UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

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ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON :

BIOTECHNOLOGY AND 21ST CENTURY :

AGRICULTURE (AC21) :

THIRTEENTH PLENARY MEETING :

:

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A meeting in the above-entitled matter was held on Thursday, August 30,
2006, commencing at 8:26 a.m., at the USDA, 1400 Independence Avenue,
S.W., Washington, D.C. before:

Dr. Michael Schechtman, Designated Federal Official, USDA

Dr. Patricia Layton, Chairperson

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

Abby Dilley, RESOLVE

Kathy Grant, RESOLVE

Cynthia Sulton, HW&W

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

Josephine Hunt

Russell Kremer

Sarah Geisert

Carol Tucker Foreman

Duane Grant

Margaret Mellon

Michael Dykes

Sharon Wiener

Elizabeth Milewski

Lisa Zannoni

Adrian Polansky

Alison VanEenennaam

Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes

Bradley Shurdut

Carole Cramer

Daryl Buss

Gregory Jaffe

Jerome Slocum

Marcia Holden

[PRESENTATIONS]{.underline}

[Page]{.underline}

Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner 33

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

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the second day of the
USDA Advisory Committee on Agricultural Biotechnology and 21st Century
Agriculture. Our meeting, I\'m pleased to turn over the chairing of this
meeting to the official committee chair, Dr. Patricia Layton, who got in
here late last night and is joining us now.

DR. LAYTON: Good morning and welcome. I would rather have been with you
yesterday, all day, than what I was doing, but, I understand that you
carried on amply in my absence and had wonderful presentations which
just says something about my absence. I may get kicked off the committee
because it was so successful. I\'m very happy to be here this morning
though with you and we have a lot to get done today and we\'re expecting
Deputy Secretary Conner in about 35 minutes.

So, we\'ll just move right into \-- welcome to the new members, by the
way. I haven\'t met Sarah yet, so, Sarah, good morning. I think I got to
everyone else. And it\'s good to be here and have you on board with us.
So, with that, I\'d like to go ahead and have Abby continue our
discussions from yesterday. Abby is in and ready to go.

MS. DILLEY: Good morning. We have just to briefly go over the agenda. As
Pat mentioned, Deputy Secretary Conner will be here at nine at which
point we\'ll present and discuss the consensus report and then take a
break from 10:40 to 11:00 and then come back and by the end of the day
adjourning it for work on specific work plan by the group in terms of
how you want to go about doing your work, trying to capture a statement
that helps clarify what we\'re doing and how we want to go about doing
it.

So, we wanted to spend \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: May I just interrupt for a second?

MS. DILLEY: Yes.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I\'m going to interrupt for a second because I just
noticed that the agenda is slightly incorrect. The break is supposed to
be from 9:40 until 10:00 and from 10:00 till 12:00 is supposed to be the
discussion.

MS. DILLEY: So, the gap in the agenda has now been explained. So, we
have lots of time for discussion of a work plan and trying to get our
arms around what we want to do. Again, I think building on yesterday we
had a very good number of presentations, lots of information, good
discussion by the committee and now we need to start honing in on so
what does that mean, how can we take that information and process it to
what we are going to do and how we\'re going to do it to meet our
charge.

And we were going back and forth on language a little bit and we could
probably at least start with a statement this morning and see if we can
continue to refine it and work with it a little bit. If we get to a
solid statement in the half hour we have before the Deputy Secretary
comes, terrific. If we don\'t, we\'ll come back to it after the break
and continue to work on it.

I think part of it\'s a very iterative process. We don\'t necessarily
need to reach consensus on language, particularly right now, word for
word, but, it may be that we try and work on the statement and then talk
about what we want to do and how we want to do it and then come back to
the sentence again.

So, we\'ll see where it goes, but, certainly by the end of today have a
clear sense of what we\'re doing and how we\'re going about our work.
Okay. With that, I think I thought we\'d start with a statement that\'s
up on the flip chart, and I\'m sorry for those of you who can\'t see it
very well, but, it basically says in an increasing complex marketplace.
And we talked a lot about the marketplace and how it\'s complex now,
but, it\'s going to be increasingly complex as the anticipation and we
talked about that in terms of the increasing introduction of more
traits, different products, and production systems.

What will USDA need to consider to facilitate or support coexistence.
And we talked about coexistence in a lot of different ways too. I think
we added some. We started with the sense of protecting choice for
farmers, customers as consumers. We also talked about respectful
competition. We talked about \-- looked at what Lynn Clarkson, the way
he was kind of defining it in terms of what you want, when you want it,
and avoid what you don\'t want as a way of kind of capturing his sense
of navigating a complex marketplace.

So, it\'s a mixture of those things. We didn\'t really land on
terminology where they were going to use that terminology but I think
we\'re starting to get a sense of what we need around that term. We just
need to try and pin it down a little bit more. So, that was a statement
where I thought at least we\'d start and see if that\'s at least makes a
first attempt at capturing some language that makes sense.

So, again, I\'ll just read it again for those of you who can\'t see it.
In an increasing complex marketplace what will USDA need to consider to
facilitate or support coexistence? Thoughts or reactions to a first run
at that? Mardi.

DR. MELLON: I mean, at a minimal we have to have coexistence between. I
mean, coexistence, that\'s like saying go have what? I mean, I think the
choices are, you know, we could focus between, you know, between farmers
that are using GM products and organic farmers or something about
between people who are serving, what was the term, biotech versed
markets and those that are not.

But, I think, you know, we have to \-- coexistence by itself doesn\'t
have any meaning.

MR. SLOCUM: What do you mean, coexistence among competing production
systems?

MS. DILLEY: Among competing production systems?

DR. POLANSKY: Do they need to really be competing, the production
systems?

DR. MELLON: They might compete and they might not.

DR. POLANSKY: I mean, they might compete but I don\'t think that\'s
relevant to coexistence.

DR. MELLON: In a lot of cases they don\'t.

DR. POLANSKY: Right.

MR. SLOCUM: They would compete for land, but, it\'s really not relevant.

MS. DILLEY: So, Adrian, you\'re suggestion was among production systems?

DR. POLANSKY: Yes.

DR. HUNT: Among different production systems.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Among different production systems?

DR. POLANSKY: Yeah.

MS. DILLEY: So, it now reads that in an increasingly complex marketplace
what will USDA need to consider to facilitate or support coexistence
among different production systems?

DR. LAYTON: Do they have to be different? I don\'t mean to be funny,
but, aren\'t the production systems the same? It\'s just one\'s got
biotech in it and the others don\'t?

MR. SLOCUM: Sure. One can be organic and one can be influenced by
biotech and one can be a combination of three.

DR. LAYTON: I mean, organic is definitely a different production system.
But, is biotech cotton any different than non-biotech conventional
cotton system? Okay. I just wanted to make sure we\'re not being \--

MS. DILLEY: Does that make it clear? Does that need some more
definition? Brad?

DR. SHURDUT: Would it make sense to put again agricultural production
systems again, not to be too specific, but, \--

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Different agricultural production systems? This is a
USDA committee, so, \--

MR. SLOCUM: Maybe agricultural goes in front of marketplace.

MS. DILLEY: In an increasingly complex agricultural marketplace? No? So,
let me say it where we are right now. In an increasingly complex
marketplace what will USDA need to consider to facilitate or support
coexistence and on different agricultural production systems? Daryl?

MR. BUSS: Why don\'t we just start it with the word "what" and delete
that first phrase?

MS. DILLEY: You don\'t think the increasingly complex marketplace
doesn\'t help at all?

MR. BUSS: No.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Nick and then Steve.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Coexistence in my view is not just about
production. It\'s about the whole supply chain so, you know, the issue
cuts across the whole supply chain, not just the farm node.

MS. DILLEY: So you want to say agricultural production and supply
systems?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I\'m not really sure what the exact expression is,
but, my point is by saying agricultural production system you\'re only
thinking production and agriculture and in my book that\'s not totally
correct.

MR. PUEPPKE: And only think of one part of the chain.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Right.

MS. DILLEY: The food supply. Michael?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yes. Is what you\'re saying that it\'s coexistence for
the products of different agricultural production systems? I don\'t know
if you talked about coexistence of products, but, \--

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I\'m not really sure how to say. I\'m just saying
that by saying what we are saying we are making it too narrow.

MR. SLOCUM: Maybe it\'s coexistence in an increasingly complex
agricultural marketplace.

MS. DILLEY: I didn\'t hear it.

MR. SLOCUM: I just thought maybe it\'s facilitating more coexistence in
an increasingly complex agricultural marketplace. Maybe agricultural is
not the right thing. Maybe food, feed, and fiber is there. I don\'t
know. But, next point is that coexistence has a lot more \-- to me,
coexistence among producers is only a tiny part of it.

DR. MELLON: It\'s the marketplace.

MR. SLOCUM: It\'s transportation, food handlers, processors.

MS. GEISERT: I say it\'s the supply chain we\'re really talking about.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, coexistence among an increasingly complex supply
chain? Is that \--

MR. CORZINE: Do production and delivery systems do it? Is that not
enough?

MS. DILLEY: Production and delivery systems, is that what you said,
Leon?

MR. SLOCUM: Manufacturing and processing.

MR. CORZINE: I guess that would be part of my definition, delivery
systems.

MS. DILLEY: So are we among or in? Are we trying to define the
marketplace? Who\'s coexisting or what\'s coexisting or are we trying to
explain the environment? Michael, we\'re trying to work a statement that
we\'re expressing ourselves.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: What if we use the word the food systems rather
than production systems.

MS. DILLEY: Food systems.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: It might avoid trying to define production,
transportation, processing and so on and \--

MR. SLOCUM: Food systems, food chain?

MS. DILLEY: Different food systems or is it in an increasingly complex
system?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I didn\'t have a problem with the complex
marketplace. You know, I find this a factual statement. So, I am more
\-- I\'m honing more on the coexistence aspect of it and so I\'m trying
to find a substitute for production systems and maybe food systems makes
it understandable by going from production at the end.

MR. PUEPPKE: But, you\'re thinking deliberately about excluding plants
for other \-- for non-food purposes in thinking about \--

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah, that\'s right. By saying what I\'m saying
I\'m \-- by before then I\'m doing that, yes, and I don\'t necessarily
mean to do that.

DR. HUNT: How about something along the lines before coexistence in
response to market demands? It\'s putting the market back here and I
think there\'s, uh, coexistence needs to reflect what it is that the
market is demanding.

MS. DILLEY: And, so, then you don\'t have within that statement about
"coexistence among..." You need that, coexistence?

DR. HUNT: Yeah. We need something to relate it back to.

MS. DILLEY: You have different production, agricultural production
systems? Should we insert that back in there?

DR. LAYTON: Or is it biotechnology \-- biotech products' coexistence in
the marketplace. Nick, I think I missed your language. Was it food?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah, food systems. But, \--

MS. DILLEY: Different food systems?

DR. LAYTON: No.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Just to point out, you know, I\'m excluding, for
example, fiber. I\'m excluding biopharmaceuticals. So, \--

MS. DILLEY: Right. Michael, is that your card?

DR. DYKES: Yes. How about coexistence of the different production,
however you had it in that last, in the other piece?

MS. DILLEY: Different agricultural production.

DR. DYKES: In a diverse marketplace. I think that takes in complexity.
That takes in the vast number of products, growing number of products.

MR. SHURDUT: Why don\'t you just add a clause "and across the supply
chain?" I mean, keep your agricultural systems and so amongst competing
agricultural systems across agricultural production systems and across
the food chain or the supply chain.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So you want \--

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: What about agri-food systems.

MS. DILLEY: Agri-food systems?

DR. LAYTON: That still leaves a \--

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Not necessarily.

MS. DILLEY: That\'s coexistence among or within?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Coexistence of.

MS. DILLEY: Of.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Among.

MS. DILLEY: Among diverse agri-food systems.

DR. LAYTON: I think that leaves out the pharmaceuticals, the trees, and
everything else.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Agriculture covers PMP\'s because it\'s
agricultural production. You\'re still producing them.

MS. DILLEY: Agriculture? Agri-systems and then we have to define what we
mean by agri-systems?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: No.

MS. DILLEY: Just so long as we\'re all on the same page.

DR. DYKES: Can you read it to us now?

MS. DILLEY: What I have right now is what does USDA need to consider to
facilitate or support coexistence among diverse agri-systems in a
diverse marketplace. But, we\'re not sure we want to add that clause.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: How about food and fiber systems?

DR. DYKES: I think we\'re getting pretty close to it no matter what we
get.

MS. DILLEY: I just want to make sure people are \-- the terminologies
that we\'re using people are somewhat on the same page. We can fine tune
the language a little bit later. Russell, you want to add?

MR. KREMER: Just for consideration, I kind of like the agricultural
production thing and I also like the supply chain and I like value chain
better than supply chain is what I think encompasses a lot more.

MS. DILLEY: So, agricultural production and supplies?

MR. KREMER: Remove the value chain.

MS. DILLEY: Value chain.

MR. KREMER: That should take care of feed, fiber.

DR. LAYTON: Yes, it does.

MR. KREMER: It\'s more than distribution. It\'s more than processing,
brokerage, whatever.

MS. DILLEY: With agricultural systems, do you think it\'s comprehensive
like your terminology? You need agricultural production?

MR. KREMER: I like where we\'re heading with that agricultural
production, but, also I think we need to incorporate value chain.

MS. DILLEY: So it may be that we have about 15 minutes. It might be good
to talk about it for just a little bit and we can come back to the
language. Oh, I\'m sorry, Greg. Do you have a suggestion?

MR. JAFFE: On a different point. I\'m not particularly comfortable with
"facilitate or support" and I don\'t have a good something else in there
but it seems very positive and it seems that the only things are how to
help coexistence and it seems to me there are two issues there.

One is, some things may not. We may not want to have certain things
coexist. Maybe canned peas shouldn\'t be coexisting. And this sort of
suggests that everything has to coexist and USDA has to figure out how
to facilitate or support that when everything may not. Even very small
markets or various kinds of things, they shouldn\'t go out of their way
or why should we spend tax dollars to help support a very small niche
thing that may give lots of risks to other parts of things.

So, and also I think \-- so, it seems to me that it sounds like we\'re
only going to concern with things that want to make everything coexist
when the fact is that the market may not want them all to coexist. There
may be other risks; other risks may outweigh benefits to go to parts of
society. Consumers may \-- that may not be advantageous to consumers or
other things.

So, I mean, I\'d rather have something like understand or \--

MS. DILLEY: Provide leadership?

MR. JAFFE: No. I mean, what will USDA need to understand about
coexistence of different markets or what are the issues that will arise
out of them. Because I don\'t think our task is only to say what things
I should do to support this. But, there may be things that they should
do that don\'t support this or that are neutral to this.

I mean, we talked yesterday a lot of stuff about just letting the market
do it. Those aren\'t necessarily things to support it. They\'re just
things to be neutral about it; maybe just to stay out of it.

MS. DILLEY: Right.

MR. JAFFE: And this suggests we\'re only talking about positive things
and we\'re only going to mention issues to them that lead that. So, I
don\'t have a good response, alternative language yet, but, I want to
flag that I\'m uncomfortable with just with the way it is right now.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. I do understand. I\'m just trying to find the right
term.

MS. SULTON: Could you do it with an "or" clause? Support or response?

MS. DILLEY: Think about it.

MR. JAFFE: I\'ll think about it.

MS. DILLEY: Adrian?

DR. POLANSKY: Well, my view of the way to cover that is if there\'s an
area where this group says there will be a consensus in terms of USDA
needing to consider facilitating or supporting we don\'t go down that
path. If this group doesn\'t feel like it\'s appropriate to facilitate
we don\'t recommend it. I mean, that\'s a better way to deal with that,
I think.

MR. JAFFE: But, I think our charge is to talk about all the issues
surrounding coexistence and talk to them not just about things that
support it or come to recommendations about supporting it. I mean, we
can come to recommendations if we want. Some of those recommendations
might be not to support certain parts of coexistence or something. So, I
guess that\'s my point. I don\'t think that our charge is only to
facilitate or support coexistence. It\'s really to discuss the issues
around coexistence that may impact what USDA\'s role in agriculture and
there may be issues around coexistence that don\'t impact their role in
agriculture also.

But, I mean, my understanding is the charge is more to discuss and
explore those issues around coexistence, not just talk about things that
USDA can do to facilitate or support coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: Right. Right. Carole?

DR. CRAMER: So, if you could replace "to facilitate or support" with
either "regarding" or "concerning" so what will USDA look to consider
regarding coexistence among different productions without recommending
or concerning is more apparently.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, what will USDA need to consider regarding
coexistence among different agricultural systems \-- among diverse
agricultural systems \-- production systems in the value chain in a
diverse marketplace.

DR. POLANSKY: I would just throw out \-- thinking back to yesterday,
there was some conversation about choice and if we\'re really serious
about choice, consumer choice, you know, farmer choice and so on, I\'d
just throw that out as something that we shouldn\'t forget in terms of
drafting the language there.

MS. DILLEY: And my sense is that\'s kind of a roundup of what you mean
by coexistence and we still have some discussions around that. We
started that and we had a good run at a couple of different things that
people think of in terms of coexistence and choices was one of them. The
respectful competition was kind of another terminology. So, it was a lot
of different things. We have to break this sentence down and figure out,
okay, so, what does this really mean; how are we going to talk about the
issues.

We\'re going to have to talk about the whole range of issues associated
with coexistence and, I mean, we may want to talk about where USDA could
support or facilitate. So, Jerry?

MR. SLOCUM: Abby, is there any way we could see the original language
when the Secretary brought this coexistence issue to us?

MS. DILLEY: Sure.

MR. SLOCUM: Because it wouldn\'t hurt to go back and look at what he
asked for.

MS. DILLEY: We\'re going to pull it up.

MR. SLOCUM: Because I don\'t think he asked about facilitation. I think
he asked about what the ramifications of it were.

MS. DILLEY: What are the effects. We can go back to the original
language. So, for people who can\'t see it, what are the effects in
terms of planting decisions, markets, and rural communities, and I
don\'t think that has to be an exhaustive list, but, of coexistence
issues on the development and use of \-- and then we had talked about
specialty crops for non-food uses and for quality enhanced crops. I
think that has been evolving in terms of that last piece, but, that\'s
the original language.

So, let me just read it without any explanation. What are the effects in
terms of planting decisions, markets and rural communities of
coexistence issues on the development and use of specialty crops for
non-food uses in quality-enhanced crops was the original language of the
last meeting.

MR. SLOCUM: What is so frightening about that question? I mean, \--

MS. DILLEY: You\'re asking me?

MR. SLOCUM: Yeah, I am.

MS. DILLEY: I don\'t think it was frightening at all. I think people
didn\'t understand what it meant and so that\'s why we\'re trying to
kick it around a little bit and understand. If we were pretty clear on
exactly what that means and how that sets up our work then we don\'t
need to spend time.

MR. SLOCUM: Well, I guess I\'m wondering if that\'s what he\'s
interested in how we get from that to something that looks like that.

MS. DILLEY: It\'s not atypical to have to kind of wallow around and come
back. So, muddling through. So, we\'re trying to break it down and then
we may put it back together and it looks exactly like this. You know, I
have to say I don\'t even pretend to speak for the Secretary\'s Office.
Michael\'s the best person we have to do that. So, Greg and then Brad.

MR. JAFFE: I think one thing was that was too narrow focused solely on
the development of use of specialty crops with non-food uses and quality
enhanced crops and I think the whole point was that there\'s a lot of
coexistence issues happening right now. We don\'t have any specialty
crops for non-food uses really and we don\'t really have any quality
enhanced crops yet. And, yet, we heard yesterday about all of this
activity that\'s been going on by many different parts of the food chain
to address coexistence and I think though one of the reasons to modify
that was to bring in, first of all, what we\'ve learned from current
experience and also to realize that those issues are still going to move
forward in the future and get more complex with additional kinds of
complexity in the marketplace with additional kinds of things.

So, I think part of it was that that was a fairly narrow charge and I
think a lot of people thought that that was going to miss the majority
of the issues really that are involved with coexistence. And if you\'re
willing to get around coexistence you needed to talk more broadly.

MS. DILLEY: Brad?

