches a critical
mass and you can\'t meet it maybe for all and you can meet it for
smaller operations and, so, the efforts of what I hear kind of coming in
here as you look to the future is I think you\'re going to continue to
see this complexity create needs for all the factors at work and it
doesn\'t have to consider new traits, new attributes, new innovations
that come up that may not be GE-related. They could be organic. They
could be conventional to meet the consumer\'s expectations.

And that\'s how the marketplace works. And I do think that what we\'ve
seen has been a bit of that complexity. So, I\'m not sure it\'s just too
devoid and I understand, Mardi, that the concern is that they can\'t get
zero tolerance GE materials. The consumers ask us for a lot of
interesting things that they can\'t really get. This one is where they
used to be able to get it maybe. So, I\'m not sure I want to pull just
the GE out because I think it\'s broader than that.

MS. DILLEY: So, could you give us language to put in there?

MS. BRYSON: You said fragmented, right? Or, not fragmented but \--

MS. GEISERT: We\'re not just doing commodity corn anymore. We\'re not
just doing \-- I mean, that\'s the benefit of the marketplace is that
it\'s become, in my opinion, more fragmented and in some ways it\'s
provided opportunities for others that maybe didn\'t have the same
opportunities and it\'s not related necessarily to GE. So, I\'m not sure
it relates to coexistence either.

MS. DILLEY: It\'s becoming more complex and diversified or I mean, I get
some of your point and I\'m just not quite sure I know what language to
use.

MS. GEISERT: Let me work on those.

MS. DILLEY: Greg?

DR. JAFFE: I would delete that first sentence.

MS. DILLEY: The market is becoming more complex?

DR. JAFFE: I\'m not sure what market we\'re talking about here and,
clearly, it\'s more complex as it matures. Markets mature. Is the market
not maturing now? What does this mature market mean? The market\'s
always \-- the marketplace is always \-- it sounds like such a broad
thing. I would delete the first sentence.

MS. DILLEY: Do you start it then with a subset of consumers or do you
\-- so what are we trying to articulate here then?

MS. GEISERT: Both of these \-- you know \-- a sub-set of consumers who
express a desire to avoid \-- will likely continue to search for these
products and I don\'t know if it\'s avoid just GE. But, you know, there
are consumers that want to avoid attributes or characteristics and right
now we see it manifest as GE, but, that may change in the future. I\'d
take the first sentence out and think about starting with the second.

DR. DYKES: I would question what this has to do really with coexistence.
I also think there\'s a contradiction in the statement the way it\'s
written. Those who desire to completely avoid GE materials pertaining to
all things such as mandatory GE labeling which implies a GE label would
be held to zero standards.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah.

DR. DYKES: I mean, it\'s contradictory and within its own statement.

MS. DILLEY: There are two different issues here to begin with. There\'s
the using organic as a *de facto* GE-free is one topic and then the
other is whether a consumer wants to avoid or obtain particular
materials and I don\'t know if that\'s particularly a coexistence issue.

Sarah, that\'s why I\'m looking to you for particular language that I\'m
probably missing.

DR. DYKES: To me, it says avoid GE so labeling is the answer which
implies zero. The other thing it says, organic is out there and there
may be another piece of the market that doesn\'t want organic but wants
GE-free and it\'s labeled to be zero, I mean, when I breakdown this
sentence.

DR. MELLON: There most certainly are people who don\'t care at all about
organic who just for the moment perhaps they\'re primarily focused on
the GE trait. They resent the fact that they have to pay extra for
organic in order to get that or at least as close as they can to it. So,
there are those two market forces.

I\'m not sure. I do hear what you\'re saying about implications about
mandatory labeling and I don\'t think \-- I mean, I think we already
know where mandatory labeling is in place you don\'t have a zero
standard. So, I don\'t \-- I\'m not sure that that\'s an implication
from mandatory labeling. It\'s almost just the opposite. If you have
mandatory labeling you\'ll have to \-- you\'ll probably have to more
explicitly acknowledge the presence of the GE.

But, it is also the case that if you have mandatory labeling you would
have much less coexistence problem I think with organic in that people
would not be relying entirely on organic to meet their needs. They could
just go elsewhere in the market.

DR. CARDINEAU: For just that sentence could we change it to a positive
instead of a negative and perhaps say something like subsets of
consumers have expressed a desire for products with specific attributes?
And that attribute could be, you know, it\'s organic only, it\'s not \--
it\'s a positive instead of \-- you know, it could be locally grown, it
could be \--

DR. MELLON: I mean, but, that\'s not what we\'re defining.

DR. CARDINEAU: Only that sentence. You can play with the rest of it,
but, instead of being negative and completely devoid make it positive as
to they\'re looking for products with specific attributes.

DR. MELLON: I mean, when you change it to consumers have expressed
desires or have desires to have food with particular attributes.

MS. DILLEY: Michael and then Leon.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I wonder if a lot of the \-- I mean, I think it is in
part a negative point that\'s trying to be made, but, I wonder if a lot
of difficulties in talking about what\'s here has to do with the stuff
after completely avoid GE materials in that sentence. I think if you
stopped it after GE materials. A subset of consumers have expressed a
desire to completely avoid GE materials.

MS. DILLEY: And then what?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: And then organic as de facto GE-free.

MS. DILLEY: That would be that one point and then, okay, Leon and then
Nick.

MR. CORZINE: I\'m having a lot of trouble with \-- even though this may
be the point, if you go back to what we\'ve been using from the onset as
the definition of coexistence these look like specific contracts or
specific wants of the consumer that really don\'t have anything to do
with the coexistence issue and anything really in that bullet.

MS. DILLEY: Well, I thought we talked a while ago, and maybe it\'s
evolved to where we don\'t think this anymore, but, that one of the \--
kind of not intentional, but, one of the coexistence things that have
allowed organic to get to thrive a little bit more was avoiding GE and
they think of organic as their *de facto* and so I think the question is
in the future does that become \-- reach a point where that doesn\'t
work any more or that dynamic doesn\'t work any more. Has that point
evolved and I don\'t \-- so I don\'t know if it\'s still an issue for
coexistence or not, but, I think that\'s where this came from.

DR. MELLON: I mean, to me, that\'s more maybe an issue to the organic
consumer than it is really a coexistence issue.

MS. DILLEY: I don\'t think it has because part of that has been taking
some pressure off of the labeling, mandatory labeling argument. So, I
mean, I\'m not defending this point. I\'m just trying to link the dots
here.

DR. MELLON: There is that people are told you don\'t need mandatory
labeling in the U.S., you have organic. And then on the other hand
saying we\'re not going to take extra measures to prevent the
contamination of organic product as I think, you know, that\'s one of
the things we\'re asking for the USDA to do. But, that \-- you know \--
that creates \-- you know, that makes people angry. They feel that
they\'re being told that all they \-- the only recourse they have is
organic if they don\'t want GE and, yet, we\'re not going to kind of
address the fact of this ongoing kind of contamination of the organic
product.

MS. DILLEY: Brad.

MR. SHURDUT: I was going to say that in many ways getting back to the
point that Michael made before that we\'re knocking on the door for zero
tolerance and if folks want it, you know, the impracticality of getting
zero. I mean, that\'s what this is really \-- I think we\'re fighting
around the edges there, but, it\'s really getting back to the zero
tolerance and the lack of ability to get to zero and that some people
want it and they want it but it\'s not going to be practical and now
we\'re having an impact on coexistence.

But, to me, it seemed like another embodiment about that discussion.

DR. MELLON: But, what\'s the therefore. I mean, it\'s going to be
impractical to get all the way to zero. What\'s the difference?

