Testimony Before the

**Committee on Agriculture**

**Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture**

By John M. McClung

Texas Produce Association

October 3, 2007

Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee. My name is John McClung. I am
President of the Texas Produce Association, headquartered in Mission,
Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley. The association represents the
interests of growers, shippers and importers of fresh fruits and
vegetables. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to appear before you
today to present my association's views on produce import inspections
and this nation's efforts to defend itself against destructive foreign
pests.

As I'm sure you know, the fresh fruit and vegetable industry is rapidly
globalizing. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has just released a
study entitled "Increased U.S. Imports of Fresh Fruits and Vegetables."
That study points out that between 1990-1992 and 2004-2006, average
annual imports into this country jumped from \$2.7 billion to \$7.9
billion. It also reported that 44 percent of U.S. fresh fruit
consumption and 16 percent of fresh vegetables came from imports in
2003-2005. That's up from 31 percent for fresh fruit and 9 percent for
vegetables in 1983-1985.

Texas, as a southern border state with a strong investment in produce,
has been directly and substantially impacted by the surge in imports.
Some 20 years ago, Texas was the number three producer of fresh fruits
and vegetables among the states. When the 2001 block grants to
horticulture were passed by the Congress, with distribution based on
sales volume, Texas had slipped to tenth place, tied with New York.
Importantly, that ranking was based solely on domestic production. In
reality, distribution from Texas to consumers nationwide increased over
those same years; the apparent discrepancy was, and is, that over 50
percent of our sales within the state and outside the state are of
foreign produce, the great bulk of it from Mexico. In 2005, for example,
Texas points of entry from Mexico recorded some 76,577 loads of fresh
fruits and vegetables. At 40 to 44,000 pounds per load, that's obviously
a lot of produce.

Let me give you just one specific example. Last year, Texas imported
some 20,000 forty pound boxes of large limes from Mexico. That's most of
the limes we consume in the U.S. Go back 25 years or more, and those
limes came from Florida. There probably aren't 200 commercial acres of
limes left in Florida, nor are there commercial acres elsewhere in the
U.S. By comparison, we only produced some 10,000 forty pound boxes of
oranges and grapefruit combined, so our imports of limes were about
double our production of citrus in the state. And we expect the business
to grow. For Texas, that growth is driven by greater consumer demand,
and also by business realities. At the current price of diesel fuel, it
costs roughly \$1000 to \$1500 less to run a truck to the East Coast if
it comes through South Texas than if it enters the U.S. further west.
That makes a lot of difference to the bottom line of importers and
truckers alike.

I can't resist pointing out that unless the Congress is able to quickly
resolve the immigration reform issue, more and more of the
grower/shippers in Texas will accelerate the trend of moving production
to Mexico and elsewhere offshore. I have no one on the board of the
association, and few of any size in the industry, who are not working
both sides of the frontier. If we cannot secure labor in the U.S., we
will move operations to where we can find labor. Then we will have
succeeded in outsourcing yet another U.S. industry.

Back to the issue at hand. The core problem is that as imports increase,
so do the risks from foreign pests. We spend a lot of time in the Rio
Grande Valley trying to figure out how to avoid infestation by citrus
canker or greening. We've watched these two bacterial diseases devastate
the fresh citrus industry in Florida, and in the process defeat the best
efforts of state and federal government to prevent their introduction
and then curtail their spread. We are exceedingly fearful that should
either of these two diseases gain a foothold in Texas, they would
decimate our citrus industry in short order. We only have some 28,000
acres of citrus in Texas, compared with about 700,000 acres in Florida
and 335-350,000 acres in California. Our entire commercial citrus
production area is only about 50 miles long and maybe 20 miles deep, so
we feel terribly vulnerable.

And these are only two examples of potential pests that could do us
grave economic damage in both our fruit and vegetable sectors. For many
years, we have battled against Mexican Fruit Flies in the Rio Grande
Valley, where we are at the northern extreme of their range. I am
pleased to report that because of an increased effort on the part of
USDA to suppress Mexflies in the state, we finally appear to be winning
that battle, at least for now. Any advances we have made have been the
result of expanded resources and focused attention from APHIS in both
the U.S. and Mexico. That is the kind of effort we need at our borders
to deal successfully with many other pests.

Our shield against these threats is the government's import inspection
service. Following 9/11, as we are all well aware, the Agriculture
Quarantine Inspection functions previously housed in the Agriculture and
Plant Inspection Service at USDA were transferred over to the Department
of Homeland Security. The industry thought the shift unwise at the time,
but the momentum could not be successfully challenged.

Since then, we have worked diligently to try to get the Department of
Homeland Security to put the proper emphasis on AQI, but we have been
consistently disappointed. In the competition within the agency between
"bugs" and "thugs," we inevitably play second fiddle. When we complain,
we always get various versions of two themes from the agency; sometimes
they tell us they are aware of the problem, they're working on it, they
just need a little more time. On other occasions they tell us they have
bested the early organizational problems and are actually doing a better
job of it than APHIS ever did. We simply don't agree.

I won't try to improve on the GAO review of AQI functions released in
May of 2006, but I will tell you that we generally agree with that
analysis. It is of real concern to us that while DHS insists there are
more inspectors working on agriculture because of cross-training, in
fact the GAO study confirmed that even the previous APHIS inspectors
were doing fewer product inspections and more non-agriculture work. In
another telltale measure, some 60 percent of inspectors felt their job
was not respected by CBP officers and management.

In talking with inspectors and supervisors at the Pharr/Reynosa bridge,
which is about five miles from my office and is the most important
produce port-of-entry by far between Texas and Mexico, employees are
very guarded about what they say, but they are quick to tell you that
they can only skim the surface because they are just too few and
resources are too limited given the emphasis on border security and
terrorism.

I do want to note that we had our differences with APHIS, too, when that
agency was responsible for AQI. Perhaps one of the most vexing issues
for the industry was, and continues to be, the government's insistence
on working bankers' hours at the crossing points. It is the nature of
our perishable industry to want to move product in the afternoon, after
picking and packing in the morning, but it is government's nature to
quit for the day at about 4 or 4:30 in the afternoon. So our trucks sit
on the bridge approaches or in impoundment lots over night. But that's a
worry for another day, and in any event, we in industry aren't always as
efficient as we might be.

In fairness, DHS does seem to be trying to improve the AQI function. But
in the grand scheme of things, they are much more inclined to put
resources into counter terrorism than they are into foreign pest
prevention. The irony is that in economic terms, the real terrorists may
well prove to be the six and eight legged variety. One credible recent
study put economic damage from foreign pests at around \$120 billion
annually. I'm not aware that terrorists slipping across our borders are
exacting such a toll. It is also obvious that there were many
difficulties during the long transition period between USDA and DHS that
have either been addressed, to some extent, or at least papered over.
And there are those who believe that it would be best at this point to
try to make the most of DHS rather than creating a whole new period of
upheaval by sending AQI back to USDA. But it is our perception that
import protections actually are eroding at the very time they should be
improving.

The coalition of some 120 regional, state and national produce
organizations working on Farm Bill issues---the Specialty Crop Farm Bill
Alliance---recommends a transfer back to APHIS. Our objectives are
simple to explain, if not to implement: we want a federal AQI program
housed in an agency that puts foreign pest exclusion above all other
priorities, and we believe the experience of the past few years shows
that only can happen in the long run under USDA. We advocate legislation
consistent with the proposals from Chairman Cardoza, Senator Feinstein
and others to move AQI back to where it originated, for good reason, in
USDA.

Again, thank you for allowing me to testify today.