MR. SHURDUT: Yes. I just had a fairly similar response to Greg. I mean,
that to me seems narrow and I don\'t know what kind of footing we have
to operate to kind of enhance that. But, you can even argue, when you
talk about non-food crops, if it\'s going to pertain to PMP\'s then
coexistence isn\'t even the right phrase because you don\'t want them to
coexist. You want complete isolation in many respects.

So, if you look at the scope of the question that Adrian brought up, you
can take that and it doesn\'t even seem relevant to coexistence, but,
then how do you define the scope?

MS. DILLEY: Michael and then Daryl.

DR. DYKES: I think part of the thing is we are grappling with the word,
coexistence, and trying to apply it to something new. And we\'re
searching for what\'s new, why this word all of a sudden, coexistence.
If we listened to the presentation yesterday, coexistence has been going
on for years and years. We may have new things that are out there
coexisting today, but, the whole issue and the guy from Clarkson Grain
said he had a list of what, 120 different pesticides he\'s testing for,
spray drift. Certainly a coexistence issue we\'ve been dealing with for
years.

And they all gave different examples. So, I think we\'re hearing the
word coexistence and we\'re trying to attach the new aspects to
coexistence which I\'m not sure that\'s maybe the way to go with it. I
think it\'s what we want to present is that there\'s a lot of
coexistence issues out there. There are some new ones that are coming
because there are new products and there are new offerings in the
marketplace and it seems like there\'s more offerings in the
marketplace.

But, some of the old coexistence issues aren\'t going away either. So, I
don\'t have an answer to it. I think we\'re grappling with coexistence
is something new and we\'re searching for what that new thing is. I
don\'t think it is anything new. But, that is too narrow as well.

MS. DILLEY: Jerry?

MR. SLOCUM: Well, we can broaden it. What narrows is it that all the
language is after special crops. Why don\'t we just develop the use of
new agricultural products and new agricultural crops and not confine
ourselves to \--

MS. DILLEY: New agri-systems or other language we were trying to
struggle with earlier?

MR. SLOCUM: Yeah. I\'m not talking about systems. I\'m talking about \--
and I don\'t really think the Secretary wants us to define coexistence.
What he wants to know, he presumes that coexistence is there and it\'s
been working. It is working. Obviously it\'s working. He wants to know
what the effects of it are. What are the effects of \-- what\'s the
effect that his department as new agricultural products for consumers to
buy and farmers to grow and for handlers to handle and processors to
process, what are the effects of those products on U.S. agriculture.

Planting decisions, marketing schemes, marketing scopes. To me, that\'s
what he\'s asking. He\'s really not asking us to debate what coexistence
is or isn\'t. He\'s not asking us to define it because it already
exists. We heard that yesterday. It\'s working pretty darn well it
sounds like to me. You know, civil, non-threatening way. What it\'s
going to cost for you guys to drink beer together. Pretty civilized,
right?

Lynn Clarkson, you know, he has more consumers than he has suppliers.
That doesn\'t sound like a real problem.

MS. DILLEY: I guess the question in my mind is we may not need to define
coexistence for the Secretary. Obviously, they have a sense of that.
But, for our work, I think people have to have, at least, a common
definition or how we\'re interpreting coexistence issues to be able to
talk about what are the effects.

So, we still need to come back and address it with a \--

MR. SLOCUM: Dictionary definitions. You have the definitions of three
people in the trade practicing in the trade. You have the definition of
the OTA, which was a dictionary definition, and Nick talked at length
about coexistence in the seed industry, cherry picking, and those sorts
of things.

So, I think we\'re beginning to have some kind of grasp what coexistence
is. Whether we can put it into a concise sentence, I\'m not so certain.
But, I don\'t think we\'re talking about a different \-- I don\'t think
we\'re talking about a bunch of different animals here.

MS. DILLEY: Daryl?

MR. BUSS: It seems that he could meld the two by using the front part of
the Secretary\'s question. What are the effects of in terms of planting
decisions, markets, and rural communities of coexistence among different
agricultural, whatever it says over there.

MS. DILLEY: To broaden it out so get around the more narrow \--

MR. BUSS: And still retain his emphasis on what he wants to \--

MS. DILLEY: Right. Sarah?

MS. GEISERT: This is more of a question. I\'ve been listening to the
conversation and I\'m reading it. I\'m just wondering again, it\'s a
little bit of interpretation and I don\'t know what liberties we have.
If you look at the issues that have come up and it hasn\'t been nirvana
since \'96, as these issues have come, is I\'m wondering if part of the
question has to do is given the issues that we\'ve had, how will that
either accelerate or hinder the development in other areas outside of
corn, soybeans, canola, cotton?

So, that, to me, is, as I was listening, to say most of the stuff, the
specialty crops and non-food uses and the goal of quality enhanced, are
they being impeded, are they being accelerated, are they \-- so is that
the other part of saying, yes, we define the issues in the marketplace.
What impact did those issues, which would be transparent what the issues
are, how we work around them, but, what\'s that doing to the advancement
in other areas?

So, when you read the last part of it, to me, it was a bit more narrow
to say how is \-- not that that\'s how it should be, but, is it focusing
more on what the future was going to be and how did the past action
impact developments that may be going on in the various companies?

So, I don\'t know, taking it out, I didn\'t know if that was the intent,
the broad agriculture? Was the intent to look more towards different
crops and different applications of technologies?

MS. DILLEY: I don\'t know the answer to that. We\'ve got to get Michael
back in here.

DR. LAYTON: I can see where Sarah came from, because I thought about it.
The back end of that sentence just said, okay, let\'s not deal with the
current crops and the current genes.

What are the issues as we go forward? That was kind of what I first read
this that was my take on it too. And I think what the words were was
trying to exclude those rather than to tie them into what we were going
to look at.

MS. DILLEY: Maybe that\'s a different way to conceptualize what are the
effects or what will be or have been the effects of coexistence issues.
So, it\'s 9:00 and I know Michael is outside waiting for the Deputy
Secretary. Okay. Michael, we\'re kind of at a place where the question
of are we on track with what the Secretary\'s asking the committee to do
so we\'re going to need your input, I think.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Okay.

MS. DILLEY: At this point. So, I\'m not sure how much more you want to
pursue this or wait until we can get your input.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I suspect the Deputy Secretary is going to be down here
within the next few minutes.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, unless anybody\'s had an epiphany and we can see
if we get a cup of coffee or tea.

DR. LAYTON: Let me just kind of give you heads up of how we\'re going to
proceed. I have a few introductory remarks to the Deputy Secretary and I
know that he has some prepared remarks that he plans to make.

So, what I thought we\'d do is move from my small, short prepared
remarks, handing him the report, letting him continue with his remarks
since he\'s prepared them, and then we\'ll open the floor to questions.

Is there \-- or to your additional remarks. Are you comfortable with
that just so that we can go forward? That will \-- last time we did this
we all went around the table and said something. The Secretary when he
was with us at that time didn\'t have a lot of prepared remarks so I
thought since I know the Deputy Secretary kind of has some prepared
remarks I thought we\'d let him give those remarks and then have you all
add any additional comments that you want to about the current report
that we\'re bringing over if that\'s okay. Okay.

(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken)

DR. LAYTON: Good morning, Mr. Deputy Secretary. First, on behalf of the
committee we ask that you please give our best to Secretary Johanns and
we\'re very sorry we weren\'t able to connect with him, but, the
schedules are such that we understand that.

We\'re very glad that you were here with us today. Today we have our
latest report from the Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st
Century Agriculture, our AC21. The paper is entitled Opportunities and
Challenges in Agricultural Biotechnology, the Decade Ahead.

We had planned to have this paper done in '05 and we tried very hard to
get it done. We actually finished our last writing session as a group in
March and finally edited it. For example, it took a while to get with
you all so we\'re sorry about the delay, but, we\'ve worked very hard at
it and we hope it\'s worth the wait. And we know that you\'ve been
awfully busy with other things since then so hopefully you\'ll still
find the need for this report.

It\'s a wide ranging report touching on nearly every area where USDA and
biotechnology intersect from a fairly high altitude. The report
addresses a major part of the charge given to the committee to examine
how biotechnology may change agriculture and the work of USDA over the
long term.

For this committee, the "long term" means five to ten years and it\'s
hard to know when that time period actually starts since it\'s taken the
committee three years to prepare this report. I\'d like to thank all of
our committee members, both past and present, for getting us to this
point.

One of the reports that you received in May of '05, the one entitled,
Preparing for the Future, is a companion piece to this report. Today\'s
report ranges from the immediate past to the future. To provide context
it discusses the first decade of biotechnology products and describes
how the world in which new biotechnology products will be entering has
changed over that decade through global developments, through new
priorities, and through the internet, etc.

It provides some signposts on just how the world has become even more
complex over that period. The report then delves into a series of topics
of discussion, 28 in all, and that number went up and down, but, it\'s
28, that have been identified by the committee that some or all of the
committee members feel will affect you and your work related to
biotechnology over the upcoming decade.

You will find that this committee has not shied away from controversial
subjects. The topic list extends even beyond the legal authorities of
USDA because some topics may affect USDA\'s working environment even if
they are not directly under their purview. In particular, some issues
around FDA\'s policies on biotechnology-derived foods and labeling are
highlighted.

Just to give you an idea of the breadth of the other topics covered
here\'s a flavor of a small sampling. Changes and patterns of ag land
use in the U.S. that have and will continue to be seen as new
agricultural biotechnology products and new uses come on line.
Regulatory issues around particular kinds of genetically engineered
organisms such plants producing pharmaceutical and industrial products,
or, transgenic animals, or, even new classes of products that are not
yet anticipated and around future biotech imports coming into the United
States.

Evolving consumer attitudes and what consumer factors influences the
success of future products. How our domestic regulatory system addresses
consumer concerns. Commercial considerations around coexistence between
new biotech varieties and other crops. Asynchronous product approvals or
moratoria on product approvals in other countries. Insurance and
liability issues. And enabling the least developed countries to make
informed decisions and to acquire new technologies.

A wide realm is covered. But, the AC21 has not provided recommendations
in this report to you. This has been an exercise is what we\'ve called
"issue spotting." The report is a consensus report from this committee.
Every member from biotech representative to food manufacturer to
environmental or consumer group representative has signed off on it.
But, that does not mean in this case that everyone in the committee
thinks each topic is of equal importance nor does it mean that everyone
sees each topic the same way.

On five topics in this report, a range of perspectives from different
committee members is presented. Sometimes two perspectives, sometimes
more. It is significant that the report highlights both areas of
consensus as well as other areas where there are nuances of different
views or even disagreements. We on the committee hope that this report
will provide you with a rich picture not only of past successes but also
the opportunities and challenges ahead.

We are very pleased that we have gotten to this point. As I said, it\'s
taken three years to develop format AC21 members can sign off on and to
reach this occasion. We can expand on individual topics in this report
and the future if you would like the committee to do so. We are working
on our way already starting with yesterday and this morning\'s
discussion on agricultural coexistence and the future and we\'re still
working on defining that this morning.

Again, we thank you for the opportunity to present this report to you
and look forward to continuing to provide input to USDA. I know you have
some remarks and, so, we\'ll turn the podium over to you for your
remarks and here it is.

DEPUTY SECRETARY CONNER: Pat, thank you very much. We do appreciate this
transmittal and all of the work that has gone into this. I do regret,
this morning that Mike Johanns is not here to be with you. I think as
you probably saw from some of the farm clips this morning he has been
out touring some drought-stricken regions. And this is a topic of
particular sensitivity to him being a former Governor of a western state
that has a tendency to lack rainfall from time to time and so he wanted
to be out there and we made some important announcements I think
yesterday in South Dakota.

Right now we are focusing primarily upon the impact that the drought has
had on the livestock sector. I think the jury to some extent is still
out on the full impact of the drought on the crop sector and whether or
not additional action is going to be needed from this agency for that
purpose.

I think a big factor in that drought consideration actually is directly
relevant to biotechnology. Many of you know that last year was a
particularly difficult year in many, many regions as well in terms of
dry weather, adverse conditions, but, yet, we had the second largest
corn and soybean crop on record and I think the resiliency of many of
these varieties of corn and soybeans, most of which are the product of
biotechnology, are viewed as the reason that despite some very, very
adverse conditions in most regions of the country, farmers harvesting
either near normal or in some cases record crops from those acreages.

So, I think it\'s important for us to evaluate, but, not jump ahead of
the gun on this crop situation to see really the full impact the drought
is having out there, particularly in the Western Corn Belt and the upper
Midwest region.

You\'ve tackled some difficult subjects as I\'ve been advised by Michael
and others on this report and I know it\'s taken a lot of your own
personal time. There\'s a lot to absorb and I think there\'s a lot for
the Department to learn from what you\'ve provided to us today, Pat.
USDA does face a lot of challenges every day and your work is key, I
think, for not only the farmers, which, as always, remain a core mission
area for USDA, but, for rural America and for consumers as well going
forward.

Just over a week ago, the Secretary of the USDA and FDA have been
notified by Bayer Crop Science that trace amounts of a regulated genetic
engineered rice had been detected in samples of long grain rice. All of
you know about this situation already. You know as well that both
agencies have reviewed the available scientific data and based on that
data have concluded that there is absolutely human health, food safety,
or environmental concern associated with this particular GE rice.

Bayer has developed many GE herbicide tolerant products with the protein
that is commonly referred to as Liberty Link. Three of those, of course,
have been in rice products as well. This regulated line that we\'re
referring to specifically, of course, is known as LL rice 601 and Bayer
reports finding, fortunately, only very small trace amounts of it during
their testing procedures.

Two other regulated lines, 62 and 06, which, again, uses this very same
protein, have undergone thorough safety evaluations and have been deemed
safe for use in food and, of course, in the environment, although I
think it\'s important to note that these lines have never really been
commercialized. That\'s a choice that Bayer has made.

USDA\'s APHIS conducted risk assessments based upon the available data
and information which indicates that rice line 601, of course, is
totally safe for the environment. Bayer has indicated no plans to market
it or had indicated no plans to market it and, therefore, it never
really requested deregulation from our agency. Field testing for 601, of
course, occurred between 1998 and 2001. Now, of course, based upon a
petition from Bayer and reports that it is in the marketplace, albeit in
trace amounts, AFIS will conduct a deregulation process and then working
very, very hard down this path over the last several weeks.

We will do that, of course, with the opportunity for full public comment
that will include that opportunity not only for those directly impacted
but for consumers as well. And I know the Secretary and I were very,
very interested in seeing this deregulation and public comment process
move forward very, very quickly. Cindy looks a little tired back there
because she\'s been working very, very hard to move this forward. If she
jumps out of her chair I may have misspoken but I will tell you the
Secretary and I would like to see this done in a matter of days, not
weeks, and I commit to a specific time period, but, everyone knows who
has been working on this that we are pressing very, very rapidly to see
this deregulation process go forward with public comment sought and the
Federal Register again knowing that we need to move very, very rapidly
in this regard.

Because of the line of GE rice in question was regulated the Secretary
directed APHIS to conduct an investigation as well to determine the
circumstances surrounding the release of that and hopefully we can use
that as a basis to in the long term think how we can prevent these
situations from replicating themselves.

It is important to note that the protein found in this regulated line of
rice is approved for use in other products and other commodities. I\'m
quite familiar with this as well because my own family grows a lot of
Liberty Link corn products on our own farm in Indiana so we\'re very,
very familiar with not only the efficacy but certainly the safety of
these proteins.

It has been repeatedly and thoroughly scientifically reviewed, used
safely in food and feed and for cultivation in food and feed, of course,
in the United States. It is also approved for use in nearly a dozen
other countries as well around the world. So, in this regard, despite
the fact that this has been the biotech issue that we\'ve focused on a
great deal we will persevere and continue on on this path.

From trade to research to the environment, ladies and gentlemen, the
regulatory and human nutrition arena, biotechnology does touch so much
of what we do today. Since 1987 we have as an agency deregulated 70 GE
crop lines. In the last decade farmers, of course, have planted more and
more of this. You know the numbers, but, they bear repeating for some of
you who may be a little bit new. Sixty one percent of our corn is GE; 83
percent of our cotton and a whopping 89 percent of our soybean crop were
all planted biotech varieties in this country in the past year.

Now, in terms of this agency, let me just remind you, ladies and
gentlemen, that USDA, as all of you know, is a very big place. We have
113,000 employees and every day when you come into this place you
realize that somebody out there, although we have many, many, many
wonderful people within our agency, we\'re blessed with the people
within USDA, somebody out of 113,000 is doing something they probably
shouldn\'t be just about every day when I come into the office,
unfortunately.

So, you can have a tendency in our job to get fairly micro in your view
of things. I mean, just simply focus upon, you know, what in the world
somebody may have done on any given day, but, that\'s not what we\'re
about. We are a vision agency as well and I think it\'s hard for us from
time to time to step back and think about that broader vision, longer
term perspective.

Even though certainly biotechnology is a specialized subject,
specialized product, its impacts are felt in many, many ways at USDA
that do require that broader longer term view of things going forward.
For many groups, you collectively have that broad appreciation and I
think that is the reason that you have been pulled together is to help
us identify those cross-cutting issues that we will need to grapple
with, not tomorrow, perhaps when I come in, but, certainly five, ten
years down the road.

Your work is valuable. I think this report will be very, very valuable
for that broader, longer term perspective as you go forward certainly as
we establish some long-term farm policies and we begin to think next
year on the new farm bill. And as you know, the Secretary and I are
emphatic that we want this next farm bill to be less about next year and
production and farm income next year, which has a tendency to be the
governing example in the farm bill debate, but, focus a little bit more
on, you know, what is the best policy going forward for American
agriculture for American consumers, not next year so much. It\'s
important, but, let\'s think about five, ten, maybe even fifteen or
twenty years down the road for that next generation involved in this
great production system that we have established here in this country.

And we would very much like that next farm bill focused on that longer
term, broader vision. I think this report will help us view that. I know
it will help us do that as we tend to look at and focus upon those
longer term policies as well. So, again, I thank you all for the work
you have put into this. You all know that the Secretary and I are
technology-oriented, if you will.

I use that term knowing that, you know, we\'re not a people who are
afraid of change. We want that change to be well-defined. We want it
certain to be in the interest of safety. We want it to be in the
interest of understanding that there is a broad market, broad demands
out there for American products that run the gambit in terms of issues
and we need to be equipped and give the farmers the tools to meet the
broad, broad marketplace that is out there and getting broader.

Biotech certainly has a key role in that. You will have a key role in
this as we develop the policies going forward for that. Thanks for your
work. I know Dr. Layton emphasized the word consensus a couple of times
in her opening remarks. I assume that was not by mistake; that there was
an effort made to get consensus here, so, I didn\'t trip over any bodies
on my way in, so, I assume that came without too much expense, although
I can only imagine it was not an easy task.

But, we appreciate the fact that you have worked together to identify,
again, those issues common to your organizations that each of you
represent and I thank you all very much again for your work.

(Applause)

DEPUTY SECRETARY CONNER: A few questions, additional comments for me or
something that\'s not in the report that you really want to lay on the
table feel free to do that.

DR. LAYTON: Mardi.

DR. MELLON: Well, a lot is not known about, I guess yesterday was
referred to as the rice issue, but, apparently it is true that the
contamination was not discovered by USDA, it was discovered by somebody
else out there in the supply chain. And I guess my question is whether
USDA is thinking about doing testing on its own to determine earlier
rather than later the extent of the contamination of the \-- of our
grain supply and rice supply and even I think it would be appropriate to
add wheat now that we know we\'re talking about unapproved events.

If the government would be in the position \-- would want to be in the
position of finding these things before the marketplace.

DEPUTY SECRETARY CONNER: Well, I think you raise an interesting issue. I
think it needs to be answered in a couple of different ways. From our
standpoint, when you\'re talking about deregulated biotech products, the
issue of testing becomes a very difficult issue. And I think the short
answer to your question is right now our policy and I don\'t see this
changing anytime soon is we are not going to test for those deregulated
products, although we have resisted enormous pressure, particularly in
the marketplace to do that very thing.