DR. LAYTON: You won\'t be able to satisfy a sub-set of customers at
zero.

DR. MELLON: They\'re going to forget it. They\'re going to go to Sarah
and she\'s going to say not practical.

MS. GEISERT: We do it all the time.

DR. JAFFE: There\'s other kinds of markets.

DR. MELLON: But, I think you\'re \-- I think she\'s \--

MS. GEISERT: Somebody may figure out a way to do it differently and
create that market demand that General Mills can\'t meet. We do that, to
your point, all the time.

DR. MELLON: But, my point is that you don\'t do it until you\'ve tried
and that\'s different from I think just simply \-- I mean, a therefore
is to simply have this committee say it\'s not practical, GE is here,
forget about it. I mean, if there are consumers out there who think that
you will ever, ever, ever again be able to get a pure product that is
not going to happen. It\'s just tough and, therefore, whatever your
desires are, forget them.

And I just \-- I don\'t think that we\'re serving either the needs of
agriculture or respecting the preferences of people in the marketplace
if we take \-- if we move, you know, to that, what I would call very
extreme position.

DR. DYKES: You said, you used the word, pure, there. You\'ll never,
ever, ever be able to get pure. What do you mean by pure?

DR. MELLON: Without GE in it. That\'s what they want.

DR. DYKES: Zero?

DR. MELLON: Right. And I think that people don\'t know exactly what zero
is and if push to shove it would mean very, very, very little, but, it
doesn\'t mean five percent without anybody trying.

DR. DYKES: But, it gets back to the question of zero.

MR. CORZINE: I wonder though, Margaret, I understand your point, but,
still, that\'s addressed in that one we just did that was the second one
on page 3 so I\'m not sure what number \-- I\'ve got number 8, the next
to the last one \-- I don\'t see the relevance to coexistence when you
look at the other one that is already there and covers everything.

DR. MELLON: That was just growers. I thought we weren\'t dealing with
the consumers. We took consumers out of it.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah, we took consumers out and we\'re going to address
consumer dimensions of that in this one.

MS. GEISERT: You know, Mardi, I hear you. I guess what I \-- you know
\-- it is to Michael\'s point that, you know, the \-- what is the
threshold or what is level of insignificance because, frankly, I\'m not
sure when it was all pure. I\'m not convinced that ten years ago or
fifteen years ago the organic seed was as pure as what we wanted to
believe it was under a definition. So, I think it\'s been how do you
find the median where it\'s good on extreme to say well, they want
perfection. We\'ve never been able to deliver perfection in any way and,
so, how do you set a number where there is an ability to define it and I
think on a whole host of things that we struggle with certain groups
telling us you can\'t, we want none of this.

And that\'s really never been possible. So, I do think, Michael, that if
we don\'t acknowledge that we can\'t have a hundred percent purity
somehow we \-- and I think that\'s where we get hung up; that we lose it
when we\'re at a 100 percent and, you know, what\'s that bright mark
above 100 percent, I\'m not sure, but, we\'ve never been at 100 percent.

DR. MELLON: Well, I agree with \-- I could not agree more. I mean, but,
I think that people will, as long as there is that demand they will \--
they will begin to approach that to a degree greater than the kind of
five or ten percent that people say you could achieve by kind of going
ahead.

So, and I think there are whole countries like Austria, or, others that
are basically going to be in a position to sell products that are going
to have very, very, very, very low, maybe not zero, but, very low. So,
it\'s not impossible at some price.

MS. GEISERT: I think that\'s where the market really does somewhat
communicate to us and I think we interpret on our own. What our
theoretical zero, and you and I have had this conversation, might be
different than what somebody else\'s theoretical zero is and, you know,
those aren\'t sitting on a piece of paper, you know, for a number of
things that consumers tell us. We don\'t write it down and publicize
what\'s in flour.

Now, some could say you should. Maybe that\'ll drive, you know, the
flour standards differently. I don\'t know, maybe. So, I think we do
reach implied or we reach and then we work as best we can in the
marketplace to say, you know, we can\'t do organic grits anymore because
we\'re concerned about \"x\". That doesn\'t mean somebody else can\'t do
it. It\'s just not worth our time and investment to meet what we believe
for our company and our brands that zero to be.

And I think if Austria can do it then consumers can get it from Austria
you\'d say they\'d have to pay a price, well, yeah, that is agreed how
it works. So, I think that\'s that struggle with that hundred. How do we
write it away, Mardi, that doesn\'t make it so absolute?

DR. MELLON: I\'m absolutely in agreement. We want to write a sentence
that says, you know, in the U.S. right now we couldn\'t, you know, for
any ag product for which there is a GE version we cannot assure absolute
zero. It is impractical and can\'t happen and that\'s \-- it\'s just,
you know, biologically impossible and it\'s practically impossible, so,
we can put that in there, but, I still \-- you know \-- I still think
there is \-- we have to say and, so what. Does it mean that we don\'t
acknowledge that there is this kind of pressure to make it as well as
possible? I think we somehow have to do that. Otherwise, we don\'t need
to write this at all.

We could, you know, as I said at the beginning, maybe we don\'t \-- I
don\'t know that we \-- maybe we don\'t have anything specific to say,
but, we have to acknowledge that pressure, I think.

MS. DILLEY: So, if we can find some language.

MS. GEISERT: So, we don\'t meet the needs of certain consumers. I mean,
I don\'t know what\'s a so what. So, give us what you think the so what.
The pressure is out there if the market drives it. So, what would be so
what? What would you \--

DR. MELLON: I mean, what I\'m saying is that therefore we should put in
place a more stringent, more serious regulatory system that would
actually allow people to offer product that is much lower in GE elements
than we are going to have if we don\'t take any extra care. And, so, I
mean, that\'s a therefore for me. It is a therefore for me to recognize
that from a policy point of view that there are a lot of people who are
\-- you know \-- these are all consumer preferences.

I mean, it could be a consumer preference for a GE product, you know, if
one were to come along. But, these are consumer preferences that people
hold with a degree of intensity that makes them actually politically
important. And, so, if we simply ignore them or tell the USDA that it
can ignore them I think it doesn\'t serve USDA in terms of wanting to
move the fortunes of all three of these kinds of agriculture forward.

So, I would \-- my therefore is that these are preferences; that they
deserve to be taken seriously on their own; that they have political
implications and that we can respond to them by doing a better job in
terms of regulation that we\'re now doing or as a matter of fact we\'re
going to do even if they come up with their new regulations.

DR. LAYTON: I guess what \-- you know \-- we said there\'s cooperation
in market orientation; that that works and that we\'re driving to meet
those market demands. We can\'t do it necessarily all the time
immediately, but, that that is working; that was a factor enabling
coexistence.

I think I was comfortable with that. But, what I think I heard you say
is that you want it to go beyond the market working and the regulatory
efforts in place to push toward that ultimate zero when I don\'t \--
when many customers don\'t want to pay for that regulatory cost and so
you would be regulating additional cost into all of our products simply
for one group of customers to get it.

DR. MELLON: Not necessarily. Not if you\'re in Austria. You know, I
mean, whether there are costs are not depend on a lot of other things,
but, my real point is that I just \-- I don\'t want \-- I\'m backing off
from the notion that somehow we\'re simply going to say we can\'t get to
zero and therefore we\'re going to do nothing.

DR. LAYTON: But, I think we\'ve said the market will go as far as it can
go if there\'s a demand and, so, there has to be enough of a demand for
people who are willing to pay for it that if Sarah had to she would go
to Austria and buy whatever she needed and then sell it into the United
States. She will find a way to make it happen if there\'s a big enough
market and a price at which she can do it and still make a profit.