As you know, when they are considered unapproved we don\'t, you know,
put them into two categories of, you know, this type of corn, this is
another type of corn. It\'s simply corn as a result of that unapproved
process. In this particular case, with the Liberty Link 601 product, as
you know, it was very, very similar to two deregulated events. It had
not been commercially marketed, although I think the evidence that we
saw and, you know, the evidence that we are going forward with in terms
of our own analysis shows there is absolutely no reason to believe that
it doesn\'t meet the criteria for an unapproved event and, you know,
again, we\'re going to go forward with that information with public
comment.

And, so, at this point we have no plans to separate and go out and have
government testing, if you will, for, you know, what will be a
deregulated product. In this case, as you know, though we were very,
very rapid in developing protocols for a testing procedure so that, you
know, the commercial marketplace has the tools to meet whatever demand
may be out there for 601 or products, you know, without 601 in this
particular case and we expedited that process very, very rapidly so that
the market would have the ability to respond.

But, in terms of our own policy, again, trying to respond to what has
been a constant drum beat out there of, you know, we want biotech and we
want non-biotech, I don\'t see our policy changing in that. Again, once
they\'re deregulated they\'re simply corn or they\'re simply rice and we
don\'t attempt to differentiate whether that product is the product of
GE or a product of, you know, normal commercial hybrid breeding,
cross-breeding.

Other comments? Questions? All right. Well, again, know that this is,
again, an important report. The Secretary and I are going to take this
back. Just so you\'ll know as well our Secretary of Agriculture in
addition to be a former governor practiced law quite successfully for
many, many years. He is a vociferous reader of information; studies,
analyzes a lot of materials so as I look through this don\'t think for a
moment that this will not be something that he pores over thoroughly.

So, your work is going to be seen, read, and heard about in the future
and again, thank you all very much.

(Applause)

MS. DILLEY: It\'s a little after twenty five after. Why don\'t we take a
break and reconvene at a quarter to.

(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken)

DR. LAYTON: Okay. As we get started, some of us have noticed a
resounding buzz. Carol has suggested that that somebody\'s blackberry
buzzing through a computer or being picked up on the intercom so I\'m
turning mine off in the hopes that it\'s not mine because I am sitting
out here with one and hopefully if everyone else doesn\'t mind turning
theirs off. I just turned mine back on while \-- I think they come in
really quick. Thank you.

MS. DILLEY: All right. So, from last we were together we were talking
about the sentence and looking at the original language of the charge
and how that\'s been discussed a little bit between the last meeting and
this one and starting off with the sentence we had taken a run at this
morning and trying to maybe merge those.

And we had what had been what are the effects in terms of planting
decisions, markets, and rural communities of coexistent issues among
different agricultural and we hadn\'t quite \-- agricultural production
systems and something or other. But, that\'s when we started merging the
other sentence.

So, okay, let me back up. What had been or are the effects in terms of
planting decisions, markets, and rural communities of coexistence issues
among different agricultural and then we have dot, dot, dot. The
original language was issues on the development and use of specialty
crops for non-food uses and for quality enhanced crops.

And when we had left off there were a lot of questions in terms of what
exactly was the Secretary asking the committee to do. Was it to assess
the impacts to date in terms of introduction of new products, or, is it
that we need to take some of that information and look forward and
anticipate some of the issues.

So, I wanted to go back to Michael for some clarification and then pick
up the discussion of the statement.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Okay. A couple of thoughts that I\'m still obviously
getting caught up with what you had been talking about earlier. I think
that the intent of this was to take current information and use it as
much as possible to look forward, even, again, recognizing that there
are different views of what the future\'s going to look like but I
don\'t think anyone thinks that it\'s going to become less complicated.

And the committee has talked about the fact that it has a vision of a
diverse marketplace and maybe that phrase is a phrase that means
different things to different people. I don\'t know that we can dissect
that at this point and it may be very well be that the issues in the
future will be exactly the same in kind as what there are now, only more
so. I don\'t have a strong feeling one way or the other.

But, with the idea from the Department is to sort of be able to use the
information that you have and at least look to the future. And, again,
this is something we\'re not expecting long descriptions of current
problems but it\'s strictly identification of things that are relevant
for USDA to be thinking about. It could be ways to improve things. It
could be things to keep \-- things we\'ll need to keep our hands off of.

I don\'t have a \-- I don\'t think that the Department has a particular
bent one way or the other. Again, it\'s supposed to be something that\'s
succinct. Probably three more meetings is all the time that you might
have to complete this plus whatever work you think you might usefully do
intersessionally. So, I think that\'s the \--

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, it\'s more the forward rather than assessing how
coexistence issues have affected decisions it\'s more looking forward in
terms of how it might or how will it?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I think \--

MS. DILLEY: And some of them will be the same as how it\'s affected
things up till now but it\'s more looking into the increasingly complex
marketplace, which I think the terminology at least for discussion.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I think it\'s certainly being mindful of what\'s
happened to this point. It\'s not trying to put any of that information
away.

MS. DILLEY: Carole, question or comment?

DR. CRAMER: Yes. I\'d like some more clarification. So, we spent a lot
of time yesterday looking at the coexistence of organic, conventional,
and biotech. If we pull this out it appears to me that the Secretary is
asking specifically what will be the impact or do we have to consider
other things from the coexistence point of view as we move to non-food
or very specialized components?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Okay. As I indicated yesterday, that concept where there
was a focus on specialty crops and non-food products was what was
described two meetings ago as a possible charge. And I think that has
been \--

DR. CRAMER: So we shouldn\'t have gone back to that statement?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: That was the original charge. That was what I was asked
to send around. And even though I may have sent around the wrong that\'s
neither here nor there. But, I think the point is it\'s fine for us to
be looking at broader issues than just those, you know, but, again,
because that\'s really going to depend on what your vision of what the
first marketplace is in the future and you don\'t all share the views of
how prevalent those things are likely to be. So, I know that that\'s a
challenge.

I think you probably will need to account for the fact that there may be
some of them. The question of how you\'re dealing with pharmaceutical or
industrial compounds or plants producing pharmaceuticals or industrial
compounds is something that the committee\'s going to need to work on
what it wants as its scope for this because I know there are different
views about whether and how to incorporate reference or specific
discussion of those things.

MS. DILLEY: And I think at the break I think the discussion was \-- I
don\'t think these are mutually exclusive in terms of the statement we
said yesterday or statement we were trying to work with this morning and
the original charge. I think it\'s trying to get our hands around what
that means, but, one of the effects in terms of planting decisions,
markets and rural communities and there\'s probably a longer list within
that. I think that\'s part of what we need to decide in terms of what we
can take on in the year time frame that we \-- less than a year time
frame that we have of coexistence.

And I think then we were starting to work with that last portion of the
sentence among different agricultural production systems and value chain
or something along that on the development and use of traits, new
products, production systems and we were kind of wrestling with that. If
they expanded in scope we hadn\'t really talked about scope yet but it
was a broader slice than what had been in the original language.

So, it was trying to work with some of the original charge language and
then working in as what we understood in terms of what the scope, how we
were trying to define it for ourselves. So, that was my attempt at
merging that language and obviously we still need to do some work. But,
more clarification from Michael, additional questions, thoughts,
comments?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yeah. Just one other thought. I think the two different
formulations. We had one where we were asking for what are the
considerations that USDA should be thinking about. There\'s that sort of
formulation versus the formulation what are or will be the effects of
coexistence considerations and I think it will probably get down to sort
of the same place but I don\'t know.

I\'m perfectly, I think, we will be fine with whichever way makes the
members will feel more comfortable with describing them. Just to lay
that out.

MS. DILLEY: So, those are different. The effects of coexistence issues
versus what should USDA consider with regard to or regarding coexistence
are different formulations. So, we do need to be on the same page in
terms of the approach.

Nick?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: If I had a choice I would not go down the route of
outlining the effects. I would probably try to stick with key issues. I
don\'t think that this will drive all the possible effects might be,
especially in the context that we are talking about.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, sticking with a formulation of what should USDA
consider regarding coexistence and then I think among different
agricultural production systems in the value chain. I\'m still not \-- I
don\'t have that language yet. In an increasingly complex marketplace
and I think that marketplace was the piece where new traits, new
products, new production systems, we were trying to get at that
dimension of it.

So, any \-- so in this one we\'re starting with in an increasingly
diverse marketplace what should USDA consider regarding coexistence
among different agricultural production systems in the value chain.

Leon and then Nick.

MR. CORZINE: Abby, if it helps, where you get to different agricultural
production systems if you change that different to diverse and take
production out of it and you can drop in the value chain because
agriculture systems includes production. It includes the delivery
system. It includes all the way to the shelf to the consumer. I mean
that\'s all agriculture.

MS. DILLEY: Shorten it up. Is that \-- do people see that as
comprehensive enough doing some of that fine tuning of the language?
Nick and then Alison.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, I\'m okay with all the modifications that Leon
suggested. I would also want to include what Josephine was talking about
on the market demand side. We discussed consumer choice yesterday and so
bringing in somehow the demand side of the market might be appropriate
at this point.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, we could either inject it into diverse marketplace
or among diverse agricultural systems. Your thoughts in terms of adding
that language? It was Josephine.

DR. HUNT: I\'m trying to remember what I said. It was so great.

MS. DILLEY: I have it scrawled somewhere.

DR. HUNT: It was something about how coexistence needs to reflect the
demands of the market or fail to respond to the market.

MS. DILLEY: Right.

DR. CRAMER: Do we actually need to have that in the topic sentence?
It\'s going to be a whole area of discussion once we get into the \--

MS. DILLEY: Now, it\'s a balance between how much do you need to put in
the topic and then the rest of it we can explain. We\'ll flush out as we
have the discussion. But, Alison, I know you had your card up and then I
want to go to Sharon and Mardi.

DR. VANEENENNAAM: A number of people yesterday spoke we\'ve been doing
this for years. That\'s a really broad thing. Is this committee really
more directly charged with coexistence related to genetic engineering
issues because I don\'t want to be talking about keeping blue corn and
yellow corn separate. It\'s really, I think the biotech committee is
issues specific to biotech coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: So, isn\'t that included in diverse agricultural systems,
biotech being the one that obviously this committee\'s \--

DR. VANEENENNAAM: Well, I was saying that I guess do we want to just say
all coexistence and then that is a very broad thing and I think do we
really want to just focus on the issues that are germane to genetically
engineered varieties?

MS. DILLEY: Let me get \-- Michael, did you want to respond to that? No.
Sharon, Mardi, and Adrian.

MS. WEINER: Just a couple of things. Just a minor little editing thing.
We\'re saying diverse and diverse. I wonder if we could say in an
increasing complex marketplace and then diverse agricultural systems
maybe. And then in terms of having to worry about, you know, factors
like consumer marketplace or whatever, it seems to me that when we say
what or what factors or what elements, something, it seems to me the
word what there actually does address an entire universe of things that
are out there.

We may want to make it more point specific by just saying what and I
think it covers everything. And then finally in terms of this whole
coexistence thing, to follow up on what Alison was saying, if the charge
of the committee is overall the existence of the committee is focused on
biotech then does it need to, in fact, be more specific to say, you
know, consider regarding coexistence of biotech with other, you know,
with diverse agricultural systems.

I mean, it seems to me that that\'s fundamentally what we\'re being
asked to look at is where does biotech fit in in all of this.

MS. DILLEY: Mardi and then Adrian and then Nick.

DR. MELLON: I wonder if we should insert the word issues after what. I
mean, I\'m a little worried about what. It just seems \--

MS. DILLEY: Issues USDA considered?

DR. MELLON: I mean, I like the notion that we \-- I mean, I think we
would do a great service to simply describe some of the issues that have
arisen as a result of biotech trying to coexist with other, you know,
with other production systems and, so, I would \-- I mean, I like the
idea of our trying to do that. If we can do that well we probably don\'t
need to do a whole lot more.

But, I do think it should focus on issues. I mean, it\'s not going to
be, you know, facts or facts, or, we\'re not economists.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. That\'s for you, Nick. Adrian and then Nick.

DR. POLANSKY: I don\'t know that I have a particular opinion of whether
biotech as such should be in the statement but I do think that it\'s
relevant. There isn\'t anything special about biotech pollen, corn, and
blue corn pollen. And, so, I think it really is inclusive because
there\'s nothing \-- I mean, pollen is pollen and if you\'ve got a
self-pollinated crop or not the same kinds of coexistence solutions
relate to both, whether you\'re talking about conventional and organic
or conventional and biotech.

So, the solution, if you have a solution for one it would be my view
it\'s a solution for the other side. In other words, I\'m caught up in
whether biotech is in the statement or not, although certainly I think
this focus is, you know, solutions are coexistence issues in terms of
biotech, but, I think that the application is across and beyond just
that narrow perspective because you still have to have clean bins and
you have to have transportation systems that are able to cope with
differentiation of products, etc.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I just wanted to reflect on that a little bit. Certainly
at the producer end that\'s entirely true but given that I think it may
at least merit a moment\'s thought as to whether or not that\'s entirely
true all the way through given that certainly in some circumstances
biotech is commercially thought about so differently.

So, I\'m not quite sure. You may be right. I just think it may bear a
moment or two more reflection.

MS. DILLEY: Well, part of it, I mean, we certainly will have. I
anticipate we\'ll have more discussion. That\'s part of the whole
discussion. I think the question is whether biotech needs to be in the
title and I think your point is well taken that, you know, some people
would think about these things whether it\'s biotech or whether it\'s
blue corn and white corn.

But, my sense was that people, just to remind ourselves that we\'re the
Advisory Committee on Biotechnology in 21st Century Agriculture. It\'s
kind of a placeholder to just remind ourselves of that as that being our
\--

DR. POLANSKY: I don\'t have a \--

MS. DILLEY: Right. You know what committee you\'re on so the rest of us
need some reminding. But, I wanted to get Nick. I know Nick was next
and, okay, no cards yet, so, go ahead.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, I agree with Adrian. There\'s substantive
issues that are common and cut across both agriculture and other issues
on coexistence, but, to answer his point, I think it would help the
scope of the discussion, the announces that we might go through, and the
way I would word it is should \-- what issues should USDA consider
regarding coexistence among diverse agricultural \-- I wish I could see
the rest of the paragraph there \-- brought about by modern
biotechnology rather than try to insert biotech.

MS. DILLEY: You\'re going to have to say that again.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Right. So, coexistence among diverse agricultural
systems brought about by modern biotechnology or something like that.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, it\'s in an increasingly complex marketplace what
issues should USDA consider regarding coexistence among diverse
agricultural systems brought about by modern biotechnology. Does that
capture accurately what you said?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yes.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. DYKES: The issues brought about by modern biotechnology needs to go
up there.

(Discussion off the record)

MS. DILLEY: I realize that what we\'re doing is fitting out the scope of
our charge as well as writing our charge, so let\'s take a crack at
where we are right now. So, in an increasingly complex marketplace what
issues brought about by modern biotechnology should USDA consider
regarding coexistence among diverse agricultural systems.

DR. VANEENENNAAM: I don\'t like that first part anymore. I think you\'ve
already \--

MS. DILLEY: We throw it out, we put it back in, we throw it out, we put
it back in.

DR. VANEENENNAAM: Before we took it out before. It just seems like
we\'ve already got that it\'s diverse agricultural systems and I\'m not
sure that it adds anything.

MS. DILLEY: I guess the one thing it does is it\'s a placeholder for
this consumer demand, that whole end of things. It\'s the whole
marketplace, not just thinking about it in terms of agricultural
production systems. So, I think that\'s why people keep putting it back
in.

Leon?

MR. CORZINE: Maybe it helps if you take increasingly out of there. It\'s
already a complex marketplace. It\'ll continue to be. I think it reads
better without it.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, you didn\'t hear yesterday from the presenters
that it\'s becoming increasingly complex?

MR. CORZINE: It\'s already complex and they\'re already dealing with it.
And we\'re saying it\'s going to remain. Some of the issues we\'re
already dealing with and it\'s not anymore complex.

MS. DILLEY: In the interest of making this a shorter sentence. In a
complex marketplace, is that future enough looking, Michael, or, is that
in the future marketplace is complex?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I was just going to ask if there was a way to take this
and point it a bit more towards the future. You took the words out of my
mouth.

DR. LAYTON: So in the future marketplace.

MR. SLOCUM: It\'s increasingly.

MS. DILLEY: That\'s why increasingly because it pulls you forward.
Anyway, increasingly should stay as the placeholder for future? Michael?

DR. DYKES: I guess, to me, if we think about as looking to the future I
don\'t think it\'s necessarily the issues as it relates to biotechnology
per se because as we think ahead some of these may not fit our total
definition there, the issues. I just think we want to convey in this
sentence that if we look ahead to the increasing marketplace,
complexities in the marketplace, and the advances or changes,
modifications, introductions into the agricultural systems there are
going to be a lot of things that need to be considered. There will be
factors that will need to be considered.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah. It sounds like the sentence before that we just turned
in, what are the issues brought about biotechnology in the future. So,
we want to be sure we\'re not doing that.

DR. DYKES: Yeah.

MS. DILLEY: To me, that was kind of the point that we were making, but,
you want to be sure that we\'re focusing on the right sets of issues
that we want to talk about.

DR. DYKES: Yeah. I mean, you know, we will make \-- I mean, look at one
of the coexistence issues right now, modified oils. They have added
value. They need to be handled differently so that you can extract the
value. However, if you don\'t have a market and you can\'t clear them
with the added value they go into the regular run of the mill commodity
soybean oil and we\'re going to see more and more of those.

Think about high lysine corn that isn\'t biotech that\'s out there now
this year. And it has a higher value, but, if you don\'t \-- again, the
marketplace. If it doesn\'t clear the market for the higher value, it is
sold as number 2 yellow dent. So, I just think that we\'re looking at
this thing from \-- my real fear, to be perfectly honest, is we\'re
looking at this thing as a biotech versus organic in this whole thing
and I\'m just trying to get it to be much broader than that so that it
is meaningful.

That is certainly an important component and I\'m not in any way trying
to diminish that. I\'m just saying let\'s kind of raise up and let\'s
put that out there, yeah, we\'re going to talk about that, but, there
are other things that we need to consider in here and especially put our
hats on looking forward. There are going to be things that we shouldn\'t
just limit it to the things we know about today. We should try to
stretch a little bit and think about, based on what we know today and
based on some of the things that are fairly near term, there are going
to be other things.

There are going to be value reasons to think about coexistence. Some
things are going to have more value than other things but they don\'t
have to coexist and they may not be biotech. Biotech may be an enabler.

MS. DILLEY: Michael?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: So, you\'re giving an example of a non-biotech high
lysine corn and that that would apply stretching the mandate of this
committee a little bit.

DR. DYKES: Well, if it\'s stacked with a biotech trait. I mean, I just
don\'t think we can think about these. We just said complex agricultural
systems. They\'re going to be biotech around them, through and in them.
They may not be clearly \-- like, for example, our own Vistive soybean
oil. This itself is not biotech. It\'s all if it is stacked with Roundup
Ready because 89 percent of the soybeans in this country are Roundup
Ready. You can\'t \-- you don\'t produce this. You\'ve got it in a
Roundup Ready background so people will grow it.

So, I just think we want to hang too much on the biotech thing and I\'m
just afraid we\'re missing policy implications because we\'re still hung
up back to biotech versus organic. Again, I\'m not trying to diminish
that. It\'s there, but, there are more. It\'s much more here.

MS. DILLEY: Well, again, we\'re trying to do two things I think in terms
of we want to have a conversation about scope and what we\'re really
trying to do and how to do it, but, I wanted to see, Michael, if you had
a particular line in terms of adjustment to this.

Is taking out the modern biotechnology piece of it and then I want to go
to Sharon and Mardi.

DR. DYKES: To me, and not said in language maybe, but, what we want to
look at is the coexistence of different production capabilities
throughout production, the value chain, the market demand, and all that
over the next few years and what are the factors you\'re going to have
to consider about that. And there\'s going to be coexistence of things
of different value. There\'s going to be coexistence of things of
different uses and there\'s going to be coexistence of things that are
from biotech and others not from biotech.

And biotech may be combined with all of those things of higher value may
also have a biotech component. Again, I\'d make the argument in the case
of this, the biotech component there is not the issue. The issue is the
oil is worth more.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. DYKES: I may not be expressing myself very clearly. I just \--

MS. DILLEY: No, I think you are.

DR. DYKES: I just think the scope question, the reason why it\'s
important \-- I mean the topic sentence, the reason why it\'s important
is we go back to where we\'ve been over the years and talking about all
those things. When we had three pages written on them. Once we try to
come together on and Greg was often most helpful in saying as I read the
three pages it doesn\'t nothing (sic) to the topic sentence. That\'s to
his credit.

Once we got the topic sentence to what we really were wanting to talk
about then we took three pages off and down to a paragraph that was
pretty succinct and pretty tight around this thing. So, that\'s why I
think getting our topic here is pretty helpful to us.

MS. DILLEY: It is. It is. And we are doing \-- I think that\'s what
we\'re trying to do, both in terms of trying to figure out our scope and
what that meant. Sharon and then Mardi.

MS. WEINER: Just in terms of trying to get more of a sense of future and
pick your possibilities out there, I\'m wondering if we\'re always
saying increasingly complex marketplace, but, it seems to me people are
also saying coexistence among increasingly diverse agricultural systems.
I mean, there may be changes in all of that that are \-- that need to be
considered. I mean just a thought. You might look at that part of the
sentence too in getting some future.

MS. DILLEY: Mardi and then Leon.

DR. MELLON: But, I mean, we don\'t want to focus on issues that aren\'t
issues. There are a lot of things that are going to happen that we\'re
going to need to develop identity preservation systems in order to
accommodate the fact that there are going to be products with higher
value and I see that as \-- I mean, I see \-- I\'d see that as a
challenge but one the marketplace will probably figure out.

I think if we\'re going to spend time on issues we ought to focus on
issues that are controversial and that matter. And it seems to me that
focusing on the biotechnology and organic matters big time. Their
coexistence is, you know, a challenge. I mean, whether the two can
actually coexist is an issue.

I don\'t think it\'s an issue of whether white corn and blue corn can
coexist. I mean, I think they can, but, I think that there is \-- you
know \-- there is a more explicit burning issue that surrounds the
coexistence of biotech and organic where, you know, we might be able to
make a contribution. I think that there are also, you know, these
issues, I guess we would say biotech and conventional or, you know,
people who are trying to serve this diverse marketplace where, you know,
the adventitious presence problem is really important.

I mean, it\'s costing. I mean, you know, the suit has already been filed
by the rice growers on rice. This is going to cost somebody a big chunk
of change. I mean, we ought to be trying to think about, you know, is
there a way to \-- I mean, I would advocate that we would want to try to
address those issues where, you know, they\'re really going to matter to
people where, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars are going to be
spent trying to address them.

So, and we \-- you know \-- so I don\'t think we should shy away from
saying that our charge is to kind of address these issues that arise out
of biotech. I agree with Adrian that a lot of the solutions, a lot of
the context for the issues is going to come from the fact that they rest
on this background of, you know, conceptually and practically people
having tried to deal with similar issues in the past.

But, those aren\'t the problems. That\'s not nobody\'s spending. I mean,
I don\'t know how much this current one\'s going to cost, but, lots and
lots of dollars on those issues. We want to figure \-- we want to focus
on those that are important.

So, I would like \-- I mean, I do think we should say that we\'re
dealing with issues that are arising out of the introduction of modern
biotechnology that USDA that we want to kind of help, you know, frame up
some of those issues for USDA and that we \-- I mean, that we do want to
\-- I think the important thing about the diverse agricultural systems
is that, you know, we want to, at least from my point of view, is that
we want to say that we want to make the world \-- we want to find a
place in the world for all of these different production systems and
that might need to be said.

I mean, we might need to say we want to make it possible for organic to
exist, for it to go forward which, to me, is, you know, we can also make
similar issues. We\'ve made similar statements about biotech. But, I
don\'t know. I can\'t quite get to the answer, but, I don\'t think we
ought to distract ourselves into, you know, thinking about things that
aren\'t really issues.

MS. DILLEY: I\'m glad you want to talk. Why don\'t \-- what I\'d like to
do is take a couple of more comments on the language, but, I think
people are really anxious to have \-- what does the conversation look
like and maybe we just need to shift to that for a while and air that
out a little bit and then come back to language later.

But, I would suggest, I know Michael wants to talk. Leon has his card
up. Why don\'t we take your two comments and have a work in progress
here and talk a little bit more about what it is we\'re really trying to
\-- what\'s the conversation we\'re trying to have. What does that look
like because then I think that will help clarify some of the language
when we come back to it.

I\'m sorry, Michael, you wanted to say something. Then Leon.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I just want to respond and this is without wanting in
any way to lessen the issues that you mentioned. The focus that \--
you\'re achieving an evolution of the focus of where this topic was,
from talking about the sorts of products that were specialty products,
etc. But, I think it\'s been very clear that we are still looking
towards the more complex marketplace and also I think it\'s been very
clear from the discussions that I\'ve had that we haven\'t wanted to
focus this as a biotech versus anything.

DR. MELLON: I\'m not saying \-- well, \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: So, I mean, I think that there certainly should be a way
to include all of the issues that you\'re talking about, but, at the
same time allow for recognition that not all of the issues or not \--
that\'s not going to cover the whole picture. Let me put it that way.

MS. DILLEY: Leon?

MR. CORZINE: Well, I agree that if we set it up as a biotech versus
organic\-- we don\'t want to do that because, you know, we could create
some things that maybe aren\'t there in the real world. We had four
presentations yesterday that were all good ones on how things are
working out. Nobody\'s talking to anybody, but, back to this work in
progress, Abby.

I think we can keep it short. We\'re trying to do too much with one
sentence. So, with that being said, if you like the idea of dropping off
that first part and starting with what issues and maybe drop out brought
about by modern biotechnology. But, what issues should USDA consider
regarding coexistence among \-- sorry, I don\'t like increasingly \--
diverse agricultural systems to meet future marketplace complexities.

And then if you want to build on that with another sentence I guess
that\'s what we ought to have a discussion on.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Say it again, Leon. What is \--

MR. CORZINE: To meet future marketplace complexities.

MS. DILLEY: So, what issues and then USDA should consider, maybe we have
thought about by modern biotech, maybe not. What issues should USDA
consider regarding coexistence among diverse agricultural systems to
meet future marketplace complexities. Is that correct?

MR. CORZINE: Yes.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. All right. So, I\'m just curious because I\'m looking
at all your faces and I don\'t know where you are on this.

So, I want to take a quick thumb check, I guess, in terms of yeah,
we\'re getting there; oh, my gosh, I\'m so confused; or, eh, a little
more work and we\'re almost there. Okay.

MR. SLOCUM: I don\'t know what it means to meet future marketplace
complexities. I don\'t know what that means.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, we can either work at this a little bit more or we
can set this aside as a work in progress and talk about what is the
conversation you envision. What are we trying to do here. I think people
are starting to kind of gravitate towards how to approach this. We
talked a little bit about this yesterday. I think one suggestion from
Nick was, you know, maybe we should talk about are there market
failures. What do those look like in terms of \-- that\'s one approach
anyway. I\'m not saying that\'s necessarily what we need to do. I just
want to float that out there because it was a suggestion.

And I think people were intrigued by that. Another way was on Carole\'s
very upbeat note yesterday concluded with, gosh, I think there\'s a lot
to talk about. There\'s transportation issues. There\'s \-- name some
others that you named, Carole, because transportation\'s the one that
popped into my head.

DR. CRAMER: Sampling.

MS. DILLEY: I\'m sorry?

DR. CRAMER: Sampling and detection.

MS. DILLEY: Sampling and detection methods; availability of seed. I mean
there are lots. Adrian had put some issues on the table as well \--
consumer confidence and neighborhood issues, information. There\'s a
whole range. So, when you talk about issues, and we\'re going to do
issue spotting and we have three more meetings to do it, I think we need
to start listing out, okay, what do we really want to talk about and how
do we want to talk about it.

Michael?

DR. DYKES: I think maybe one of the things we\'re grappling with is we
really touched on a lot of these issues already, sampling, testing. We
had that. We\'ve covered that.

MS. DILLEY: We\'ve done that report.

DR. DYKES: From A to Z in the other one. Adventitious presence, we\'ve
done it every time we\'ve done a report. We had two topics we had in the
report we just handed in this morning on adventitious presence.

MS. DILLEY: So, I get your point which is let\'s not repeat where we\'ve
been with the caveat that some of these things are going to take a
different slice and that\'s what part of what we need to figure out. I
think there\'s some that may be slightly overlapping but how we set our
priorities because we do only have three more meetings.

So, what\'s the scope of what we\'re going to try and get our hands
around?

DR. DYKES: To me, another thing is I\'d add I think the coexistence
issues that we took it to a very narrow scope to follow on Mardi\'s
point is the coexistence in the biotech production systems, the organic
production systems, and the conventional production systems. We have to
think about the three of them because we think about them in terms of
their size. The largest size is biotech. Second largest is conventional
and the third one in that line is organic.

That is a very narrow cut at it.

MS. DILLEY: One piece, yeah. So, there are lots of \-- in the realm of
what should USDA consider and where we even start with that are what
issues. There\'s a lot so we need to set some priorities. So, it may be
a good \-- to me, it would make sense to spend a little time throwing
the topics out there and then doing the prioritization process that we
need to set up a work plan around. Does that make sense to people? Leon,
you\'re looking at me quizzically. That doesn\'t make sense? It does?
Okay.

Okay. Yes?

DR. LAYTON: Is it worth going back and just saying which ones we\'ve
already covered in the old topics that we don\'t have to take?

DR. DYKES: No, let\'s just do \--

DR. LAYTON: Okay.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, Carole, to tell you the truth, I started with what
you were thinking about and named the topics you had put on the table.
Issues topic.

DR. CRAMER: Standardization of sampling and detection technology.

MS. DILLEY: Sampling and testing, right? Okay. Russ?

MR. KREMER: I\'ve got two of them. Competition and preservation of
choice.

MS. DILLEY: Competition was the second one?

MR. KREMER: Yeah, I would separate them out. Competition was in
presentation of choices.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Elaboration on that, maybe, preservation and choices.
Does that cover the whole range of users, consumers?

MR. KREMER: I think that would be all right.

MS. DILLEY: Competition, can you elaborate on that a little bit more?

MR. KREMER: Just your food and agriculture system is an increasing
system addressing, you know, the threat of concentration and
consolidation of technology.

MS. DILLEY: Market access?

MR. KREMER: Yeah, right, market access.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

MR. KREMER: All the way through. Yeah, that\'s fine.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Other \--

MR. SHURDUT: And adventitious presence should be included?

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, I don\'t know if competition also picked up Mardi
on the different agricultural systems. Greg?

MR. JAFFE: I mean, the topic I think is interesting and Nick had sort of
mentioned it yesterday, I mean, is the issue of sort of externalities.
Are the benefits and risks being properly balanced in the sense of is
the person who\'s also getting the benefit also bearing the risk or is
somebody else bearing the risk but not getting the benefit? Is there an
externality?

MS. DILLEY: Okay. All right. Other topics? Low energy here. I need some
feedback here.

DR. MELLON: I think we have a little bit of compliance issues. We may
have them out there.

MS. DILLEY: Compliance or what?

DR. MELLON: It could be a whole host of things.

MS. DILLEY: Whole range of things.

DR. MELLON: Right. If you have them who\'s monitoring plus to verify?
Should compliance be monitored?

MS. DILLEY: Adrian?

DR. POLANSKY: I mean, I think there\'s a number of thought. I mean, the
thought of a third party in terms of the verification I think could be
somebody at least talked about and I\'d go back again to what I
mentioned yesterday toward the end of the day. The older I get the less
anxious I am to sort of fight numerals if they\'re not really the issue
and was identified in the presentations that half of the challenges,
they bring up tolerance issues and so forth, the storage, and
transportation, and just the mechanics of cleaning the equipment, that
sort of thing, I mean, USDA has had, for example, facility loan programs
for their storage facilities for farmers for 50 years and maybe that\'s
part of the solution. If you\'re going to have organic or whatever
production system, that needs to be kept separate. There\'s some, you
know, real world kinds of things that USDA could play a role in
immediately to help this marketing that we\'re talking about.

MS. DILLEY: So, is that the infrastructure around compliance or is that
a whole different topic, the transportation and storage? Is a separate
stand-alone topic?

DR. POLANSKY: If it\'s half the issue, it\'s really significant.

MS. DILLEY: Right. Right.

DR. HUNT: Maybe we can capture that in preservation and that\'s
certainly one topic, I think, we\'re going to be discussing here and it
captures lots of the storage and transportation and the testing and so
on so that\'s going to need to be captured too.

MR. SHURDUT: I think it\'s on-hands stewardship that\'s a component. It
was going to be on a voluntary.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, maybe stewardship and compliance.

MS. DILLEY: Those are two big categories, stewardship and compliance?
Josephine?

DR. HUNT: No.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Carole and then Mardi?

DR. CRAMER: One of the comments that was brought up by the speakers
yesterday, especially from the organic point of view, is that the
extension agents and original people often didn\'t have information on
multiple systems and that might be one area again where you need to
ensure that we have training within the state agricultural system for
the diversity of markets and the diversity of production systems.

MS. DILLEY: Mardi?

DR. MELLON: I think we somewhere need a description of the issues faced
by the organic community. I think we need to incorporate some of what
we, you know, heard yesterday about what the rules are, you know, what
would cause people, you know, to lose either markets or certifications.

So, what we kind of understand what the issues are faced by the organic
community in terms of adventitious presence, waking up to find that, you
know, trying to meet a market demand for non-GMO seed. They\'re growing
it and harvesting it even though they didn\'t intend to. But, I think we
need to articulate what those issues are. I think a lot of people, you
know, don\'t understand that it is a process-based standard, for
example.

So, we think we should do that. The other thing I think we need to
address is seed supply. If you\'re thinking \--

MS. DILLEY: Is it seed or is it supply?

DR. MELLON: No. It could be availability of seed. I mean, there are a
lot of seed issues. One is simply knowing whether \-- and I\'m going to
use \-- I want to be clear, I\'m going to use the word contamination,
not in a pejorative sense, in the same sense that the seed industry uses
it all the time, blue corn contaminates white corn. It\'s just something
though you don\'t really want it.

But, what \-- to what extent it is, our seed supply contaminated with
unwanted for any reason elements of, what I\'ll call genetically
engineered elements, whether, you know, they\'re the whole gene, or, the
promoters or whatever, but, we need to \-- there are issues of the
extent of that contamination, whether we know anything about it, what
measures we might want to take to actually, if we\'re going to offer
choice, to preserve some part of our seed supply that is \-- that is not
contaminated.

Those are, I think, issues out there and, you know, we would need to
think about the feasibility of doing that. I mean, some of this is \--
some of these problems arise because they\'re setting a process \--
we\'re setting into motion processes that we cannot control and that we
cannot \-- we are not going to be able to walk back from and, so, some
appreciation of that I think is important as well.

I mean, we need to consider the fact that most probably everything we
have field tested, every one of those genes, you know, has a path into
the seed supply and some number of those, whether they\'re approved or
not, are probably already out there in our seed.

So, whether it\'s a problem or not, I don\'t know, but, I need we need
to talk about those are the things that, to me, are big and important
issues where USDA could play a role.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, I think we picked that up in the coexistence needs
among diverse agricultural production.

DR. MELLON: Yes, right.

MS. DILLEY: It runs through what\'s happening with the seed supply, how
are people\'s choices being affected if we\'re trying to preserve choice
and protect choice among producers, customers and consumers? What does
that look like in looking at it through different lenses and getting
more affirmation for the organic community is what I hear you saying in
their experience.

DR. MELLON: Right, uh-hmm.

MS. DILLEY: So, I\'m not sure which card came up first. I\'m going to go
with Lisa and then Leon and then Duane.

MS. ZANNONI: There\'s another issues would be liabilities like who\'s
responsible for the isolation and all down the line and quality of
product. I think at some point we need to get back and define
stewardship because stewardship means different things to different
people.

MS. DILLEY: Right.

MS. ZANNONI: So, I think at some point we\'d have to get back.

MS. DILLEY: So, liability. I\'m sure we could wrap that up in about a
half an hour discussion, but, is there a particular cut at liability,
Lisa, that you think would be good to take on? Because I know that\'s a
huge topic as is stewardship and compliance. Don\'t get me wrong, but, I
just wanted to see if you had a particular cut at the liability piece
that you think would be most productive.

MS. ZANNONI: I would say isolation because that\'s kind of the beginning
state.

MS. DILLEY: So, liability as part of the compliance \--

MS. ZANNONI: And it goes down to the final product if you don\'t have
\--

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

MS. ZANNONI: \-- the market specification for something then you go back
through the line so it gets back to who was responsible for isolating
it, at which point in the line.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

MS. ZANNONI: Other people might have different opinions.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Leon and then Duane.

MR. CORZINE: I think it\'s a moot point what we\'re really talking about
and I think to not limit back to the organic thing because I agree with
Margaret is contracting and knowledge of contracting is what we\'re
really talking about, whether no matter which product, which added value
product we\'re talking about, and, you know, understanding what the
contract language means and to a great extent the liability issues as
well.

I think when we talk about seed supply it is an issue that it really
isn\'t a contamination issue, Margaret. I\'ll disagree for a long time
about that because we\'re talking about seed purity and whether you\'re
talking about noxious weeds or whether you\'re talking about does this
contaminate corn or beans contaminate beans, but, it is a purity issue
and it gets into maybe the Seed Act issues. So, it really isn\'t
contamination. It\'s purity.

MS. DILLEY: What role does the seed play in achieving a what you want,
when you want it and you want to avoid what you don\'t want?

MR. CORZINE: And they\'re tied together. The purity issues and the
contracting issues and the folks to draw on the presenters yesterday,
and each one of them addressed, you know, be careful what you sign and
know what you\'re signing, know where you can get your seed. You know,
all those issues.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, can I just ask a question for clarification?
So, you think that the marketplace is not dealing with contracts
effectively so, therefore, there\'s a role for the government to step in
and \--

MR. CORZINE: Well, I think you should move forward to \-- to help move
forward I think it is more \-- and we mentioned extension service and I
don\'t know if Extension Service can ever keep up on some of the issues,
but, a job of Extension Service in university systems could very well be
to help with these contracting and knowledge of contracting and part of
that knowledge is knowing what kind of seed purities you could be
dealing with with these various products.

So, there could be a place there. But, we did see yesterday, to this
point, really it\'s working pretty well.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I was just trying to understand when you say
contracting, what exactly, what was the issue on contracting that you
were tackling?

MR. CORZINE: I think it\'s knowledge across the system from producer,
but, also to the end user. You know, are they really asking for what
they really want. You get into those issues. You get that in Europe all
the time. And we really don\'t want that type of system here. You want
people to know what they\'re asking for.

MS. DILLEY: Duane and then Sarah?

MR. GRANT: So, this kind of fits perhaps under liability. The topic
would be dispute resolution or dispute prevention and resolution.
There\'s a little bit of communication in that and a little bit of
liability depending on where you take the cut. I know what that means in
the countryside. I\'m not sure I know what that means as you move
further down the chain, but, in the countryside there is definition that
we need to address.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Sarah?

MS. GEISERT: This fits into the conversation that one of the things that
we turn to often is what we call tools and the tools could be
information. The tools could be, you know, grids that say Japan is 5
percent. You know, you\'re at .9 percent. And I think they need to be
simple tools that are available that can convey important parts of
information.

At Danac (sic), we have tools that help people understand what are made
from organic and what the organics stand for so that when we communicate
to the marketplace you have some mechanism to help us be consistent and
a lot of these really come down to because we are a complex marketplace,
Europe and Japan are not going to beat the U.S. yet we deal on a global
basis. What are some of those basic principles of pieces of information,
you know, that we need to be aware of.

And, so, it strikes me we struggle. As we define the issues we struggle
with what are our tools to help facilitate good decision-making
throughout because I think one of the goals we have is we don\'t have
the ability to prevent all issues, but, if we do our job well we have
the ability to minimize our impact wherever you are in the supply chain
and I think that\'s what, you know, going back and evaluating and trying
to create tools is the more you can enable the system to know the
choices that they have and some of the factors that impact them in a way
that\'s easily accessible if you reach a broad audience then the system
becomes more effective.