DR. MELLON: Well, then we need to be clear about that. We need to tell
people the U.S. is not going to take any steps to assure that there is a
product that meets your demand, but, we do perhaps are going to provide
information that it may be you can satisfy it elsewhere in the world. As
to the organic industry in the U.S. it\'s just tough. You\'re not going
to be able to supply the demand and, therefore, as I said, you\'re just
going to \-- we\'re going to solve coexistence by simply letting the
organic community that could have supplied that demand wither away.

MS. DILLEY: Michael has language that I think captures what that
exchange was. So, Michael, why don\'t you throw it out there then.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: And that was "the marketplace cannot currently deliver
zero" in whatever crops, however you want to describe that. That means
\-- well, for particular groups.

MS. DILLEY: We\'re talking about the U.S. so let him say U.S.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: "That means in the U.S. that those who seek to
completely avoid genetically engineered materials in these products may
increasingly need to source products from outside the United States."
Does that \--

MS. DILLEY: It\'s going more dramatically to Mardi\'s point is that you
push the organic group more offshore and whether that\'s an issue for
you or not that\'s what \-- if you\'re saying USDA should support all
three types then that runs contrary to that.

DR. MELLON: Yes, definitely.

MS. DILLEY: I think that\'s what you\'re saying. Okay. So, Nick, and
then Alison, and then Guy.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I\'m trying to decide whether I should open my
mouth or not because I mean I don\'t want to complicate the discussion
we just had.

(Discussion off the record)

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Okay. So, I\'ll give it a try. I actually listened
very carefully to the exchange and I thought that Mardi made a point
which I hadn\'t thought of before which was I think your point in the
sentence was started out as a key of zero and so we all focused on the
fact, well, zero is not possible. But, I think the underlying point that
Mardi might be making is that if you think about it since organic
standards today are process-based so, therefore, they have no AP
threshold, and certainly we cannot satisfy zero practical or otherwise,
and since we don\'t have mandatory labeling for GE products, over time
if the AP content of conventional products continue to increase there is
no market mechanism to bring it back to keep it under a particular
level.

DR. MELLON: Right.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: And, so, the zero is the extreme to express a
concept that have to key that number from sliding down, so, I actually
heard something that wasn\'t in the text which is the point that I never
thought about before. Is there a market mechanism for consumers to
express a desire that I can take .2 but I don\'t want .5 and there is no
market mechanism that I can give you.

So, it\'s an interesting concept. I said, it\'s complicated and I\'m
certain of that. It\'s an interesting concept.

DR. DYKES: But, have you answered your own question though, Nick, in
that if the market\'s working and if this thing builds that we go from
.4 to .5, to, .6 and all of a sudden there\'s a realization in the
market by smaller players or larger players, depending on their scale,
that if some participant in the market realizes that there are a group
of folks out there that would do more, pay more, there\'s a demand for
.1, aren\'t they going to come capture that at .1 and isn\'t that what
we see happening in the market today?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Right. That\'s exactly \-- actually, it begs the
question.

DR. DYKES: There are no GMO strawberries.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Are we saying that there is or there isn\'t a
market mechanism so I think that\'s what markets is saying, is there a
real market?

DR. MELLON: The market mechanism is going to be keeping GE out of
everything. That will be the market mechanism for people to demand. They
will want to say \-- they will say there is just no way that people can
separate and give me a choice, therefore, to the extent I can by putting
pressure on whoever I can, I\'m going to see that there\'s no GE.

DR. LAYTON: But, we just did that in wheat.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, \--

DR. LAYTON: So, it works.

MS. DILLEY: Can we go to the cards in the back? For quite a while people
have been patient so Fuller?

DR. BAZER: I\'m just going to comment that it\'s not zero, but, it\'s
generally recognized as safe. Is there a standard that meets that
criteria then they might not require anybody to label it so it seems
like this issue is drifting more to something we should having the
regulatory agency rather than coexistence and I\'m just wondering if
we\'re not kind of drifting off.

MS. DILLEY: I think that\'s partly what Mardi was saying actually.
Because if it continues to drift and there is no market mechanism then
your option is regulatory or say no, I don\'t want it at all.

DR. BAZER: You can label things as organic. There\'s just no requirement
to read the label as GE or not GE.

MS. DILLEY: Alison, then Guy, and then Adrian.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Yeah. I guess I just want to clarify that we\'re
talking about people that want zero GE. It\'s not really about organic
actually per se.

DR. MELLON: Right, that\'s very true. The coexistence issue is only
where, inadvertently, organic people kind of overlap the GE production
system. In their world this is not the most important thing to them.
They do a hundred, you know, other things that are probably as, if not
more important, but, all of a sudden they wake up in the morning and
find that they cannot simply go out and buy non-GE seed, plant it, and
sell it to the relatively few number of people who want it. They have to
deal with this kind of contamination issue.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: So it\'s not really organic.

DR. MELLON: GE-free.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. DYKES: It started off as organic.

MS. DILLEY: Guy and then \--

DR. DYKES: Then you realize the organics process and contaminants. Then
you get to this. So, start it off, let\'s be honest about it. So,
that\'s probably why we have organic intertwined in here. It\'s the
realization that organic is process-based. That\'s what\'s happening
here.

MS. DILLEY: Guy and then Adrian.

DR. CARDINEAU: I just wanted to reiterate what we\'re talking about is
corn and soybeans here. So, if we\'re talking about an issue with
GE-free, right now in the United States it\'s only corn and soybeans.
And we don\'t know if there\'s ever going to be any, you know, fruits
and vegetables. Michael made the comment about we don\'t have any GE
strawberries. We don\'t have GE tomatoes.

DR. DYKES: There are GMO-free strawberries sold.

MS. DILLEY: That\'s why we\'re talking about free in the future.

DR. CARDINEAU: Well, it\'s belonged and \--

MS. DILLEY: That\'s currently belonging. We\'re talking about the
future, I thought.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: But, just because we\'re talking about corn we\'re
not talking about corn oil and cornstarch and all the other stuff, the
ingredients. I\'m not sure that takes it out of the realm of \--

DR. CARDINEAU: Well, corn oil is completely separate from the corn
proteins or the GE. It\'s absolutely no relationship with oil in
anything. You couldn\'t tell the difference between oil from a GE plant
and oil from a non-GE. It\'s not identified.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: It has nothing to do with the customer choice.

MS. DILLEY: Can Adrian get in here, please.

DR. MELLON: The question is do you want there ever to be a strawberry?

MS. DILLEY: Adrian.

DR. POLANSKY: I guess I\'m just not going to buy into the business that
the market won\'t find a way to provide products that have minimal GE
because there are, and I don\'t necessarily buy into that it will drive
it up, that demand offshore or that market offshore. It might for a
time. It may not. If there is GE-free seed in Austria and somebody wants
to buy GE-free, it\'s a world economy, they can go buy it. If there is
organic farmers that want organic seed and they\'re already producing
organic this business about they can\'t find seed is absolutely foolish
because you\'re already making a market growing organic soybeans for the
market they can easily double their profit margin by growing some
organic seed.

Now, you know, I get a little bit frustrated with some of this rhetoric
that flies around that absolutely in reality doesn\'t make sense. If a
General Mills can access GE-free whatever it is in Europe it here and do
it in a more cost-effective way than we can, that\'s what happens to
world markets and if there\'s producers here that find that they can
access that seed in Austria and bring it here and compete and sell to
General Mills for less than they can ship it across the ocean, then
that\'ll happen.