So, it strikes me a lot of these are how do we convey them in a simple
way and the tools that can facilitate understanding them.

MS. DILLEY: Michael and then Jerry.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yeah. I was just going to add one point because I think
one of the things that I heard yesterday was some disparities in the
availability of information on different markets, the dimension that was
made about the organic folks not having comparable data for what their
market is doing because of availability of information.

So, that\'s just availability of market \-- I don\'t know if it\'s
market information or what you call it.

MR. CORZINE: That is one of the issues.

DR. MELLON: It\'s prices, the size of the market. I mean, the
availability of extension.

MS. DILLEY: So, the tools to help facilitate good communication and
decision-making throughout the marketplace?

DR. MELLON: That would be very important.

MS. DILLEY: Jerry and then Carole?

MR. SLOCUM: I was just going to say it\'s probably included in two
places and one of them\'s liability and the other is dispute prevention
and resolution, but, there\'s issue of land/producer rights. I mean, you
know, the guys that own the land have certain rights and yet they\'re
neighbors because they own land and have certain rights to them.

And you heard yesterday practitioners in the trade talk about how they
had resolved those issues. And as long as that can be done across the
fences and kitchens that\'s where it needs to done, but, it won\'t
always be done that way. We all know that.

MS. DILLEY: That\'s one piece of it, but, there are other pieces.

MR. SLOCUM: There are pieces of it, so, I don\'t know that \-- I don\'t
want a lot of government helping that because I do think it\'s a problem
that we need to be aware of.

MS. DILLEY: Daryl and then Lisa.

DR. BUSS: Well, in terms of issues, I think one of the things that I
don\'t think is exclusively listed is sort of the comparative economics
because we\'re hearing how that ultimately drives decision-making across
the various production types.

MS. DILLEY: Say that again?

DR. LAYTON: That was identified in here I think that we don\'t have that
data. We don\'t have that ability to look at it and analyze it.

MS. DILLEY: Lisa?

MS. ZANNONI: Import and export issues, so, import issues on the
standards, safety standards, marketing standards, and when things come
into our market.

MS. DILLEY: So, safety standards. Safety and marketing standards and
what was the export? Did you say something about the export, the mention
of it, or, no?

MS. ZANNONI: Well, I guess I think it\'s more into the exports. It
seemed like the big issue was the AP was the biggest issue yesterday.
AP.

MS. DILLEY: Thank you. AP.

DR. LAYTON: We have AP up.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Mardi?

DR. MELLON: Another issue I\'d like for us to talk about that was
brought up yesterday was the notion of markers. In this case, not
selective markers. But, markers that would actually identify \-- that
would be put in to \-- into biotech crops that could be easily tested
for and that, you know, might facilitate some of the information
exchange in the marketplace and the U.S. might even \-- I mean I think
this is an issue.

I haven\'t thought all the way through it, but, I think that it is an
interesting idea that the U.S. might encourage the use of markers around
the world so that the global marketplace might benefit from their
availability.

MS. DILLEY: Markers as tools of information change. Was that your \--
okay. Other issues, topics?

DR. MELLON: I\'d call them ID markers maybe. So that each \-- you know
\-- what I\'m thinking of is some sort of each genetically engineered
event would have a little molecular marker that you could devise that
would become an I.D. tag for that event that could be made available to
some, you know, folks and that they might be available to test for.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Maybe we can take a break and I think then start
potentially clustering and then seeing a prioritization of how far we
can get with that before lunch. Brad, I believe you\'re next.

MR. SHURDUT: And it\'s kind of tying up some loose ends or some of the
things touched upon previously. There\'s really a whole world of
regulations and standards versus contracts. I don\'t know how many times
I heard yesterday, just getting back to the organic thing, process-based
standard or performance-based standard versus, you know,
substantive-type standard and a lot of confusion but it gets back to the
quote, what is the world of regulation and what\'s the relationship
between regulation standards and contracts and the confusion in the
marketplace in terms of sorting that out.

MS. DILLEY: Let me make sure I got that. Regulation standards and
contracts \-- another section I guess of regulation standards \--

MR. SHURDUT: And contracts.

MS. DILLEY: \-- contracts with confusion in the marketplace.

MR. SHURDUT: Correct.

DR. LAYTON: Is testing in there too?

MR. SHURDUT: Testing would be in there to some extent but I\'m really
getting that. There\'s so much confusion about organic because you find
a GMO in there although it\'s a process-based standard, when are you in
violation, and it probably goes back to contracts in terms of the level
but that confusion it brings in liability and it brings in so many other
aspects.

DR. MELLON: And the other issue \--

MS. DILLEY: Wait a minute. Sorry. Nick. Mardi, I didn\'t mean to cut you
off. That\'s fine. I just want to go to Nick after that. Sarah and Nick,
you\'re next.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, there is a lot of activity outside of the U.S.
at the global level Codex, the EU, Japan, Korea, all kinds of standards
being implemented and all kinds of discussions going on on issues of
coexistence standards, adventitious presence, and so on which, of
course, is an important backdrop to the discussion that we have
domestically.

So, at a minimum, considering what all these ongoing discussions which
is largely in flux and how it affects the domestic discussion should be
at a minimum acknowledged, if not addressed. We\'re not operating by
ourselves. That\'s what I\'m trying to say.

MS. DILLEY: Was your framing of it, Nick, that impacted the
international marketplace on the domestic?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: International regulation and international policy
discussion on coexistence. And it\'s complex and it\'s at various levels
and that creates all kinds of complexities as to how we play
domestically and what we do domestically. So, that intersection between
what\'s happening outside of our borders at a policy level is what I\'m
trying to say. Let\'s acknowledge it. Let\'s consider it. Let\'s figure
out what it does and how USDA should be taking into account.

MS. DILLEY: Duane?

MR. GRANT: So, this one isn\'t big for me, but, just kind of thinking
forward, it could be. It\'s a sanitary, phytosanitary issue. There\'s
kind of two cuts to that. One is because organic is in this discussion
there\'s kind of a background hum of the ability of organic to be a
refuge for disease, etc. that can become sanitary, phyto-sanitary, can
result in those issues.

The second cut to that is the potential for other countries to use
regulations that are empowered, I guess, by sanitary products, sanitary
as a way to exclude inputs from the U.S. or seed sources from the U.S.
And that\'s definitely on the future. It\'s not today. We\'re not
fighting that today. But, depending on how far you want to look.

MS. DILLEY: It goes back to what Nick was talking about, the
international discussion and there\'s a little bit of different
agricultural products I\'m trying to piece out.

MR. GRANT: So, you know, we may want to drop this, but, I guess what\'s
different than what\'s been put out so far, at least to a point that
there are regulatory powers, I guess, that are associated with those
terms and the ability to regulate trade.

MS. DILLEY: So, I almost get a reversal, I think, you\'re saying in
that, you know, what\'s going on domestically; how does that affect the
trade dynamic at the international level as some of the things you\'re
bringing up. I don\'t know.

MR. GRANT: Just leave it there for now and we can discuss it.

MS. DILLEY: Can I sort of focus on sanitary, phytosanitary and then \--

MR. GRANT: We\'ll see what that\'s \--

MS. DILLEY: All right. Sarah and then Marcia and then Mardi.

MS. GEISERT: I don\'t know if this really fits either but I was thinking
about what Michael was talking about with storage and some of the
things. Well you want to have a capital market coming into play. We\'ve
heard about consolidation yesterday and as organic becomes more
mainstream and you need to have different segregation systems and, you
know, all of a sudden the availability of capital, especially if you
look at rural America, who gets the capital, where does it go, how do
you invest, that can have an impact on the reaction of either or any of
the three agricultural production systems.

It\'s a market driver again but, you know, make a lot of decisions based
on our cost of capital.

MS. DILLEY: Marcia and then Mardi.

MS. HOLDEN: To go back to testing and international issues again and
international harmonization of testing, worldwide agreement on the
testing or what event and in order to facilitate the movement from one
country to another and in the issue of markers it\'s not clear to me how
a marker would be an improvement over an event-specific detection
that\'s possibly available now for a specific event.

MS. DILLEY: We\'re not going to have that conversation yet. That would
be part of the conversation, I think, when we decide to go down that
path.

MS. HOLDEN: And, it also affects quantitation issues, how you calculate
quantitation.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah. So, let\'s go to Mardi, Dale, and Carole and then
we\'re going to take a break because I want you guys to kind of peruse
these lists at a break and then we need to come back and do a little bit
of sorting and prioritization. Mardi.

DR. MELLON: I just want to follow up on Brad\'s point about the
intersection between kind of regulation and some of these issues and I
think we want to not delve into, but, again focus on the fact that we
don\'t approve any events for food safety in the U.S. and that we have a
voluntary and I think from the point of some people, of course, not all,
but, you know, not a confidence-inspiring food safety approval system
and we want to think about that in \-- we want to think about that issue
in the context of kind of adventitious presence and responding to \--

MS. DILLEY: It can be part of the discussion on some of these other
topics but I didn\'t hear a topic.

DR. MELLON: Well, I mean I think the food safety.

MS. DILLEY: The intersection piece?

DR. MELLON: Yes. Not just \-- I mean that\'s one of the big
intersections between some of these market issues and the regulatory
system is whether, you know, what kind of assurances the regulatory
system provides to the marketplace.

MS. DILLEY: Daryl and then Carole.

DR. BUSS: Well, you mentioned international primarily from the
standpoint of regulation, but, a different cut would be issues arising
from import genetically modified from abroad.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Daryl, could I just ask if you mean specifically
genetically engineered or is that broader for import of diverse things?

DR. BUSS: I was referring to it in the biotech context but \--

MS. DILLEY: So, it\'s import of biotech products. Okay. Carole.

DR. CRAMER: You guys think of me as being that technology wonk. I think
you should \-- we should think as well that there\'s a whole new
generation of I.D. chips, nanoparticles that could be mixed in. There\'s
a whole series of new tools that in the ten-year time frame could be
something that could cost-effectively be integrated into identity
preservation marker systems, traceability.

MS. DILLEY: Traceability technology?

DR. CRAMER: Yes. So, new I.D. technologies, I think, is something that
it would be good to have at least a little discussion so that the
Secretary knows these are going to be options moving forward.

MS. DILLEY: So, we have six pages. You know, this is a brainstorming
session so I think the next we at least need to do is have you take a
bit of a break and have you \-- have all of us look at this, see if we
can compile a little bit and do some prioritization because obviously we
can\'t take on all these topics in three sessions and produce a product
so we need to make some decisions about how to focus our time.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Actually, I think the other thing is maybe just some
talk about what the output might look like; is it going to be \--

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, what I\'d like to accomplish if we can by the time
we take the break, the lunch break at noon, is to do a little bit of
organization of these lists, the list, and also Michael was just saying,
which I\'m not sure if you could hear it or not, was let\'s talk about
the product, because that also helps think about how we need to
prioritize.

We talked about a fairly brief paper that discusses these issues, so,
again, let\'s see if we can get a little bit more clarity around what
the product might be, a description we called the last paper issue
spotting. Is that the same thing here? What are we trying to accomplish
in our discussions about whatever issues we decide to prioritize and
move forward on? But, if we can at least get a little bit of a handle or
discussion on that and then some organization of these topics I think
that will be a good thing to kind of mull over as we hit lunch and then
come back and try and pin down a little bit more.

Okay. So if we could \-- is it five after? Am I reading the clock
correctly?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

MS. DILLEY: So, if we could just take like \-- let\'s make it fifteen
because \-- well, let\'s say ten and it\'ll probably be fifteen. So, if
we can start talking at twenty after that would be great. Okay. So make
sure you look at these lists. Don\'t just use it to check on your
blackberry or as Cindy calls it, blueberry.

(Whereupon, a brief recess was taken)

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So we had a half an hour break. We have a half an hour
before lunch break at noon and what I\'ll probably do is \-- had a
couple of suggestions in terms of how to analyze or sort through this
list. One was an observation, and I think this is true, not surprisingly
we have a fruit salad up there so one way to sort is to talk about
what\'s the conversation we need to have in terms of current issues or
topics or the current situation and obviously something we got a lot of
that from yesterday\'s presentations, etc., but, trying to understand
the current situation and whether some of the tools or mechanisms that
are linked or have a role in coexistence, whether they\'re going to be
appropriate, need to be fine tuned, need to be changed, or, going to be
updated for future, when we do the future looking piece of it, what\'s
that kind of conversation.

So, for example, inputs of biotech products from \-- I\'m just picking
one \-- but, we\'re doing a huge amount of that right now, but, that\'s
a future looking thing, new technologies. Those are the kinds of things
as part of that future looking conversation that we need to have.

The current one in terms of guiding ourselves in the current issues that
may come under, you know, stewardship and what we\'re doing for storage
and transportation and some of what we heard yesterday and how might
that change or how do we need to look at that differently for the
future. That carries into the next conversation.

But, they are somewhat different conversations. So, that would be one
way to sort it. Another way, and I know Pat was doing a little of this
analysis, I haven\'t really gone through it, and we all know some of
these topics are some we\'ve picked up before in the previous report and
we don\'t want to repeat the previous report, but, like adventitious
presence.

I think we identify an issue, if that\'s something that we think is so
important to this particular topic then what\'s the kind of unique slice
of it that we\'re going to have in this conversation that can add
additional value to our thinking to put before the Secretary as opposed
to having that same conversation.

So, it\'s trying to kind of fine tune a little bit some of these issues
in terms of what\'s the different conversation we\'re trying to have
with regard to this charge versus what we\'ve already done or as opposed
to repeating what we\'ve already done.

So, and then I was just trying to come up with some big categories like
the compliance and stewardship. I think a lot of these fall under those
categories. The area of preservation of choice for producers, consumers,
and consumers and customers, that\'s kind of a big category. The whole
tools to help facilitate and communication and decision-making
throughout the marketplace also is kind of a big category of things.

So, a dispute resolution could fall under that and some other kinds of
things could fall under that. So, we could sort these in a lot of
different ways. I don\'t know if other people had different suggestions
in terms of how to tackle this list but those are some.

You do have other ideas, Jerry?

MR. SLOCUM: No. I kind of like your idea, Abby.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Which one is that?

MR. SLOCUM: It\'s a number of things that make a lot of good sense, you
know, the issue to the producers, you know, you can certainly put my
issue of landowner producer rights there. You can put part of the
dispute resolution there, prevention resolution there.

MS. DILLEY: Slow down. Let me stay up with you. So, this one that has
\--

MR. SLOCUM: The one that has preservation of choices for producers. And
I think there\'s a preservation of choices for customers/consumers or
maybe there\'s three categories.

MS. DILLEY: Customers and consumers. I think there are kind of two
categories. And you could tuck some of these under \-- all of these or
some under just \--

MR. SLOCUM: The liability issue. There\'s a liability issue with respect
to the preservation of choice for producers and there\'s a liability
issue with preservation of choice for the people that buy for producers
and deliver to consumers.

MS. DILLEY: Contracting a piece of it.

MR. SLOCUM: Contracting is a piece of it. And some of these may fit
under several of \-- because really, and Russ is not here, but, really,
you know, coexistence is about preservation of choice in a sense. Isn\'t
it? Yeah.

MS. DILLEY: We talked a lot about that yesterday.

MR. SLOCUM: Yeah.

MS. DILLEY: So that would be one way to sort it. Reaction to that? Steve
and then Duane. Mardi, is your card up also or was it up from before?

DR. MELLON: No. I\'m sorry.

MS. DILLEY: I didn\'t think so. So, Steve and then Duane.

MR. PUEPPKE: Are you talking about putting something \-- everything
under something or developing a matrix?

MS. DILLEY: I think trying to develop a matrix. I mean, it\'s we\'re
trying to get our hands around categories of things and then we\'ll need
to make some prioritization in terms of what can we take on. But, I
think some of these are over \-- we do have fruit salad so I\'m trying
to put the cantaloupe with the cantaloupe and the apples with \-- if
it\'s a major something we need to do, great.

If the matrix approach makes it more difficult then, you know, we won\'t
use it. But, that\'s starting to look at, well, if you look at
preservation of choice, and that\'s kind of one of the drivers, then you
can sort it into producers, some of which go across all of these
categories, some of which are relevant for others, and what else on that
list might not fall into that and is that a priority for the group.

So, that\'s one way to do it. That\'s a long answer to your question.

MR. PUEPPKE: If that\'s the case then the very first thing up there, the
standardization fits well under compliance.

MS. DILLEY: Yeah, yeah. Duane.

MR. GRANT: So, I mean, it\'s helpful for me to try and think about this
in the context of what our product may look like and recognize that
hasn\'t been defined and who knows what it\'ll eventually be. But, if I
don\'t at least know where I\'m headed it\'s difficult to try and figure
out how to sort them out.

So, in my mind, one potential way to set this up is we heard yesterday
from all of our presenters, three especially, that there are a number of
things that are being done for coexistence that are well accepted in the
marketplace and folks understand what the rules are and what to build
on.

I think that that would be a helpful place to start our product. Just
acknowledge that, you know, there is coexistence taking place today and
this is kind of what\'s out there and this is what\'s being done and
this is how the players interact. And then from that point we\'ve got
\-- we do have a fruit salad on the wall; many pieces of which we\'ve
taken bites out of previously in our other documents.

I think in this document they\'re only relevant if there\'s some nuance
that directly relates to coexistence that hasn\'t been pulled out in our
other documents. I\'m not particularly interested, for example, in
taking a deep dive into adventitious presence. But, there may be some
nuances that directly relate to coexistence that we can pull out.

So, you know, when I frame it I would organize it by what\'s already
being done and is accepted within the trade. That\'s kind of the first
part. And then just what nuances of this salad do we want to really
focus on and then I think you can kind of organize it.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, to me that was kind of the first split we talked
about and I think that\'s Greg\'s take too. You\'ve got to describe
what\'s going on now and then what are some things that are relevant.
What other factors do you need to consider looking down the road in
terms of new products systems, whatever, and what are the relevant
pieces of some of the things we\'ve talked about or new issues that we
haven\'t talked about that the group wants to take on.

MR. GRANT: I guess I would just emphasize that I think we\'ve got to use
a pretty sharp line of discretion as to what is related to coexistence
and what isn\'t.

MS. DILLEY: Uh-hmm.

DR. LAYTON: Or what we\'ve already covered related to coexistence and
what we need to add.

MS. DILLEY: Uh-hmm. Carole?

DR. CRAMER: Yeah. I agree. Part of what scared me about this morning\'s
discussion is that it sounded like the last three years.

MS. DILLEY: Do that all over again.

DR. CRAMER: Yeah. And my feeling is we\'ve done the broad spectrum
issues. And what we\'re being asked to do is go in depth on one issue
and I think we should try to stay fairly focused. And if I were the
Secretary I would actually want to get something out of here.

I think it\'s important that we look from the point of view of we\'re at
this juncture now. There is a number of futures but what are the things
\-- you know \-- where should the USDA be putting its dollars in order
to make a difference and to make all these things happen more
effectively.

And, so, I think that we should not step back as we always have and
said, you know, we don\'t make any recommendations. I think that we\'ve
learned a lot of things even just from yesterdays talks about worldwide
recommendations that, you know, training, universally training the
extension agents so that they know all of the complexities of these
things and have the information there.

But, I think it\'s worth looking at places where we say, you know, the
marketplace handles this; this doesn\'t need to be regulated. USDA
doesn\'t need to do that, but, USDA could really, you know, do this.
USDA could put money into, you know, IP detection technologies that
could really facilitate five years down when it\'s even worse when it\'s
all done electronically.

So, I would say we should say, let\'s not try to reproduce the last
report. Let\'s look at what we can really bring that\'s new and unique
to this so that at the end we sit there and feel like we\'ve given the
Secretary what he\'s asked for.

MS. DILLEY: So, I believe that you have no one arguing with not wanting
to repeat the last three years. And I think what I\'ve heard a couple of
comments in terms of the vision for what this looks like. So, what\'s
happening today and let\'s have a little bit of that discussion and then
looking down the road here\'s some things or observations, issues to
consider, however you want to frame it.