The market will deal with this is my opinion.

DR. MELLON: Then write that down in the report. Write that down in the
report that if that is going to be the U.S. response is that the
market\'s going to deal with it; that if folks want to \-- if they are
searching for this low GE product they can go offshore; and that the
USDA is going to do absolutely nothing to help those folks meet the
demand other than point out the fact that we have a global market.

That is an honest response. I think a lot of people would say it
reflects pretty much what our current policy is and, you know, I don\'t
think it\'s wise, but, I do think it would be the truth and maybe
writing it down would be instructive.

DR. POLANSKY: But, it doesn\'t necessarily drive it offshore. If
somebody wants to access GE-free seed here I mean that\'s not what I
said. There\'s still options if somebody \-- if there isn\'t GE-free
seed available here and it\'s available someplace, producers can access
that seed and produce it here and it can do it in a way like
communicating with the neighbors and have their \-- that it\'s not
necessarily we\'re going to buy all of this offshore. There\'s options
available and we can do it here.

MS. DILLEY: Anytime we get into future it is partly conjecture and
we\'ve already acknowledged that people on the committee have different
points of view on coexistence so the question is whether we can navigate
those different points of view in a productive way. If we can\'t then we
can\'t write a futures section because we\'ll wind up back on hitting
people \-- hitting each other, particularly sensitive points, which
we\'ve been doing for the last hour, and then we don\'t get anywhere.

So, the question is, do we need a futures section to the report and can
we do it in a constructive way? I don\'t think we\'re going to finish it
between now and 3:00. Something just tells me. But, like if need to
figure out a way to \-- if we\'re committed to writing that futures
section then we need to find a way to do it constructively and we need a
game plan to get it done.

Nancy?

MS. BRYSON: Well, I think that we are already clear on several things
that go into future and maybe we could just sort of say those and set
them aside. We worked through this one bullet on seed. We haven\'t
talked about infrastructure but my sense is there\'s general agreement
about the infrastructure so there are at least three points in the
futures section.

The one that we\'re having trouble with is, as you have said, Abby,
there\'s a lot of issues around zero or ability to find GM-free seed and
maybe the last section of future is a bullet where we say there are
diverse views about \"x\" and say what the \"x\" is if people decide
they want to say these bullets and decide that these three future
bullets that we see clear on are the things that go in there.

But, maybe, you know, people could go away from the discussion and sort
of think about is there a fourth bullet around this that people want to
tee up for some additional discussion. That\'s a suggestion.

DR. LAYTON: You all talked about common testing methodology. But, I
haven\'t found that in what we\'ve got written so I don\'t know if it
just didn\'t get written. It\'s in the tracing and labeling \--
traceability and labeling report. We don\'t have to worry about it.
It\'s already in that.

MS. DILLEY: So we have seed supply for a diverse customer\'s needs. We
have infrastructure and we have \-- what was the third one?

DR. LAYTON: The one we did on \-- Nancy, you mentioned it.

MS. BRYSON: I was just thinking, the infrastructure bullet is longer and
we make that two separate bullets and in the way in the presence section
we broke up these trace things.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, it\'s seed supply and then two infrastructure?

MS. BRYSON: Yeah, infrastructure and three is storage capacity.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. And then the question is whether we have anything on
common testing methodologies and then there\'s this other one that
we\'re wrestling with and we need some folks to go away from this and
come back with a suggestion as to how to do it.

DR. LAYTON: There was one final one that was in the existing report and
this is the one that if you strike the word current, it\'s at the bottom
of page 5, initiatives for encouraging coexistence. For example, through
local farmer to farmer communications are basically at the state and
local levels of government. State localities may not have adequate
resources to conduct such programs and sustain them over the long term.
Also, these may not be integrated with federal and state regulatory
programs.

We never said yes or no, in or out. Nick had mentioned he thought it was
a future issue, not a current issue. So, that one will sit on the table.
If I could just bring that one, we have not made a decision.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Michael. Nick, I don\'t know if your card is up or
down. Is it up or down?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: It is up.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Then can I go to Michael first, then you, and then
Alison.

DR. DYKES: I think we could summarize in the section one broad sentence
that I think captures a lot of what we\'re talking about and it relates
to coexistence. Market preferences \-- consumer preferences in the
marketplace will dictate changes in production practices and
requirements around coexistence for a whole host of different reasons. I
think that\'s what we\'re seeing today. I don\'t think that is a reality
and I think if you look ahead to coexistence you always have to be
thinking about what is the market going to be demanding and how\'s that
going to go back to production level and how are you going to produce
these things to meet the market.

DR. LAYTON: Okay. Consumer preferences will dictate,

DR. DYKES: Changing and general preferences in the marketplace will \--

MS. LEE: Changes in the production practices and requirements for
coexistence for a whole host of different reasons.

DR. DYKES: Something along those lines.

DR. LAYTON: Good girl.

DR. DYKES: Well, I think that does summarize kind of what we said that
25 years from now consumer demanding something about something for this
particular criteria locally grown that wasn\'t around 20 years ago or 30
years ago but it\'s come back today so it\'s changes.

MS. DILLEY: Nick.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Again, I am trying to decide whether I want to
open my mouth.

MS. DILLEY: Usually when you preface that way you\'ve gone ahead, so, go
ahead.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: That was a cheap shot.

(Discussion off the record)

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I mean, I was trying to reflect what Mike just
added on the board. Just for the record, in terms of seed supply there
is today seed trade going back and forth with Austria, France, Germany,
Hungary, and quite a bit of conventional seed is coming from there to
here so this is new. It\'s happening today and so zero or very low AP
can come from those regions.

But, no, I wouldn\'t be satisfied what Mike added. My question is, do we
want to add any sentence that might cover Mardi\'s point that if markets
sometimes don\'t work government looking into it through a regulatory
approach might be a problem. I don\'t know.

MS. DILLEY: And I think we said we need to look at that, but, I don\'t
think we\'re going to resolve it right now.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I\'m satisfied with what Mike added.

MS. DILLEY: You guys just want to keep picking at it because we\'ve got
some more time. Alison, I think you were next.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Did we remove the encouraging coexistence or was your
point in addition to that?

MS. DILLEY: No, we dropped it. It was additional to that. We just added
the word current because we put it in the futures section. Mike.

DR. ENGLER: Just indulge me for a moment because I\'m new to this
debate. It does strike me that we have a very similar debate in our
industry on the definition of natural, natural beef production, and it
centers \-- I learned a lot from you folks \-- it centers around what is
zero. Whole Foods has tried to define natural as never, ever which is on
hormones and antibiotics which, of course, is a zero standard, a zero
tolerance standard.

So, I have coexistence issues with conventional production and natural
production because I can\'t assure that I can make the same feed in a
feed mill for natural production that you can make for \-- allowed for a
conventional production and just a very small nuance to that is that the
feeding of co-products from ethanol plants in the United States is
likely not to be in compliance with the never, ever standard because
they use antibiotics to inhibit bacterial growth during yeast
fermentation in many of these ethanol plants.

So, the coexistence issue is very, very parallel to what you\'re talking
about and I wish that the natural beef industry hadn\'t started down the
road of a zero tolerance standard and it\'s interesting that there\'s
more wiggle room because at least you have freedom to operate in some of
the organic and even some of these other plant systems.

MS. DILLEY: Michael.

DR. DYKES: I think that there are a lot more parallels than that,
Michael. I think what defines those kind of marketplaces that you just
described are no different than what we find in the plant side of things
as well. A lot of these terms, you know, which perspective you come
from. You\'ve got your perspective or a large organization like a Kraft
or General Mills you\'re going to do natural but in your system that has
a definition and has criteria and you\'ve got a real risk if you don\'t
meet it.