But, these are some of the areas that we want to talk about in terms of
what USDA needs to think about, consider what we would suggest, that
kind of a framing of the overall report and trying to focus on those
areas that are unique or different than what we\'ve already gone, we\'ve
already tread.

So what are the details in terms of, okay, so what does that mean in
terms of our priorities. Alison?

DR. VANEENENNAAM: I guess I just wanted I never say no to more money for
extension, but, I did want to just say that there is actually training
going on in extension and we have organic extension advisors and we do
organic research and there\'s organic funding programs so I think that
yesterday\'s discussion really didn\'t talk about the fact that there is
a lot of work being done in the extension and, of course, we should have
more money for extension.

But, there is some work getting done there.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, I think Carole was using that as kind of an
example and so let\'s not jump into that. If your heads went up on that
particular topic let\'s \-- so if we can \-- more details on the
organization of discussion. I think that would be helpful. Daryl.

DR. BUSS: I was going to pick up on that in the sense that I think it\'s
an example of something that we don\'t want to get into such specifics
as to solution. If the issue in fact is providing ready access to
reliable information to help guide potential producers, extension\'s
only one means toward that end.

MS. DILLEY: Absolutely.

DR. BUSS: And I don\'t think we ought to get down the line so far
specifying as to the extension versus web-based for example. Then we\'re
going too detailed.

MS. DILLEY: Uh-hmm. Yeah. If we\'re at that level of detail that\'s
probably the one and only topic we would take on. Yeah. Okay. So,
that\'s a good reminder in terms of we\'re trying to go \-- brought on a
coexistence issue we probably won\'t be going down the level of detail
in each factor of that.

So, what are the pieces of that then that it looks like and I actually
think, Jerry, your run at preservation of choice and how that filters
through that, that matches up with this kind of outline. So, in terms of
prioritization, people have thoughts when you looked at the list in
terms of what really struck you as kind of either a major issue, even if
it has been one we\'ve addressed, but, there is a particular important
nuance to it, or, what\'s new that really gets you pretty \-- that you
think is a really key piece of this discussion.

Nick.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, yesterday I suggested that one way to organize
all of this was to focus on the whole concept of market failure and
understand it against what \-- to Duane\'s point. Certain parts of the
market are already working pretty well.

In fact, I don\'t think that this committee is all that well positioned
to know what is happening out in the marketplace. So, you know, there\'s
a lot more that is happening that we can recognize and acknowledge. So,
I\'m actually very proud of the list that we have up there because 95
percent of the issues are actually issues that most of economists
organize as potential market failures as in \-- or places where
government can actually improve the marketplace, a standard setting,
externalities.

I can see that it is, but, my point is this, that some of this are
potential, potential places where government can have an impact. For
example, market structure \-- market access. Now, some of them might or
might not be nearly as important and maybe having something to say about
our judgment on whether it is or it isn\'t important might be something
that this committee wants to tackle.

I don\'t know whether that\'s agreeable or not.

MS. DILLEY: So, from your perspective, Nick, if you were to take that
kind of market avenue, were there things that pop out to you that would
be areas of priority?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, I can give you my perspective. I\'m sure that
\--

MS. DILLEY: That\'s what we want.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: \-- that was on the table. We have a different
perspective on exactly that issue, but, what I want to say is that
putting up a list and saying these are all being discussed and we find
that this issue might not be nearly as important as it sounds and this
issue might have \-- we find that it might have potentially more impact
if USDA paid more attention, might be something that the committee wants
to take up. I don\'t know.

I don\'t know whether that kind of recommendation or what, you know,
that kind of level of advice is something that the committee has taken
up in the past.

MS. DILLEY: I\'m trying to reconcile that maintaining a fairly lengthy
list and really having the time to do it justice and saying this maybe
is not so important even though it was on a list. So, we have to do some
kind of prioritization up front and then the conversation may look like
that. You know, we think that this particular, I don\'t know, pick an
issue, that seed supply is a really important issue but maybe it\'s not.
I mean, it could pull out that way.

But, what I don\'t want to do is walk away from here saying that in
three meetings we\'re going to talk about six pages of issues because I
don\'t think we can do that. I think that\'s setting us up for an
impossible task. So, I think we\'ll have to do some amount of winnowing
on the six pages and then we\'ll probably have the conversation I think
that you\'re trying to do which is let\'s have the conversation and then
some are going to sort out as more of a priority than others.

Jerry?

MR. SLOCUM: I mean, maybe we could pose the question to ourselves and
Nick is right because there\'s so many things of it I certainly don\'t
understand. Is coexistence among farmers in different production systems
among the wholesale, among the grain handling, the delivery system,
among the wholesale, the retail, all the way to the consumer.
Coexistence does exist and it is working. Is that fair to say?

MS. DILLEY: Greg?

MR. JAFFE: Nobody can say that. I mean, we heard from a few people that
it was working. Is it working where they want it to work? They\'ve
altered a lot of what they would normally might have done differently to
make it work. Does that mean is it working? I don\'t \-- I mean, it\'s a
subjective thing.

Some people would say it was working. Some people would say it was not
working. Some people would say they\'re forced to work it. They\'d
prefer it to work a different way. That\'s why \-- I mean, that\'s why I
think \-- I mean, there may be some market failures but there also may
be just because the market is working doesn\'t mean it\'s working
ideally or in the best way at this point.

And is our job not just to point out the complete failure but also point
out places where there\'s still some tension in the market. Commerce may
be happening. Farmers may be doing things. But, they also may be \-- we
may be forcing people to change what they\'re doing and some of that may
cost money and is that cost worth it to society?

You know what I\'m saying? I mean, there\'s lots of other things to
value whether something is working or not. So, I don\'t think it\'s our
job to say it\'s working. I think where we would add some value for the
current situation is I think there are a lot of misconceptions out there
about coexistence, about either how well it\'s working or how well it\'s
not working. We probably would add some value by putting some analysis
to some of the misconceptions, some places where it is \-- we think it
is working well and some places where it may not be working as well.

So, I mean, I think, to me, this is not a topic I know as much about as
other ones that we\'ve dealt with in the committee, but, I think that
there are a lot of misconceptions out there. I mean, it would have been
nice to have data. We had two farmers yesterday who both grew organic
and conventional. I think probably many people in the United States
think you\'re either an organic farmer or a conventional farmer.

It would be nice to have data to show that 90 percent of organic farmers
in the United States also have a conventional farm and maybe that would
make us distinguish us from Europe and why they\'re having coexistence
issues there and we don\'t have them here is because they\'re not
dealing with their neighbor, they\'re dealing with their own plot of
land and how to \--

But, it was clear from another speaker, we don\'t even have that data.
So, you know, we got a couple of anecdotal ones. We don\'t really have
the data who these people are.

MR. SLOCUM: But, we\'re not going to get that data.

MR. JAFFE: I understand that. So, I don\'t think we can do a factual
analysis so we have to just do a multiple policy analysis. That\'s what
kind of committee we are here. We\'re not a factual committee. We\'re
not a research committee and \--

MR. SLOCUM: But, that\'s a different approach to this, see.

MS. DILLEY: Jerry, and I\'m not sure where you\'re going.

MR. SLOCUM: I\'m just asking a question. I\'m not as comfortable with
the way we\'re approaching this as I\'d like to be and maybe if you made
a presumption it was working in some form or fashion, it obviously is in
some form or fashion, then what are the threats to that seizing the work
in that form or fashion and what would the USDA do to consider those
threats and to consider a way to make that form or fashion truly more
desirable to participants.

MS. DILLEY: See, I don\'t think you\'re any different than what we were
talking about before. It\'s really a "what is coexistence today?" We\'re
describing it now. People \--

MR. SLOCUM: But, we\'re saying we can\'t describe it now.

MS. DILLEY: Well, but, I think \--

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s what Greg is saying and I think he\'s right.

MS. DILLEY: Well, I think the conversation is what we need to have. I
mean, that\'s part of what the Secretary is asking is what is happening
and what are the perspectives given the makeup of the committee of how
it\'s working, not working, differences of opinion of one person\'s
working is another person\'s not working.

So, what does that look like and then where are there going to be
different things to think about in terms of coexistence in the future
given that the marketplace is changing and I still think it\'s a
journey, not a destination. I mean, that really resonates with me.

I don\'t know if you ever can declare we\'re there, now we\'re done. You
know, we\'ve accomplished coexistence. It\'s always going to be
adjustments, changes to the marketplace, and so changes to how you
actually \-- what coexistence looks like. It\'s always going to be
changing. It\'s a dynamic thing.

So, and I think the conversation the committee\'s going to have around
current and future looking at the changes in the marketplace and
preserving choice where producers, customers and consumers is the
conversation we need to have and try and capture in the report. That\'s
kind of what my sense of was where we were going.

And, so, I don\'t think \-- it may be saying it differently, but, I
think you\'re in the same place that Duane and Greg are really. So,
maybe I\'m wrong, but, to me we did not \--

MR. SLOCUM: Are we in the same place where Nick is?

MS. DILLEY: I think so. I just think, yes, I think so because I think a
sort out of what\'s important and we agree or agree to disagree or we
find we don\'t think that. Again, I\'m picking on seed supply, not for
any reason, but, just because I can read my own handwriting on that one.
It may fall out as an issue or we may decide, you know, it\'s a lot
bigger than what we thought and that may be if it played out this way
maybe that will be close to a market failure.

So, and maybe we do want to do something about it and maybe we don\'t. I
mean, those are the kinds of things that I think the conversation is the
same or similar and I\'m talking too much and other people\'s cards have
come up, but, I think we\'re making progress in painting the picture
that we need to have.

Adrian, Mardi, and then Leon.

DR. POLANSKY: Well, I just would comment on in terms of how well is the
coexistence working. I\'m not sure that we can make a judgment that
it\'s perfect or somewhat perfect, but, I think what the value of what
we heard yesterday is that it can work. There are at least examples of
how it is working, how it\'s working on the farm and how it\'s working
in terms of delivering that product, not only within domestically here
but worldwide, if I understood or if I recall what the message was
yesterday.

The individual was talking about purchasing various types of product,
not just from producers here but China, elsewhere. So, I think the point
is, it can work and identifying what makes it work, what allows it work,
and those instances and how that can be a dynamic that USDA can assist
in where there have been issues or problems or whatever.

So, I think that\'s the important part of that. At least that\'s my
view. The other thing that I think as we\'re looking to the future,
that\'s a lot of what I think the focus is here, to \-- I mean, to make
a judgment on what the change will be or what consumers are demanding or
that sort of thing is not particularly, in my view, relevant in terms of
those preferences today because they change.

Consumers, that low carb thing, my God, preferences change. My point is
preferences change and for us to try to get locked into what those are
going to be and the key is whatever \-- you know \-- my view is, is to
look at a system or options where USDA can be helpful into whatever
those consumer preferences are, whatever the preferences are in terms of
production so that the system is in place to allow the market to work
and provide whatever the consumers are looking for at whatever
particular time that we\'re talking about, whether it\'s five years or
ten years from now.

I mean, that, to me, is the important issue at hand. It\'s not what the
preference is going to be, whether it\'s organic or something else,
it\'s having a system in place that allows it to work so that people can
in terms of whatever they\'re demanding at a particular point in time
they have an access to it and a choice to purchase whatever that
preference is.

MS. DILLEY: I had Mardi, Leon, Nick, Pat, Michael. Mardi, then Leon.

DR. MELLON: I just want to caution us that I don\'t think we would want
to say things like the market is working. I mean, we want to describe
some of the places where it might be working, but, to say overall it\'s
working I think is just too big a statement and I want to \-- I mean,
you know, what I remember from our conversation yesterday is Nick saying
things like your organic market can work just fine if you don\'t mind
most of the organic food coming from outside the country.

We heard folks say, who needs the Midwest. You know, we\'ll just bring
things directly from Argentina in. So, I just think the market \-- you
know \-- there are places where you could say the market is working,
say, from the consumer point of view. You could say the market\'s
working just fine if you could get the products that you need but
they\'d all come from outside the U.S.

But, that wouldn\'t work for agriculture. It wouldn\'t work \--
certainly isn\'t what I want to see American agriculture provide. So, I
think we ought to kind of describe it in all of its complexities. I
really do like the idea of conveying to people what we did learn
yesterday, which I didn\'t know, and I was really interested by it. But,
I think, you know, the market is a many splendored thing, but, we also
ought to look forward to the notion of we\'re talking about coexistence
in a world where the only products out there that are coexisting are
corn and soybeans, which are important, but, those are not the big
categories certainly from the organic point of view.

So, what we want to think about that \-- I mean, so as we\'re looking
forward we\'d want to think about coexistence in terms of fruits and
vegetables and nuts and orchard crops and all of that. Do the hopeful
signs that we have today translate into those kinds of markets or are we
going to have to, you know, think again.

MS. DILLEY: We\'re getting close to lunch and I think trying to have the
conversation in the next five minutes is tough. So, what I\'d like is
people have cards up. If you can \-- because I still think we\'re
bouncing back and forth between what we want to talk about and actually
talking about. So, I think people agree that we want to capture a
description of what is the marketplace today and what are some of the
elements of coexistence that are going on today and capturing that so we
need more details about that.

But, I don\'t want to start defining we think it\'s successful or not
successful because that\'s a conversation that we\'re going to have in
talking about that.

So, I just wanted to make that statement because I think we\'re getting
into the conversation. Let me take the cards that we have up. Leon,
Nick, Pat. Pat, I don\'t know if you put your card down.

DR. LAYTON: I put my card down.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, Michael and then Steve and then we\'ll break for
lunch. Leon.

MR. CORZINE: Well, to try to be brief. I just feel like Adrian said and
also I think still Jerry asked the key question. If we\'re going to
start up on the basis of what we learned yesterday, what we\'ve seen,
Greg, I think you have to acknowledge that things are working in the
marketplace. They are.

Now, is it perfect and absolutely easy for everyone, no. But, you know
what, with that difficulty comes value. If it was very easy and
everybody could do it \-- if I could go sell hot dogs in the middle of
the street I may think that\'s the best place, but, it\'s going to be
pretty difficult. But, you know what, I can do it over on the edge of
the street.

And as we move forward to that next marketplace I think what we need to
talk about is what Adrian mentioned. If we want to be helpful to USDA we
want to say this is where we are. This is what the landscape is. And
this is how USDA is going to help facilitate and be helpful as we move
forward in the future for whatever the market may be and we don\'t need
to get hung up on specific organic issues, for example, or we need to
look at a little bit bigger picture of that as we look at what might be
next in the product line.

But, I think we have to acknowledge things are working and I think you
can look clear across the country and see that.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Nick?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, I\'m going to try to say what I tried to say
before one more time and if I don\'t do it this time I\'m going to shut
up for the rest of the afternoon. So, I think there\'s a common thing of
what is being said around the table and there was a lot of learning that
took place yesterday and everybody has acknowledged that to some degree.

And what was said yesterday is that markets work for some things and
then the question was posed, are there places where markets can be
helped by government and so that was said, well, you know, one good way
to frame it is to focus on potential market failures so that there are
places where governments can actually do and have a useful role.

So, when I look at the list that we have put together actually 95
percent of everything we have can fall into a bucket of a potential
market failure. Now, what I was proposing before is instead of
prioritizing today and saying we\'re going to take up this and not take
those up, keep that list, put them into large buckets of potential
issues, and then use the other three sets of meetings that we have plus
whatever we do in between meetings and kind of go through that list with
presentations that we might invite useful presentations and at the end
of the day tell something about all of this, whether markets work or why
they work, whether there\'s some issues like market structure and, you
know, the seed industry being an issue or not being an issue; you know,
liability being something that you might want to take up or already
legal scholars are addressing it and the courts are going to resolve it.

So, my point is, we might have an opportunity to use this list as a
framework to kind of inviting people in and take that information and
turn around and prepare a report that says, hey, these are important
issues and these are misconceptions and these might not be \-- these are
professional issues but really there\'s not a lot of value for USDA to
be part of.

So, that was my suggestion. Don\'t take anything out of the fruit salad,
but, rather use it as a platform. You know, we can organize the fruit
salad in a much better set of bowls but, you know, use it as a platform
for us to have useful discussions over the next year and at the end of
the day present a report that says, hey, these are important issues and
these are not.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Steve and then Michael.

MR. PUEPPKE: Yeah. The question I have is does it make any sense to go
back to where we started yesterday which is this we looked at the
results of the call. This notion of where the future, agreeing on a
future that has such and such characteristics, Michael?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I think it\'s a great idea that I think will be very
challenging, agreeing on what that future is going to be.

MR. PUEPPKE: Because it seems to me that we\'re 180 degrees off and
we\'re not agreeing on pushing forward from the present either. You
know, we\'re not even agreeing on the sort of what\'s the present
looking like.

DR. LAYTON: Some of us see it as successful and working and some of us
see it as \--

MS. DILLEY: But, I like Nick\'s formulation. It\'s working for some
things and I don\'t think people would disagree with that. It does work
in some areas and people have different opinions of what those areas are
and how successful it is and I think that\'s fine. I don\'t think the
committee\'s trying to come to an agreement on whether it\'s a success
or a failure. It\'s more just what is going on, where is it working
well, where might we want to take another look.

I mean, I think \-- I got your formulation.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: That\'s exactly what I was trying to say here.

MS. DILLEY: And for me I want to take the next step of where you \-- so
then how do we set up that conversation the way you\'ve laid it out.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: What I was trying to say is already the framework
is out there. All the key issues are probably already laid out and if
you have another three hours to discuss this you probably would not add
a lot to that list. That was, you know, what I was trying to say.

This is actually pretty inclusive in my view.

MS. DILLEY: No, I don\'t want to add to the list, but, what we need to
do is organize the list to say, okay, so what\'s the next conversation
that the committee has; what does that conversation look like; what are
the presentations we need to have that conversation; that kind of thing.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I think what you have out there can be verbalized
in a very coherent way.

MS. DILLEY: You want to do that over lunchtime for us? Excellent.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I\'ll be happy to help. I\'ll be happy to help.

MS. DILLEY: I know when to end the meeting and we\'ve got a volunteer to
organize over lunchtime. Michael, I\'m sorry, I didn\'t get to you. So,
Michael and then we\'ll take a break for lunch.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: And this is \-- I just wanted to make two points on this
and this is first, the fact that I\'m not an economist and the two
points are one, I still think we\'re going to need to go back to the
list and see where there are shades of meaning on some of these topics
that are different from what was in the previous report. And I think
that\'s going to be a challenge.

I think the other question is maybe turning Nick\'s question on its head
and that is maybe it\'s more of a philosophical question that clearly
the market is working in the sense that products are being supplied to
consumers for some price with different amounts of difficulty being
imposed in different places in the marketplace.

I think the question is, does that mean to the committee that
coexistence is working? And it may be that that people believe that
that\'s the case. Always it may mean that we have to tease out a little
bit of what that specific \-- I mean previously we had the word peaceful
which people didn\'t like or there was respectful and there were all of
those other things.

So, I just think it might merit another month or two to think about
whether \--

MS. DILLEY: Not before lunch though.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: \-- right \-- whether my lack of understanding of the
broad meaning of market failures encompasses all of that.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Daryl, very briefly.

DR. BUSS: Well, I think it might help both how we\'re thinking about it
but also how we express it. The concern I have is that we\'ve been
talking about is it working or is it not working as a binary event.
That\'s a very simplistic way to look at it. And it seems to me we ought
to be thinking about what do we see as areas of fragility to the system.

MS. DILLEY: Right.

DR. BUSS: Where is it particularly vulnerable?

MS. DILLEY: Exactly.

DR. BUSS: And get out of the black and white.

DR. CRAMER: One little sentence to add to that too. Another way to think
about it is we\'ve thought of coexistence primarily from the commodity
point of view of these real large commodity crops. If you go back to
some of the original charge we may want to think of whether the system
established at that level of huge commodity streams is adaptable to
smaller crop areas and are there things that we have to look at
differently as we move into biofuels and to specialty crops. You know,
is identity for lettuce going to be the same as it is for commingled
corn sort of thing?