If you\'re somebody like my brothers out here with 700 cows, there\'s no
risk if they don\'t meet it. So, what do you want it to be, natural,
ours is natural. What do you want it to be, whatever, that\'s what ours
is so, here, take these three loads of cattle. There\'s a lot of
difference in that. So you get smaller players that will supply anything
to the market without defining what the criteria is and as you get large
you have more risk from being wrong.

The risk of being wrong is too large for larger producers. As the market
grows it becomes more and more important so you get more and more
definitions put around it and then the term natural is defined or there
will be another term that\'ll be used that won\'t be as defined and it
just keeps evolving and that\'s what happened to organic.

Organic started off as one thing and as it\'s become more and more
defined, more and more pressure\'s been put on it, you can come to a
realization that it\'s not what everybody thought it was and so now you
get other terms coming to replace it.

I just think that\'s just a marketplace evolve. There\'s opportunities
in it for participants in the marketplace. It\'s some who participate in
it and others can\'t because the risk is too large.

MS. DILLEY: Leon.

MR. CORZINE: To the point that we\'re on, the bottom of page 5, in my
part of the world, and I think others as well, when you enter the
coexistence issues and the local farmer to farmer things, it\'s not
local and federal or state government doing it, it is more associations.
For example, in the corn world, the National Corn Growers have the
section dedicated web-based to farmer to farmer communications for the
coexistence of organic and conventional and biotech crops.

And, so, I suspect the same goes for the organic association and others
so I don\'t get the government part there because our state government
and I don\'t believe the federal government is really doing anything in
like farmer to farmer communications and I\'m not sure they need to.

DR. LAYTON: Extension agents do it.

MR. CORZINE: Okay. So, extension agents do.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: And there are some states that have entered initiatives
on this. There\'s been some in Hawaii; there\'s one in North Dakota; and
I think a couple of others.

DR. CARDINEAU: Can\'t we add growers associations?

MR. CORZINE: I think maybe we should be because I think you pointed out
some exceptions but I think the majority of the things are done by
associations, not by government.

DR. LAYTON: So, adding grower associations?

MR. CORZINE: Yes.

DR. LAYTON: And you may still want to \-- I don\'t know about the state
and locality. Grower associations may not have resources either, but,
\--

MS. DILLEY: So it\'s mostly just the point is that there may not be
adequate resources for those kinds of programs, whether they\'re based
in government or grower associations or wherever they\'re based, right?

MR. CORZINE: Well, you can always \-- any association or any government
say we don\'t have the resources, right?

DR. LAYTON: We always say that.

DR. DYKES: It\'s always true.

MR. CORZINE: But, the fact of the matter is, there is that
information\'s there. I mean, and then I think the organic folks and
others, Clarkson has a website, you know, opportunities.

MS. DILLEY: If it\'s a truism by Nick\'s evaluation then it should be
eliminated, right? I don\'t know, is that what you\'re saying?

MR. CORZINE: Well, I know that it\'s there. Now, can or should it be
expanded, I guess you could always say it could be, but, we don\'t want
to put or make the assumption and make it bigger because it\'s devoid
now or it\'s done by the federal government or it\'s not done at all.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah. No.

MR. CORZINE: Because really that\'s an indication that coexistence in
the marketplace is working for those kind of things.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. LAYTON: So we\'re still taking out the word, current?

MS. DILLEY: Yes.

DR. LAYTON: At the top.

MS. DILLEY: And add grower associations somewhere.

DR. LAYTON: She did that.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. All right. So we have placeholders for how many
bullets? I think we ended up with one on seed supply, two on
infrastructure, and then we had the initiatives one and the one that
Michael Dykes suggested and then one regulatory one, right? Okay.

So, I think rather than continuing to try and drill down on those,
unless there\'s on that we\'re just completely missing that we move away
from that and talk a little bit about work plan for next session in
getting the paper another step towards completion and then Michael can
introduce the next topic and we can talk about the overall game plan
still trying to adjourn by 3:15.

Michael.

DR. DYKES: Just before we leave it so what do we end up with labor. I
thought we had a question about coexistence and I thought we had a
question about future so I would just like to know where do we end up
with. Like demands for energy, what is that in the future? What does
that have to do with coexistence?

MS. DILLEY: I don\'t think demands for energy we even touched.

DR. LAYTON: Is it in here? It\'s not in the document we\'re looking at.

DR. DYKES: It may not be in the 7/22 but I thought we got to that at
some point in time.

MS. BRYSON: We did. It was in the 5/24 document.

DR. DYKES: Yeah.

MS. DILLEY: That was 5/24 and we\'ve been working off of 7/22 so if you
think demands for energy needs to be in there then that\'s \-- now\'s
the time to \--

DR. DYKES: If you just look at what\'s happening in one year there\'s
probably been the biggest change in production in one year than anything
we\'ve seen.

DR. LAYTON: For coexistence?

DR. DYKES: Well, I mean, from acreage shifts. We\'ve seen acre shifts.

DR. LAYTON: Oh, oh, so, bio \-- okay.

MS. DILLEY: So maybe we need to pull that one up into the future one.

DR. DYKES: I just think it\'s going to raise the question about CRP\'s.
It\'s going to raise the question about a lot of different things.

MS. SULTON: Is labor in or out?

DR. LAYTON: Out.

MS. DILLEY: So we\'ll have to go back and pull that bullet.

DR. DYKES: I just think it\'s something we\'re going to talk about in
the future we might as well look at it.

MR. SLOCUM: We\'re talking about chopping trees to grow more crops.

DR. LAYTON: I know and I\'m saying grow less crops, grow more trees.
That\'ll keep the pollen out of the air.

DR. MELLON: I think all we can do on that is just say, you know, it\'s a
royal of an issue.

MS. DILLEY: So, we\'ve gone through \-- we haven\'t done the last bit of
language but I think what we need to do is take everything we\'ve done
over the last two days and put it in one document. We need to talk to
the six people who had not been in this discussion and get them to
review the document and understand some of the changes and
modifications. Leon, you\'re waving at me?

MR. CORZINE: I think about the labor bullet. I wonder if at least for
now we should leave in there because at least two of the presenters are
organic producers that did raise that as an issue.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: As a coexistence issue.

DR. MELLON: A coexistence issue because Don Cameron and the fellow from
Central Illinois that was a grower, he moved away from it because as his
labor availability went away he might not be able to grow organic any
longer.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: That\'s an existence issue.

MR. CORZINE: Well, it\'s \--

DR. LAYTON: It\'s an existence issue.

MR. SLOCUM: It\'s a pressure on that type of production. And I don\'t
know how you separate all these things to be quite honest about it.
That\'s been Mardi\'s struggle.

DR. MELLON: Right.

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s been when you talk about the labor.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Absolutely.

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s a struggle.

DR. LAYTON: And similarly \--

DR. DYKES: People are going to look one of these days and say we don\'t
have any organic in this country because coexistence and GE ran them
out, you know. I don\'t think that\'s the case. I think it\'s labor
costs are prohibitive to grow it.

MS. DILLEY: Nancy.

MS. BRYSON: Just for people who are interested, this is discussed on
page 12 of the 5/24 draft with a comment and both Nick and maybe Leon
had questioned whether \-- and Mardi had questioned whether the bio
field point was related to coexistence, but, it\'s under this heading,
farmer choices. Insufficient signals for farmers to grow non-GE and
organic crops so it puts the two together I think, the two being labor
and biofuels.

MS. DILLEY: So, we can tuck it in there for now and decide to take it
out later. I think the one piece that maybe we need some people to help
draft is this. We have been struggling with existence, coexistence and
maybe it\'s not that whole section that we had in 5/24, but, maybe we
need some language that tries to capture what Michael just said, what
Jerry said, what Mardi has been saying to try and kind of get what
doesn\'t discretely fit in the bucket of what\'s enabling coexistence
and what\'s inhibiting coexistence that we need to get some kind of
descriptive language in there.

MS. BRYSON: There needs to be a future issue.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah, or for framing the future stuff. But, or maybe it\'s
back in the overview. I don\'t know where it is, but, it just seems like
we\'re both struggling how to say it but it doesn\'t fit quite in these
categories and, so, it just keeps coming back up so maybe we just need
to do some work in writing and drafting some text and putting it before
the committee to try and capture some of the different tensions that
we\'ve been circulating around.

So we need to get a new draft turned around and then we may need to tap
from \-- we need to tap all of you obviously to review the next draft
but I\'m wondering if some of these parts are a little more rough so
that factors inhibiting coexistence and the future stuff I think we\'re
still \-- it wouldn\'t hurt to have another pass. How that\'s done, I
don\'t know, but, maybe what we could do, Michael, is kind of confer and
then maybe put out a proposed next steps for doing a little bit more
work before it goes out to the full committee for another real close
review and then we can see where we are.

Does that make sense to people in terms of the next step? Nick, did you
have a comment on the process piece?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I had a question. As we think about future issues,
is the issue of technological solutions to coexistence somewhere in
another draft? Technical solutions as an example.

MS. DILLEY: What was the last?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Technical solutions. You know, innovation that
solves problems of coexistence.

DR. LAYTON: Slice out the gene in other words.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: In the end turning on and off, switches \--

MS. DILLEY: I don\'t think we have anything. I don\'t think we have had
anything in the past on 5/24. I don\'t think we \--

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: You know, in coexistence that facilitates
coexistence of different copying (sic) systems and so on. And sensor
technology. I mean, there\'s a lot of them out there that are going to
facilitate technical solutions to many of the coexistence problems that
we\'ve been talking about.

The evolution of the tech technology which is applying more and more
pressure so at least as an item to be looked at into the future. All
along I have assumed that since it\'s not been brought up that it was in
another draft, but, I think \--

MS. DILLEY: Not a good assumption.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Okay. So, I would like to have some reference to
the innovation because I think it\'s important.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. It\'s hard to make a decision on specifically that
when we\'re just trying to wrap it up. If you have language that you
want to submit I would go that route, okay. So, if you have some
language that you can articulate in technological solutions that would
be helpful than trying to kind of, in theory, say it\'s in or it\'s out
at this point.

So, could you do that, come up with some language?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I might. I\'m probably not the right guy.

MS. DILLEY: Well, I don\'t know, who is the right person then though. I
mean, we\'re assigning \--

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: A lot of scientists around the table. Guy?

DR. CARDINEAU: Well, I\'m not sure I understand what technical solutions
you\'re \-- terminator?

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Terminator gene as an example.

DR. CARDINEAU: You know, that was very unpopular. To prevent out
crossing it suddenly got to be ooh, this is really wonderful.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: There\'s not a single company or a single
university I know that is not working on a technology of that kind. So,
I don\'t know whether it was at some point \--

DR. CARDINEAU: There is not a state university that\'s not working on
that technology.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, anyway, \--

MS. DILLEY: I don\'t know what to say because I don\'t know if that will
require another full day of discussion to get the right language.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I will try to put together two paragraphs.

MS. DILLEY: Thank you.

DR. LAYTON: Nick, I\'ll tell you something because from the tree side
we\'re looking at sterility.

DR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah. I mean, in the background.

DR. LAYTON: So, it is research, yeah.

MS. DILLEY: It\'s coexistence remember.

DR. LAYTON: You can\'t have GE trees sitting with regular trees unless
you have sterility in the GE trees so that is a technology to do that.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: My only suggestion would be that you try to figure out
three sentences, not a couple of paragraphs.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So can we move off of that and, Michael, you needed to
introduce a couple of \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yes. First off, I\'m not quite sure how timely it is
right now to be introducing the next topic since we clearly have a bit
more work though we\'re obviously a lot closer than we were.

MS. DILLEY: Than we\'ve ever been. We\'re very close. Yeah. A lot of
good work and I wanted to thank Nancy and Daryl again. I think we
certainly wouldn\'t have been as far after this meeting if they had not
taken it up.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: And if you would call Daryl up and relay this from the
committee.

MS. BRYSON: As soon as he gets back from vacation and he\'s reachable.

(Discussion off the record)

DR. SCHECHTMAN: So, I had hoped to be able to say that we were just
going to wrap up some \-- clean up some loose ends on this, but, I think
we have \-- they\'re pretty loose so we have a little bit more work than
we had hoped and I\'m not exactly sure how much time we\'ll be able to
spend at the next meeting actually working on a totally new topic, but,
let me talk a little bit about what we see in the future.

First off, we concede that there\'s going to be some follow up
discussion at the next plenary session on some of the new themes that
Rebecca Bech mentioned yesterday about biotechnology quality management
systems, the approach that APHIS is beginning to consider over the next
months and maybe she\'ll be coming back with some more information in
the interim before our next meeting.

As we\'ve indicated before, we are interested in beginning to discuss
some aspects of the animal side of biotechnology. So, we\'re thinking
about laying out some sorts of ideas. In a general sense, we\'re
thinking about bringing the committee a series of discrete questions for
which a short sense of the committee \-- sense of the committee answers
may be requested than asking you to produce big papers or reports. So,
just some sense of the committee about a few things as we are slowly and
deliberately moving into the area.

DR. DYKES: That\'s a series of questions on animal biotech?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yes. Related to animal biotech. We have enough loose
ends on the work that we have now that what we\'re doing, what we\'re
still working on finishing up could spawn some other little things.
Obviously what Rebecca has talked about has some relation to this as
well.

But, in terms of moving into the animal biotech area in the process of
thinking about some of those questions we also expect that we\'ll be
arranging for some outside expert presentations with the range of
viewpoints coming in to present to you. I have no doubt that once we
start down this road we can also expect some more interest from the
public as well.

So, we plan to bring you questions on a number of topics. Our list is
not final at this point, but, some of the topics could relate to how
these animals will affect the work at USDA along the lines of how will
transgenic animals for different uses, food versus non-food, pose
different kinds of challenges for USDA? Will USDA needs for inspectors
and veterinarians change with these animals move into commercial uses
and, if so, how?

Should USDA gather information relating to ethical and consumer issues
around transgenic livestock animals and, if so, what might be the most
appropriate form for USDA to gather that information? How should or
might that information, if gathered, be used by the government?

In addition, it\'s very possible that down the road there may be some
questions relating to regulatory policies for these organisms as well
that we may in the future wish to bring to you and still other topics
could address potential commercial or trade implications.

We\'d like to keep it to, again, a set of very discreet topics and we
expect that over time and certainly at the next meeting we\'ll at least
be able to flesh out which things and more about which things and in
which order they\'ll be going forward. So, that\'s a general thought
about dipping our toes to transgenic animals.

DR. LAYTON: So, it\'s fish, fowl, and mammals?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Potentially. Livestock.

DR. LAYTON: Well, fish aren\'t livestock.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah, they are.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Yeah, they are.

DR. LAYTON: That\'s what I\'m trying to find out, what animals are we
talking about?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Fish, fowl, and livestock.