So, again, to put it in perspective.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. With that, it\'s ten after right now and we\'re
supposed to come back at 1:30 so if you could be here promptly at 1:30
and we\'ll pick up the discussion at that point. So, have a good lunch.

(Whereupon, a luncheon recess was taken at 12:10 p.m.)

[A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N]{.underline} 1:36 p.m.

MS. DILLEY: So, Pat, I heard you started this with people need to leave
early. So, what are people\'s schedules? Is anybody leaving before 4:30?

DR. LAYTON: Three thirty.

MS. DILLEY: That\'s what we\'re aiming for, 3:30, to adjourn by 3:30?

DR. LAYTON: There were at least three that need to leave right around
3:30. I have a 5:40 flight so I definitely have to be heading to the
door myself right at four.

MS. DILLEY: So, if we aim for 3:30, give ourselves two hours. Is that
\--

DR. LAYTON: Yeah.

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. LAYTON: Especially for making specific assignments or that need
Carole, Jerry and Steven.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. We\'ll let you know what the assignments are.

DR. LAYTON: We try to be nice.

(Discussion off the record)

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, in the two hours that we have we\'re going to try
and bring, sort through what the committee\'s doing and how we\'re going
to go about doing it, whether or not we\'re going to have some work to
conduct between now and the next plenary session. Michael, I think
immediately after this meeting, we\'ll send out along with a summary of
next steps. We\'ll also get your calendars for November and December \--
is that what we talked about \-- to try and pin down dates for the next
committee meeting and anything else that needs to be done between now
and then.

So, we won\'t try and do that now, but, just to let you know in terms of
paying attention to your schedules and your e-mails and getting that
information back to us so we can pin down the next \-- set the next date
for the advisory committee meeting and a clear sense of what\'s going to
be done between now and then.

So, we did \-- Nick was true to his word and we took a crack at
organizing the information over here and I\'m going to turn it over to
him since he can say what he was thinking best directly. So, hand it
over to you.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, all I tried to do was just to put in general
categories all the items that we have there and the way I see those are
basically discussed categories. So, issues around regulatory standards.
Sampling and testing. We discussed this about the potential need for
standardization of those and adventitious presence tolerances.

And there was discussion about voluntary versus mandatory standards. In
other words, if there is a mandatory tolerance and the market through
contracts is imposing a different standard is there a reason for
government to step in and have something to say, including contractual
agreements there.

The next category was compliance and stewardship. So, issues around
moratorium, prior certification, dispute prevention, resolution, all of
those fell under that general rubric for me. Discussions on
infrastructure. Should the government have anything to do with
infrastructural limitations, improvements, and so on. Transportation,
storage, and others might go under that.

Market structure and access. Whether that\'s the seed market
consolidation or whether that\'s retail and manufacture or whether
that\'s capital markets and whether capital markets are not providing
enough, potentially enough capital and whether government intervention
is necessary falls into that category for me.

Discussion of externalities and, again, all of those are unfortunately
are economist\'s terminology so there is nothing that says that we
cannot change the title to communicate better to a broader audience, so,
but, economists talking about externalities when people do things that
influence others and impose costs or benefits on others and not on
themselves.

And, so, the incentive structure is not right. So, pollen flow would
fall into that potential category and liability around \-- liabilities
around that and the institutional framework. And then we talked about
data and tools and basically what I would present to be information
infrastructure and what kind of information you can provide to improve
the function of \-- the functioning of the market, whether that\'s among
producers, among consumers, across the supply chain and so on.

And then, so, those were general categories that each and every one of
them would be recognized by economists as places where governments
legitimately can come in and play a productive role in improving the
function of the market and making that function better.

Whether they are, in fact, compelling reasons for governments to
participate in it, that\'s the second part of the discussion, but, at
least those are general categories that would be recognized as such. And
then there is a context issue. Of course, the overriding context of what
coexistence was all about was that the idea about choice among
producers, consumers, and those in the supply chain and then the
contextual issues or if you want things to be considered because they
will have an influence on all of this categories is, first of all,
what\'s happening today in the marketplace, both domestic and
international. What\'s the situation today?

Secondly, what is the potential impact of international policy making
that is going on in the Codex, in the European Union, China, and so on?
I mean, there is a lot of policy making that is taking place on issues
of sampling and testing, adventitious presence and a variety of issues
that fall into these six general categories. How what\'s happening
overseas is affecting our policy making. That\'s what this is.

And, then finally, introduction of new technology. Whether that\'s new
products or whether it\'s new real time, for example, testing
technologies that can do \-- can make testing easier and so on. So,
those could change the context of what the discussion categories is.
And, so, that\'s how I kind of organize it, but, that was how an
economist thinks about things. Nothing sacred about it.

MS. DILLEY: So, questions, reactions to this organization?

DR. LAYTON: I guess one of the questions I have is, is there anything
new under regulatory standards that we haven\'t already covered? I know
it\'s up there. But, I mean, is there anything new on coexistence that
we haven\'t already covered in either traceability and labeling or the
existing paper?

MS. DILLEY: Daryl?

DR. BUSS: We were talking earlier about the sampling and testing and,
you\'re right, we talked about that previously, but, I guess the cut we
were taking on it was to emphasize the need for developing statistical
methodology as well as potentially technical devices to actually do
something about it.

DR. LAYTON: Right. And I thought that was probably over there where his
context was of new stuff.

DR. BUSS: It could be, but, that is where we were coming from as opposed
to just it\'s an issue. This ought to be in the concept with statistics
and technology to solve an old issue.

MS. DILLEY: Carole and then Nick.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: In my view \-- I\'m sorry to interrupt \-- in my
view this is about standardizing something. It\'s a policy-making issue
and this is about technology so in my view those are very separate.
Sorry.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So capability versus \-- do you want to \--

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Right. Policy-making body.

DR. LAYTON: And, again, my question is, if I go back to the traceability
and labeling thing, I think that\'s what we said in there is we need
standards and I\'m just asking, have we not already said all that?
Carole?

DR. CRAMER: Yes. I think that one thing we\'ve seen in the talks
yesterday, one of the things that was remarkable is that a lot to be
provided to Japan was tested five times. So, we\'ve actually learned
things that which seems ludicrous that it would require five individual
tests and all of those to be. So, I think specifically from the point of
view of coexistence there are things that we should be looking at.

MS. DILLEY: Jerry.

MR. SLOCUM: Well, Carole, it\'s the redundancy of that pure grain system
to make sure that when it was loaded at the port it would pass muster in
Japan because his point was to make sure that when the Japanese tested
it on their side of the water, as they most surely will, that he\'s done
everything that he can do to deliver a product that was going to meet
their specifications.

But, what Lynn talked about aggressively was, you know, a better
sampling methodology. Because whatever we have in the industry today
doesn\'t add up.

DR. LAYTON: That\'s more of a recommendation.

MR. SLOCUM: Remember what he asked for. That was one thing he asked for.
Another thing he asked for was an agreed to third party verification
where the Japanese test could be done in the United States so if he had
a problem with it he didn\'t have ocean flake that he had to eat and
containers that he had to take a huge loss on on the other side of the
water. That was the second thing he asked for.

And then he begged Michael to negotiate some AP\'s, some international
AP, okay, not an AP, but, not necessarily country standards at 1 percent
but to address the issue of AP internationally. And those were the three
things that the leading exporter of specialty crops for the biotech,
conventional, organic, whatever they are, those are the things he asked
for.

And I think he\'s saying that we are muddling through today with what
we\'ve got, but, it sure would make what we do a lot easier if we could
accomplish those three things and why would \-- as we look at those
things, and we really don\'t need to say a whole lot more about
regulatory standards, to be honest, because we\'ve said it twice now,
but, we can say that, you know, those are potential market failures if
they\'re not addressed and to make this system of coexistence smoother
to make the market more predictable and less punitive in the short run,
Greg, you know, less punitive in the short run, an aggressive address of
those things will make this run a whole lot smoother, not only for the
producer but for the handler and the guys that process it into foods,
and for the guys that actually consume it, demand it in the marketplace.

MS. DILLEY: So, basically, I mean, so the cut is, yes, there is
something different if you\'re looking at it through the lens of
coexistence. There is something different to say. Some of it is a repeat
of what we\'ve already said and we don\'t need to hash through all that.

MR. SLOCUM: You\'re right.

MS. DILLEY: And some of it is a slightly different take in order to put
that in in the context of coexistence and how it either works or
doesn\'t work. Is that right?

MR. SLOCUM: In my \-- I think that\'s how you say that without going
back and redoing a whole sampling thing or a whole testing thing or a
whole AP thing. There\'s no reason to do that. But, just to highlight
the importance of those things. That\'s a critical piece of Lynn
delivering to people what they want and not what they don\'t want.

DR. LAYTON: And, so, my question \-- I\'m push it back one more time so
I make sure I got this. What you said \-- what I heard you say, and I
could be wrong, is that we discussed AP and we\'ve discussed sampling
and we\'ve discussed some of these testing issues and, so, what I heard
you say was that in light of what you\'ve learned on coexistence you
actually want to \-- instead of saying it as an issue, you want to
really say to the Secretary, we need standards on AP or we need an
international standard on AP and so you actually are going to a
\"recommendation\".

I mean, because what we said before is although federal policies address
some aspects of AP, the federal government has not set forth
comprehensive policies and guidelines or standards regarding the
adventitious presence of transgenic events that wasn\'t against an
international scope, but, I think that\'s in tracing and labeling.

You actually want to take that and make it \-- well, you just had it
said for them but given coexistence issues you must look at and evaluate
the risk of not setting forth these. That\'s where I think the twist is
in this discussion. Is that right?

MS. DILLEY: Well, to me, you put on two things. I mean, and one is
there\'s a different conversation to be had within coexistence. Jerry\'s
laid it out in terms of one way to look at it. I\'m not sure the
group\'s ready to say, yeah, we\'ve got consensus about that and we\'re
ready to move onto the next category.

But, that may be where we end up. I don\'t know. I don\'t think \-- I
don\'t want to preclude the conversation before we have a conversation.

DR. LAYTON: And, last, what I\'m saying is, I don\'t hear the difference
in coexistence from what we did in tracing and labeling. And I may be
just missing it because I wasn\'t here yesterday for the presentations.

MR. SLOCUM: I don\'t think there is a difference. I think we need \-- I
think the coexistence piece that the Secretary\'s asked for is a little
bit different piece than the two broader pieces were. Okay? And we
approached them very differently.

If we\'re going to approach this in the context of things that could
threaten the current market or things that preclude the marketplace from
becoming a better marketplace, both for producers, handlers, and
consumers, then I think we need to say to the Secretary these are items
that need addressing, okay, not in a very peripheral way but to say
directly for this to be as good as it can be, you know, and to minimize
any chance of market failure, these things need to be addressed.

By God, they\'ve been around since 1996.

DR. LAYTON: Is that all?

MR. SLOCUM: Well, we were emancipated before that, but, \--

MS. DILLEY: Right.

MR. SLOCUM: \-- with respect to biotech since \'96.

MS. DILLEY: I mean, we\'re trying to do things without actually having a
whole conversation right now, but, it\'s what\'s new and different and I
think you\'re asking the right question, Pat, in terms of what are we
\-- what\'s new and different to say here. Is there more conversation to
be had under these categories in getting a feel for that without
actually reaching conclusion on what we would say in those categories.

So, I\'m just trying to \-- let\'s kick this around a little bit more
and ask questions of clarification, see what we\'ve got here, and then
we can organize to actually have the conversation.

Nick, I think you were next and then Mardi and then Marcia.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, Pat, to try to address directly what you just
said. We are having the benefit of the history of being around in the
committee and all the discussions that have taken place. There are two
reasons why you need probably to revisit even if the issue has been
addressed.

First, because sometimes the data has changed. So, the idea that, for
example, something in testing has become a different issue and, too bad
that Lynn is not here, because he would tell you that now the Europeans,
for example, are trying to install a brand new sampling and testing
protocol which the Americans are fighting tooth and nail.

And it would change drastically the picture of international trade had
that testing and sampling protocol became the standard for the
marketplace. And, so, that was not an issue two years ago but it is or
could be an issue today and tomorrow.

So, new situations come up that fall under the general category of
sampling or adventitious presence and, so, revisiting issues within this
context I think would be very important. I also think that if we do the
job right then we go into more depth into each and every one of them
because the contexts are more specific.

MS. DILLEY: Mardi.

DR. MELLON: I do think that there \-- that we just laid the groundwork
in some of our earlier things and we really didn\'t discuss issues. And
what we really \-- on adventitious presence we basically just kicked the
can down the road. And, so, that there ought to be \-- something ought
to be done about this.

But, basically, you know, the U.S. really hasn\'t grappled with it. And,
so, I\'d like \-- you know \-- I\'d like to see as \-- I don\'t think we
can resolve these things. I think they\'re really tough, but, I think we
could do some service just by trying to lay them out and I think we
ought \-- I mean I certainly agree with Lynn for where he sits and where
he\'s coming from.

He would really like to, you know, see people agree to an international
third party testing and some sort of an AP tolerance, but, what we want
to try to understand ourselves is, you know, why that hasn\'t happened
and what some of the consequences might be down the road.

I mean, the fact \-- I mean, we have to accept the fact that there is a
portion of the marketplace that has almost no tolerance for any GE
elements in the grain we\'re sending them and, yet, we live in a world
where biology and, you know, just the way business is done means that
there is going to be that low level almost everywhere.

We have to figure out, you know, kind of what to do about it, but, it
seems to me that we \-- you know \-- we need to outline and it seems to
me that the Japanese just may not want to put up with some sort of
tolerance or the Koreans.

And at some point they may decide to go to some other supplier who can
give them the product that they want. So, I think it would be useful for
us to, you know, just elaborate some of the issues that are out there
and some of the reasons why they have been around for as long as
they\'ve been around. The Japanese could send somebody over here and
test, you know, these shipments.

I mean, what is it that we would have to offer to our trading partners
to get them to agree to these tolerances. What would we have to, you
know, do to get them? What would \-- I mean, we don\'t have a difficult
time, I don\'t think, coming up with a third party tester or certifier,
but, what will it take for them, you know, to buy into it?

And if we could just, you know, admit that there are some issues there
and see what we could think about that would induce them to do it,
whether it\'s just the market, they won\'t have any alternatives, or,
there\'s something else that we could do about it I think it would be
helpful.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, more comments about that category and the overall
structure or is there something particular? Marcia, did you have another
comment on this?

MS. HOLDEN: I had another comment on this. There actually is a company
in the States \-- it\'s also in your list \-- has been certified by the
Japanese to test. We\'ve seen the Japanese methods for testing, but, it
seems to me that what the important thing is here is to have a very high
level international policy decision made to adopt certain kinds of
testing, get an agreement on AP, and then get \-- then set up the
sampling issues after that.

Because what Nick has said is correct. Where there\'s a lot of
disagreement going on right now about ISO standards and the biggest
disagreement has to do with sampling. And that\'s not supported in total
at all by the area it comes from, the European Union, but, it\'s not
supported in total by the European Union. It\'s basically one country
that\'s pushing for it.

And it\'s an international movement is what \-- is going to solve an
awful lot of the problems.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, other questions about the overall structure,
organization, some of the questions in looking at the categories. Greg?

MR. JAFFE: I mean, I just was going to sort of agree similar with Pat
and say that certain things in AP we have done a lot of discussion on
and I don\'t think it would be fruitful to go back and do some of that
over again. So, if there\'s a new take on AP related to coexistence or
maybe related to contracts and things like that we should.

But, to go over \-- go over again the four different kinds of AP and
that kind of thing I don\'t think would be productive and I don\'t think
we\'re going to come to a different consensus than before.

MS. DILLEY: And one way to organize your homework is if regulatory
standards is the right category and I mean we need to go back and remind
ourselves what we said even though we just presented the report today.
If you were quizzed on it you would probably forget, including me. I
probably wouldn\'t be able to repeat exactly what we said on all 28
topics.

So, part of what our work plan would have to be is, okay, let\'s review
what we said so far and what\'s different now, whether it\'s new
information or something\'s changed, or, because we\'re talking about it
through the lens of coexistence we want to say this about it.

So, I think that\'s the right thing we have to do in terms of making
sure we don\'t retread same ground and I think we can do that.

DR. LAYTON: But, I think my point was, you know, the end point was what
I\'ve heard Jerry say was that what \-- there was a definite cry for I
need help. USDA, get involved and fix it. That\'s what I heard you say.
We very carefully crafted out every recommendation we made that we sat
around and hashed for hours on this.

So, I guess what I want to clearly know is, are we all comfortable
we\'re just not going to do an issue spotting and repeat the
adventitious presence, and I\'m using that as an example because we
spent so much time on it, folks, not that none of those others aren\'t
just as important, but, that we are ready to come to grips and the
Secretary is ready to hear us say, you know, after listening to
everything and having all that we done we find that the following things
are very important under regulatory and standards and they are that the
U.S. Government support development of an international standard on
testing, if that was what it was.

I don\'t even know if that\'s the answer. I\'m just using that as an
example. But, that\'s a recommendation and is quite different than what
we did in other papers and that we were able to come to consensus on.

MS. DILLEY: Are you asking the larger question specifically on not on
this particular topic but recommendations for it?

DR. LAYTON: For this \-- okay. Under the discussion of coexistence are
we going to \-- are we aiming for recommendations or a mixture?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: We can work \-- what I said at the very beginning on
this. We would like this to be a report that is completed within the
three meetings. We are absolutely not averse to getting recommendations.
We don\'t want to sacrifice the report on the ultimate recommendations.
If \-- we\'re also not averse to getting recommendations of different
levels of purposiveness, you know.

Some may be recommendations that are very general. That might be issues
that we need to think about. I think if it comes down to having
different levels of those things, if people can agree to work a final
composite of those things, looks like if that\'s what aids you in
reaching an agreement that\'s fine.

To the extent that that becomes the impediment to your reaching an
agreement, then you\'ll need to know when to jettison.

DR. LAYTON: So that was the key of what I was asking, Michael. Thank you
for putting it succinctly. How far are we willing to go and can we have
a mixture.

MS. DILLEY: Lisa and then Michael.

MS. ZANNONI: I think if we could down the route to recommendations we
can\'t do just some think this, some think that kind of thing. I mean,
you really have to come with a recommendation and I agree with Michael,
who is more adamant than others, but, if we hit issues that there\'s
going to be two sides to the issues move on because as the history shows
that we don\'t do very good with that.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: If I could just answer to that. I don\'t think that it
makes sense to have some recommend A and some recommend B.

MS. DILLEY: Right.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I don\'t think that that\'s actually very helpful.

DR. LAYTON: I guess my point, Michael, was if we looked at, and I\'m
just going to pick on AP because we\'ve talked about it over and over
again, if we literally felt like all of us around the table, that we had
consensus on we recommend the Secretary do x, y, and z on AP, but, yet
we got to liability and we weren\'t able to get that far, we could just
look at it as a high 50,000 foot level of liabilities and issues,
coexistence, because and we left that paragraph as just a high-level
spotting issue but we had some that are okay that we go all the way to
recommendations, comfortableness with that concept, and then the process
issue, I think, for three meetings is how we jettison very quickly an
issue and recognize, yes, we can come to quick agreement and then the
other one is we\'re not going to get there, it\'s going to be an issue,
and let\'s move on so we get a paper in three meetings.

That would be my only process of how we make that happen.

MS. DILLEY: Right. Right. And that\'s a potential way to approach a work
plan. I still want to get some further feedback unless people are \--
you\'re completely comfortable with this organization and we\'re ready
to move on. But, I was trying \-- let me get Michael and then I\'ll come
back to you, Jerry, and then Nick.

DR. DYKES: Yeah. I don\'t think we should have the recommendation
section because I just don\'t think we\'d reach agreement on it. I think
that\'s the public comment period of making these policy changes as
well. So, I think that\'s not a fruitful path for us to go down because
I\'m just afraid we\'ll spend a lot of time on it and we\'ll end up
doing what we did last time.

We\'ll strike everything that resembles a recommendation. AP, we
mentioned it twice in the last report, topic 10 and topic 21. Topic 10,
there\'s no comprehensive domestic policy regarding adventitious
presence and topic 21, adventitious presence remains a significant
trading issue international to the food and feed supply chain.