MS. DILLEY: Raised for food.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I\'m not sure that \--

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Aquaculture is agriculture.

DR. LAYTON: Aquaculture is agriculture.

MS. DILLEY: So, do people have questions about that and then we need to
talk about when are \-- about when we\'re thinking about the meeting and
then we\'ve got three kind of moving parts. We\'ve got the new charge,
we\'ve got following up to Rebecca\'s questions, and then we also have
finishing the paper. So, obviously, we\'ll have more or less time to
take on a new charge depending on what all would be helpful to Rebecca,
to BRS, for responding to their questions on the biotech quality
management system and then how much work we can do on the paper to
finish that up between now and the next meeting.

So, those are kind of moving pieces. Michael, you had a question and
then Alison.

DR. DYKES: Just a thought. We don\'t work on things \-- we have
different for which we work on things so, we being the committee. So, we
have long days on storming and forming deal and when we get finished
with all the discussion we can come down pretty close. We can lock down
on final language fairly quickly at the tail end of that.

So, I would wonder is if we said we\'re going to need some sense that we
maybe shouldn\'t do these in parallel because when we introduce a new
topic we\'re going to have to have a lot of discussion and brainstorming
and forming around the thing as opposed to where we are with coexistence
where I think we\'ve got most of that out of the way and we\'re down to
kind of in and out clamping down on it.

So, the next thing we\'re going to do is Rebecca\'s questions I think we
could benefit from a little more structure around exactly what is the
question and what is the request, what is the expectation. Do you want a
report, do you want a one-page response, do you want just one discussion
of that meeting?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: About Rebecca?

DR. DYKES: Rebecca\'s.

DR. LAYTON: Isn\'t it a conversation?

DR. DYKES: I don\'t know.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yeah. My sense \-- that\'s a good question \-- is that
it is probably a conversation.

DR. DYKES: So, to me, then I would say if that\'s the case then I almost
think that we could allot some time, however much time we want to give
that, a day, a half day, whatever, if we had the questions given to us
ahead of time with exactly what you wanted to discuss I think we could
do that for half a day and then finish up on coexistence the other day
and a half or whatever.

That\'s why I\'m saying I think we can build a parallel rather than
finish coexistence before we ever start the other thing because starting
something new is a whole different thing.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yes, the intent and the expectation was that we would
send out to you the questions that Rebecca posed that if there were
additional developments that we could provide to you on APHIS\' thinking
on that before the next meeting we would do that as well and that we
would have a follow on conversation on that subject at the next meeting
and that would take up a piece of the next meeting.

I can\'t say for certain that that would end that discussion, but, that
would be one significant piece of it.

DR. DYKES: I might ask when you get that to us just get it to us with
plenty, like a month or more lead time at least so we\'ve got time to
gather input and reflect on it.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I can get \-- we can get you the questions that she put
up on the board obviously very quickly. We can send that right to you.

DR. MELLON: I mean, we\'re not understanding.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I understand that. I can\'t get you the cake before
it\'s baked.

MS. DILLEY: Why not?

DR. DYKES: Spend some time with Rebecca perhaps and get a little bit of
context of what those questions are.

MS. DILLEY: I think you\'ll need a couple of different pieces to be able
to be as productive as possible in that conversation for the committee
to provide what USDA is looking for. It\'s clarity around what do you
want, how do you want it, you know, is a report, is it a conversation,
what are the particular questions, and give us a little bit more about
context in terms of how we\'re trying to respond to those questions.

So, then that\'ll help shape what that conversation looks like.

DR. DYKES: If we come in and have a conversation it may be the end of it
and that\'s different than getting ready for two or three meetings about
the storming and then we\'re going to \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: No, we\'ll try to get you as much information as we can
as soon as it\'s available and we\'ll press the point that you\'d like
to see it sooner rather than later.

MS. DILLEY: Alison, Mardi, and then Greg.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Well, I just \-- about the animal thing, I was just
wondering if you can tell me what is meant by animal biotechnology.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I think the answer to that, our prime interest is
transgenics but I think we also recognize that if that to say that
talking about cloned animals is entirely off the table is going to be
very difficult to do so I think that there\'s undoubtedly going to be
some conversation about transgenic \-- about cloned animals because
they\'re attached to the subject, at least in part because all the
transgenics are likely to involve some cloning steps as well for
propagation, many of them.

MS. DILLEY: This is not just on transgenics but \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: This is on transgenics but I think there will
undoubtedly be some conversation that is going to have to \-- you know,
that is going to take place and there are undoubtedly \-- the issue of
cloned issues is not an issue that is within USDA\'s purview and that\'s
a particular reason that we don\'t see it as the main focus there
obviously are going to be some sorts of implications for USDA and
whether those things get tackled possibly down the road I don\'t have a
specific answer.

MS. DILLEY: Mardi and then Greg.

DR. MELLON: I was just going to point out maybe in support of Michael\'s
suggestion that we look at the coexistence effort and somehow kind of in
tandem with Rebecca\'s questions basically involving the same issues. I
mean, the reason, you know, this is talking about the quality of the
regulatory system, its ability to deliver not entirely but in part, you
know, products that have certain characteristics and in particular these
two things from cross contamination, so, these are not separate issues
at all.

MS. DILLEY: Greg.

DR. JAFFE: Yeah. Couple of things. One, you know, now that we\'re moving
onto transgenic animals I would do two things. One, is I would ask for
questions and definitely begin at the next meeting and spend half our
time or something on transgenic animals, whatever we can, and I look at
this committee \-- the charter of this committee ends with this
Administration and, so, starting this fiscal year we have four meetings,
in the next fiscal year it will be one more meeting so five meetings
total and I think we don\'t get started at the next meeting on
transgenic animals we won\'t get very far on transgenic animals and, so,
I think we should at least start that topic in the next meeting and
spend a significant, you know, whether it\'s half or 40 percent or some
amount of time on that while looking on the coexistence and that\'ll
give us an incentive to do more coexistence before that meeting and
really just do the final stuff.

The work expands to fill the time and we could spend one or two more
meetings on coexistence also we have to start and do it in serial
fashion and there are a lot of new people on the committee who have
their degrees in animals or somebody like Daryl who\'ve been on the
committee for five years waiting for the transgenic animals, so \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: And lack of expertise.

DR. JAFFE: So, I mean, I think it\'s really important we start on that.
With that in mind, you just mentioned that cloned animals aren\'t under
USDA\'s purview. There are a number of us who aren\'t familiar with what
is and what isn\'t in the purview regarding transgenic animals and
cloned animals and so forth and obviously you\'ve done a lot of thinking
of staff and what\'s the authority for it and I noticed the use of
regulatory issues is second on your list so I think we need background
at the first meeting on that and a presentation by the USDA about what
their potential authorities are and where their thinking is on those
type of things and clearly cloned animals are important to USDA\'s
purview. You just said that it would be helpful for us to have the
background on all of that.

So, I would push for that.

DR. LAYTON: Perhaps a briefing from FDA on what is \--

DR. JAFFE: Well, we\'re focusing on USDA so I think it would be
important to focus on USDA. If FDA also wants to give something that\'s
fine, but, it\'s USDA asking the questions and Rebecca talked about they
have a whole group of staff, they have a whole union, whatever it is
working on transgenic animals in BRS, so, what they\'re working on.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Insects.

DR. JAFFE: So, they also do Animal Welfare Protection Act so they do
other \-- that\'s more than insects.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: A different part of APHIS, but, yes.

DR. JAFFE: I understand. Because that would be my comment on that, on
the transgenic animals. In terms of the question Rebecca Bech asked and
things like that I guess I would request that we have some sort of
background paper in advance of the meeting. I mean, the presentation she
gave us was very nice and helpful. Getting the questions is also
helpful, but, obviously she didn\'t get permission to come to this
committee if they didn\'t have more thinking behind that at the agency
and a background paper of some sort, six or seven pages or something
that articulates the quality management program. I don\'t know what that
means. I don\'t work in the industry and so forth, but, to be able to
get that and talk about compliance, providing us information with what
they\'ve done historically or something to know what we\'re talking
about changing would be helpful.

So, I would request not just getting the questions and not just having
another presentation before we have a discussion, but, if we could have
some sort of background paper that really flushes some of the context
out, that would be very helpful.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: We\'ll try.

MS. DILLEY: Michael.

DR. DYKES: I\'m right where Greg is. I was going to suggest that we \--
there are two things. My understanding too is they did an investigation
on the rice issue which I don\'t think that\'s been done but that\'s
going to be done and prior we had a conversation and it would be helpful
to make sure we have the findings of the investigation because I think
we\'re talking about this issue of management systems in an abstract
that would be very helpful to us.

And I also agree with Greg on give us some more context about she
mentioned compliance officer and why don\'t you give us a context about
\-- we\'ve got to have an understanding of what it is you\'re doing
today plus what findings you have provided the investigation is complete
by now. Then we\'d have something more specific of which to comment on.

MS. DILLEY: Any other comments or questions? Fuller?

DR. BAZER: I think, what was it, four years ago or five years ago, USDA
and FDA sponsored a National Academy work with transgenics and cloned
animals and it might be useful to make that available for reference to
people so they can look at that.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I will see how many copies of that study that I still
have around.

DR. BAZER: It may be on the website.

DR. MELLON: Trust me, you don\'t. You can go back there but that was
written when they didn\'t have a single \-- they didn\'t have a single
piece of data to look at so I think the issue is beyond it.

DR. VAN EENENNAAM: Actually, for people who don\'t know anything about
it, I mean, it\'s got a lot of background material that might help
people understand, you know, transgenic animals.

MS. DILLEY: So there may be other reference materials that would help
with background information.

DR. MELLON: I mean, but, we do need to do some thinking about it. I
mean, FDA has this really quite remarkable stand-alone no regulatory
context at all risk assessment of their own cloning which leaves all the
regulatory issues unaddressed from the FDA standpoint but dose provide a
lot of \-- you know \-- it does give you I think a good look at the
state of some of the risk science, but, some thinking does probably need
to go into \-- you know \-- what are the issues we\'re going to address
and how \-- how do all the pieces that are already out there fit for the
purposes of what we need to do.

I mean, there\'s the question \--

MS. DILLEY: Part of it is what questions they\'re going to ask so there
is some general background and then there is more tailored to the
particular questions that are going to come before the committee.

DR. MELLON: There might be a decision on risk assessment for example and
you could look at that.

MS. DILLEY: Jim.

DR. ROBL: Since this is the area that we work in we deal with all of
those agencies and it seems to me that there is a very good set of
regulations in place with the FDA. USDA is really not very involved
other than from the animal welfare standpoint, so, in the context of
regulations that already exist I think it is important to review those
regulations before we start from scratch and try to create something
that already exists.

MS. DILLEY: I think people are asking for a briefing on what\'s the
regulatory structure and who\'s in charge of what and with specific
attention to what role USDA\'s is and that\'s the advisory committee at
USDA.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: And it\'s fair to say that all of the agencies involved
in this are looking carefully and reviewing their authorities and what
they have in place and, you know, just sort of state that interest.

I mean, the difficulty is, of course, when decisions haven\'t been made
it\'s very hard to get folks to come and tell you what things they\'re
thinking about when they\'re likely to discard them.

DR. LAYTON: I guess \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: It\'s difficult to do.

DR. LAYTON: \-- I guess \-- so I still want to tease back out. Are we
talking, I think Nancy said livestock, which include fish, but, are we
also \-- are you looking at \-- we\'re not going to look at insects,
we\'re not going to look at things like that. And that\'s the question
that I was hoping we could say. Are we tying this to just the more
traditional USDA livestock production kind of stuff?

DR. MELLON: We\'re going to look at horses and mules and research
animals, pets.

MS. DILLEY: That\'s a question for the Secretary. What\'s the scope that
they want us to look at.

DR. LAYTON: Yeah. That was really \-- I think that\'s one of the key \--
you just used the term transgenic animals and I probably think that
there are people who are out there transgenically or genetically
engineering things that aren\'t USDA like that fish that we had, the
Glowfish^®^, so, are we eliminating Glowfish^®^ or are we not? Dogs?

MS. DILLEY: Do you know general time frame when the next meeting? We\'ll
collect calendars, but, do we have the months that we might want to
collect calendars for? November, December, October, November, October,
November, December?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: October, November, December. That\'s right. This meeting
was particularly hard to find a time and obviously with lots of people
who couldn\'t make it to this meeting and if we get everyone to the
meeting we\'ll have real problems fitting in the room, but, that\'s for
me to worry about.

MS. DILLEY: Part of it is wanting to do it soon enough that we don\'t
forget everything of our conversation we\'ve just had for two days and
make it that much harder to finish the paper but we also need some prep
time for the context you\'re looking for for the other two pieces, the
animals piece and the questions from BRS.

(Discussion off the record)

MS. DILLEY: Anything else before we adjourn?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Oh, let me just make one point and that\'s to something
I said earlier. If we\'re going to go and really have success at
finishing the document that we worked on for the last two days we need
to get everyone to submit comments on all of the drafts, even if it\'s
to say this is fine with me, I have no comments, that would be worth
knowing.

We haven\'t had a set of shy people around the room so there were more
comments in fact than were represented on paper and for us to be able to
lead the discussion as well as we need to and move it towards conclusion
we need to get everyone fully engaged in all of the inter-sessional
work.

MS. DILLEY: Pat, anything else you want to do?

DR. LAYTON: No. I\'d like to congratulate us all on really an amazing
amount of work to this week and making decisions about utilizing
whichever resource, which paper we use, and working very hard to get
through, condensing, and really I know that it is difficult to \-- you
know \-- we have issues that we all need to say and just trying to
decide because I saw a lot of us trying to say was this really
coexistence, especially on this topic, because I think it\'s one we\'ve
had difficulty getting our arms around.

So, I think that really keeping to our definition and making sure that
we\'re doing only those things that we\'re asked to do keeps us on
target and keeps the paper short and keeps our meeting and process and I
just encourage us to continue on this level of work to where we get this
done and make sure that we\'re not just saying truisms and things like
that. So, I like that term.

So, I wish us all the best. I know that there\'s a retirement party for
somebody.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Ron DeHaven who was here last time, who was the
Administrator \-- or is the Administrator of APHIS through this week, is
heading off to become the CEO and Executive Vice President of the
American Veterinary Medical Association and there\'s a going-away party
that started 12 minutes ago in theory outside on the patio for him.

DR. LAYTON: Anyway, good luck and have a safe trip home.

(Whereupon, at 3:12 p.m., the meeting was adjourned.)

[]{.underline} Digitally signed by Beverly Jason

[ELECTRONIC CERTIFICATE]{.underline}

DEPOSITION SERVICES, INC., hereby certifies that the attached pages
represent an accurate transcript of the electronic sound recording of
the proceedings before the United States Department of Agriculture.

![](media/image1.png){width="3.0458333333333334in"
height="0.8909722222222223in"}

Beverly Jason, Transcriber