And we talk about that in 21 about development of globally, commercially
viable AP policies that also ensure food, feed, environmental safety
might minimize trade disruptions in the food and feed supply chain.

So, I don\'t know that we\'re going to talk about it much more in much
more granularity than that one. There is no comprehensive U.S. policy
and international is critical.

MS. DILLEY: We may not talk about it at all and we may refer back to the
other reports. I think the question I\'m still trying to get feedback
are these big six categories. We\'re going to have do some more sorting
through in terms of what and how much we need to talk about within those
categories, but, if people can give a little more feedback on those six
categories and the questions in terms of how we would look at those
categories that would be really helpful.

Jerry and then Nick. And then, Michael, do you have additional \--

DR. DYKES: Right. I just have a follow up question on I missed the
conversation. That\'s my own fault. But, regarding choices. As I look at
this, my perception is that there may be an opinion in the room that
there\'s fewer choices today than there have been in the past. Let\'s
take that and look at that by segments. Look that in terms of farmers,
consumers.

My sense would be is we have more choice today in the marketplace than
we\'ve had in the past. As I read this, I kind of get the thought that
there\'s a general perception that we\'re losing choice and we\'ve got
to do something to preserve it. Preserving choice, to me, implies we\'re
losing choice and we\'ve got to do something about it.

I don\'t think that\'s true. We have way more choice today on the
production end and we have more choices on the consuming end and we
listened to Clarkson Grain yesterday. His whole reason for existence is
because there are more choices, more products in the market, i.e., more
opportunities for people like him to match buyer A with producer B.

So, I just \-- my concern is I\'m not sure that some of these words
match what reality is.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Let\'s get some additional cards. Jerry, you were
next. Then Nick, Duane, Alison.

MR. SLOCUM: To that topic or your broader question?

MS. DILLEY: I think it could be either because I think that it\'s the
six categories and the way we\'re framing it and Michael was just
talking about the turning it on the preserving choices.

MR. SLOCUM: So, is the stuff in blue, that\'s not in the six categories?

MS. DILLEY: That\'s correct.

MR. SLOCUM: Okay. So, what would you call the six categories? I guess
what I\'m struggling with is how do you envision addressing them in the
report?

MS. DILLEY: Right. Okay. Let me take my version of it and, Nick, if this
is different from yours then you correct me.

So, if you had those six categories and I think this what you said
actually, Jerry, before we broke for lunch was if coexistence is about
preserving choice for producers, customers, and consumers then what\'s
going on in the current marketplace. And we spent a lot of yesterday
talking about that.

And you had organized it within those six categories. What\'s going on
out there, what\'s working, what\'s not working \-- I don\'t want to put
it as what\'s working, what\'s not working \-- what\'s going on out
there under these categories. Then what\'s the impact, the second star,
what\'s the impact of or the effect of the international policy
discussion and the introduction of new technologies, new products.
That\'s where you get into PMIP\'s, PMP\'s, or, you know, nutritionally
enhanced or whatever you want to call those, value added products.

So, whatever scope we decide in terms of looking in the future
marketplace and all the different kinds of things that are happening in
the future marketplace along with new tools that are being developed,
etc., then how does that \-- does it and how would it change our view of
those categories? And do you start having problems with preserving
choice, again, if that\'s kind of the question then where there might be
market failures.

Where would you want intervention or not have intervention or where do
you have differences of opinion on that, those kinds of things. Does
Lynn Clarkson come in and say, you know what, I was muddling through
fine and I was making a living, but, when I look at the future and I see
these different things starting to come into play I\'m a little bit \--
I\'m really concerned about this and it\'s my tool that I have now to
navigate, that\'s not going to work in the future.

MR. SLOCUM: That\'s what he was saying.

MS. DILLEY: So, that\'s how I see how that \-- those categories help you
describe what\'s going on and whether you\'re starting to worry about
stuff as things change.

MR. SLOCUM: But, aren\'t those six categories more than just what\'s
going on? I mean, those six categories are \--

MS. DILLEY: Yes.

MR. SLOCUM: \-- places that could break the system down.

MS. DILLEY: Exactly, but, the economists' organization \--

MR. SLOCUM: There may \--

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Here\'s how \-- call them discussion topics. Call
them \-- they have them as discussion categories. Call them whatever.
And to me the issue is, what could in principle government do in the
context of coexistence to improve markets? And this would be general
categories of things, policies, interventions that governments might
consider.

So, those are kind of categories of things that are homogenous with each
other; that there\'s some internal consistency and coherence as
discussion issues. So, those are, you know, categories of what
governments might \--

MR. SLOCUM: And they\'re discussion issues that are important to this
thing of coexistence.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: In the context of coexistence.

MR. SLOCUM: They\'re not just things. They\'re things that are
important.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Exactly. So, it may or may not be. At least they
are important to some of us today and my \-- if I was asking for a day I
would bring people to talk about those things and have discussions
around them so much like what happened yesterday. We walk away with
either reinforced opinions. Oh, yeah, we thought that this was important
and, indeed, it is, or, changed opinions. Well, you know, I really
thought that this was important, but, it turns out that a whole bunch of
things are happening out there.

And then the three stars are basically factors that might change your
opinion about those six categories. So, you know, what\'s happening in
Codex, or, what\'s happening in WTO or what\'s happening in the European
Union influences what we do here domestically and what does that mean?

New technology in testing might change your opinion about how you would
organize, you know, issues around pollen flowing, what kind of
regulation if you even need to. And then finally what is the \-- the
first thought is just what we talked about up to now. So, what\'s the
current state of, you know, the market for domestic and international?
Kind of an introduction. Okay. So, what\'s happening now; where are we
now?

And then here are some areas where governments can or U.S. Government,
USDA, should be thinking about potentially having a role. Some of them
might be important, might not. That\'s back to the discussion. Here are
some of the conditional factors.

MR. SLOCUM: So, the last sheet down there, the blue and brown writing is
really a way to approach the first four, the first six things.

MS. DILLEY: Correct.

MR. SLOCUM: It\'s not part of the report structure. It\'s how we
approach the support.

MS. DILLEY: It could be a part of the report structure that we can
determine that later. But, yeah, that\'s the way of organizing.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: It conditions your answers to the first six.

MR. SLOCUM: Gotcha. All right.

MS. DILLEY: Michael, do you have something to say and then we \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yes. I think this is probably redundant. But, the first
report that came out was the impacts of mandatory traceability and
labeling requirements on food/feed chain and I think it\'s going to be
very important. By the food and feed chain I think that it\'s sort of
equivalent to markets. I think people are going to need to look very
carefully at each of these topics and see how coexistence is different
from mandatory labeling and traceability requirements to be able to
piece that out how this is going to differ from the first.

I know it wasn\'t, strictly speaking, the first reports came out at the
same time, but, for the sake of discussion I\'ll call it the first
report.

MS. DILLEY: Great. I think that\'s true and as Carole said, I have no
interest in doing the last three years again and I think everybody
agreed with that. So, you\'re right. We just need to make sure that we
remind ourselves. If you want to do it again, Michael, you do so.
You\'re going to sign up for that?

DR. DYKES: We might come to different conclusions.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Duane, Alison, Mardi, Adrian.

MR. GRANT: Just a few things. I guess first of all, just in response,
Michael, to your statement that you thought there may be someone who
thought choices are limited. From my perspective, that\'s not the
context that we\'re talking about there. It\'s rather, instead, to look
at where has the absence of effective coexistence limited choices.

And, you know, at lunch time we were talking about some cases where
coexistence really has effectively limited choices and wheat is the
example that comes first to my mind where a failure limited choices all
across the board. There\'s others that we could point out as well.

So, that\'s I guess my response there. Second thing I wanted to say is I
like this very much so I would \-- I just want to support how this has
been organized. Prior to lunch I wrote down four that I would have used
as buckets. Four are up there and there\'s two additional which I think
are very rational. I like the context and I just want to support it.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Alison, no? Mardi?

DR. MELLON: I support the structure. I also, however, support some sort
of a context discussion of choice. I think it\'s such a big word that it
can encompass a lot. I think that, you know, Duane\'s kind of instance
of word choice has been denied. Adrian\'s perhaps from yesterday where
it\'s been denied are things that ought to be included.

But, at the same time, I think we need to understand the choice issues
from the standpoint of the people who want GE-free food and feel that
they have no choice. People have no choice to grow it because they
can\'t get GE-free seed. People have no choice to buy it because they
can\'t \-- because the people who would like to produce it for them at
the price \-- at a price that they\'re willing to pay cannot do that.

And there is a sense of unfairness and in a sense to kind of try to look
out and push the system in different ways to accommodate that desire for
a choice that the marketplace doesn\'t provide. And while \-- and, but,
I think it would be useful and not repetitive to have some short
discussions of kind of a desire for choice and how it is driving
different participants in this debate because I think it\'s important.

MS. DILLEY: I can\'t imagine that it wouldn\'t be a part of the
discussion because just like we were talking about market failure and
that approach and where would you want government to intervene. I think
that\'s all a part of the discussion. Now, one person\'s market failure
is another person\'s opportunity, is another person\'s, you know.
That\'s the way the market works and policymakers may decide there may
be not a true economic failure, economist\'s version, but, people may
decide that they\'re going to intervene because.

So, that seems to me that that would be a part of the whole spectrum of
choice and views on that. Adrian and then Michael, is your card still
up, and then Greg. Okay, good. Adrian, Michael, and Greg.

DR. POLANSKY: I think I\'m generally supportive of looking at the
process that\'s been outlined there. But, the one thought that I would
have in terms of choice, and certainly I think it would be valuable to
have to explore seed choice, for example. I think that\'s a good area to
gain more facts about.

I do though \-- I do have a problem with preserving word.

MS. DILLEY: Do you have another term?

DR. POLANSKY: Because in a way I want to preserve people\'s opportunity
to drive a tractor, but, I also am glad that we didn\'t just do that,
that we allowed me to have the satellite to drive my tractor.

MS. DILLEY: Do you have another word, Adrian?

DR. POLANSKY: I don\'t at the moment, but, I mean I think that\'s too
limiting. I would hate to look at the future in terms of just preserving
what we\'ve done in the past. There might be a more positive way to look
at that.

MS. DILLEY: Jo\'s got a word.

DR. HUNT: Enable. Enable choice.

DR. POLANSKY: Enhancing.

MS. DILLEY: Foster, enhancing?

DR. POLANSKY: Fostering. I mean, I don\'t know.

MS. DILLEY: Fostering. Okay.

DR. LAYTON: Preserves are in glass jars.

MS. DILLEY: People are nodding so fostering perhaps is a better term.
Michael and then Greg.

DR. DYKES: Yeah. Duane made a comment about wheat and I guess just so I
got a firm understanding. Is the fact that we don\'t have genetically
modified wheat a coexistence issue? In my mind, it isn\'t. It has
nothing to do with coexistence. We could have genetically modified wheat
and it could have coexisted with conventional wheat and organic wheat.
It has nothing to do with coexistence.

It is the marketplace as we\'ve been told and as our understanding is.
There\'s no one willing to take the risk to introduce it in a market
that\'s perceived doesn\'t want it. I don\'t see that in my mind, I\'m
asking, I\'m not debating, I don\'t \-- which I think these kinds of
things will help us get our mind around what we mean by the term,
coexistence.

The fact that we don\'t have technology in wheat to me is not a
coexistence issue. It has nothing to do with the term coexistence, the
way I look at coexistence. If it were a coexistence issue then we would
have conventional wheat, organic wheat, and technology wheat. Then we\'d
have a wheat coexistence issue about how could the three coexist. But,
today, there is no coexistence issue with technology wheat because it
isn\'t there to coexist with. It can\'t coexist.

MS. DILLEY: Go ahead, Duane, and then we\'ve got \--

MR. GRANT: It\'s a failure of coexistence.

DR. POLANSKY: It\'s a perception of failure of coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: Greg and then Alison and then Nick. Greg.

MR. JAFFE: I think overall it\'s pretty good but I think it\'s missing a
couple of things that I think are important to some of the context of
the discussion for all these different specific topics.

One is, these are things that came out of our presentations and stuff
yesterday. One is the different kinds of crops that coexistence really
is a crop-specific thing and I don\'t see that anywhere on there and the
idea of \--

MS. DILLEY: It\'s really tiny and found on the last page.

MR. JAFFE: No, it\'s on new products. With the new products. I\'m
talking about commodities versus fruits and vegetables and the idea that
some genetics or the biology or the way things are grown and the markets
for those crops has a real impact on all these. So, I just think that
concept is an over-arching concept that needs to get in here and most of
this is written very much in the commodity kind of way.

And some of these things would not make economic sense in commodities or
other types of things. So, I just raise it because one of the things
that came out yesterday was for certain crops it\'s very easy to have
coexistence and others are more difficult. It just doesn\'t \-- that\'s
not one of the screening tools and one of the differentiating tools.

And the second one was scale. I\'m thinking scale here, both in terms of
large scale farmers and small scale farmers and certain kinds of farmers
and fairly large farms, but, so, that may be one thing and also we also
heard, I think, yesterday from the economist about large markets versus
small markets. You know, it\'s very easy to have coexistence or very
easy to satisfy different markets, but, it\'s a small part out of a big
thing but when we were talking about it at lunch time 50 percent of the
market it becomes very different.

And, so, \--

DR. MELLON: Could both of those be incorporated under market structure?

MR. JAFFE: No, because those are specific market failures that are
specific. These, I think, are broader, generic things in the bigger
context. I don\'t think these are specific issues like capital markets
or seed supplies. Those are very defined specific market failures.

What I\'m talking about are broader over-arching things.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, in my view, this, all these are covered under
what\'s happening today. In other words, what do we know today from the
functioning of domestic and international markets. What do we know from
small versus large markets. What do we know from crop A versus crop B. I
mean, that\'s how I understood that star, you know, the first star that
Abby put up there.

In other words, it was, to me was kind of an introduction, what do we
know today. And, so, but, I totally agree with you because, you know,
that\'s \-- I tried to send that message very strongly during my
presentation and I\'m a very big believer that if we understand at least
those kinds of differentiations we\'re going to be very, very much
further down the road.

So, these are things that \--

MR. JAFFE: And I agree. Those are all part of the context but I\'m also
giving you part of the discussion of a different substantive one.

MS. DILLEY: Right.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Sure.

MS. DILLEY: So, you had scale. What was the other? Was there anything
else?

MR. JAFFE: I mean, it was crop in terms of both the genetics or the
specifics of the crop, but, also the distinction between commodity crops
and specialty crops and then scale was both the size in terms of farms,
but, also in terms of markets for particular kinds of \--

MS. DILLEY: Right, crops and markets. Okay.

MR. JAFFE: Those were the things.

MS. DILLEY: So, crops and scale and different mutations of that. Okay.
Alison?

DR. VANEENENNAAM: I\'m going to jump back into this fray here, but, I
just want to \-- my understanding of coexistence is to allow farmers to
use the production system and grow what they want to grow in the region
and satisfy certain markets and I think that if you can\'t buy a product
\-- I\'ll use California as an example \-- if you can\'t grow
genetically engineered crops in your county then that\'s a problem for
coexistence because it\'s by definition banned.

And, so, I think there are examples where you\'ve actually \-- and I
think not being able to grow genetically engineered crop actually is a
coexistence issue because maybe Duane wants to grow it and he can\'t get
it and so that\'s a coexistence issue because he can\'t grow what he
wants to grow in his region.

MS. DILLEY: Other comments, reactions to?

DR. DYKES: One comment on Greg\'s comments. I think there\'s also some
geography in addition to the size. Coexistence in New England is largely
about organic versus conventional in fruits and vegetables. There isn\'t
any biotech there. So, that\'s the issue there. So, it\'s different by
geography. Differences as Greg pointed out, by crops.

Fruits and vegetables coexistence is organic from where we were when I
left, organic versus conventional. Get into row crops it\'s probably all
three. Getting to California it\'s probably organic and conventional
again. Even row crops because in some places you can\'t have that.

DR. LAYTON: And salmon.

MS. DILLEY: So, regional is part of the whole scale of markets.
Different markets are set up different ways and one of them is by region
and there are different \--

DR. DYKES: Soy milk.

MS. DILLEY: Right. Okay. Daryl?

DR. BUSS: I very much support this structure. It seems to me if we\'re
going to get this done within the time frame there\'s got to be a lot
more discipline in laying out a schedule and I\'m wondering about
potential advantages of triaging these in terms of sequence.

MS. DILLEY: Yes.

DR. BUSS: And if we can agree on which ones we think are the \-- have
the biggest bang for the buck I would argue that we ought to do those
first. And if there are those \-- none of these lack importance they
wouldn\'t be there, but, if there are those that we think can be handled
more simply or could take sort of a second initial on it I think we
ought to make that triage if we\'re going to get it done.

MS. DILLEY: Michael?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yes.

MS. DILLEY: Work plan is definitely in the next thing.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: A couple of thoughts on that. One, and this is in part
reflecting on something that Carol Tucker Foreman told me which has to
do with her desire not to set this entirely in stone before we perhaps
have heard some other presentations. So, that\'s just one. That\'s one
little caveat to what you said.

I think possibly before you do the triage it may be necessary to go back
and try to figure out from each of these topics what\'s different for
the discussion of coexistence than was in the other report. You may try
to triage it, but, I think that doing a little of that reflection first
might save a little bit of time.

DR. DYKES: If we\'re going to have other speakers I might.

MS. DILLEY: So, \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I don\'t have the answer to that yet.

(Discussion off the record)

MS. DILLEY: One question is to say exactly that, Michael. If the first
question is what\'s going on right now, what else do we need \-- we
heard a lot yesterday. How do we need to supplement that information to
look at some of these topics? And, so, that would be starting to come up
with what additional information does the committee need to hear. One
way is through presentations for the next go around.

DR. DYKES: Well, you know, one obvious thing. We probably don\'t have
time. We also don\'t have time to do them probably. But, you know, look
at these major categories there. Everybody seems to be aligned around
it. We kind of covered transportation and infrastructure, but, some of
the stuff on compliance and stewardship or some of the stuff on
information or international. There may be something from seed
companies. We talked about that out here. What are some of the two or
three, one or two seed companies that are on the front lines like these
guys were taking it one step up the chain.

What do they see in this regard?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: You did have one seed company talking about some of that
at the last meeting.

DR. DYKES: We did? Who was that?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: From Pioneer.

MS. DILLEY: I\'ll look at that information and then see if we need to
have any additional supplemental. You can\'t ask what he said because
nobody\'s going to be able to say that on the spot.

DR. DYKES: I just wanted to be clear who that was.

MS. DILLEY: That\'s a good step in the right direction. Maybe I\'m
saying the obvious, but, does anybody have a disagreement with this as a
kind of a working model? It just \-- we didn\'t hear anybody. I just
wanted to make sure if somebody did that we have the opportunity.

Okay. So, we\'ve started. And, Michael, I\'ve heard three different
things that kind of broadly, a broad brush, the compliance, the
stewardship category of issues, international context and potentially
seed companies. But, that\'s kind of on hold just so we can go back and
review what we\'ve already done.

So, is it the two areas of compliance and stewardship? Pat, what\'s
wrong?

DR. LAYTON: Nothing, nothing. I had a brain. I remembered what he talked
about now.

DR. DYKES: I was just thinking, the seed companies from the perspective
of what their offerings are, what they\'re finding in the marketplace,
what the dynamics are of the marketplace, you know, what is the deal on
conventional seeds?

MS. DILLEY: Okay.

DR. DYKES: So, I mean, they have more for conventional seeds.

MR. SHURDUT: Greg did not get into that level of detail.

MS. DILLEY: Absolutely, right.

MR. SHURDUT: And yesterday following our discussion was purity of seed
and having that available and, you\'re right, I think we do need to shed
a lot more light on that.

DR. LAYTON: Yes, I agree.

MS. DILLEY: Jo.

DR. HUNT: What was the point that was brought up, looking forward, and
particularly what is it that we could expect in terms of what consumers
could be expecting and one suggestion would be to get, for example, the
Food Marketing Institute in to look at trends, you know, what has been
the feeling, what could be expected roaming in different areas.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, trends for consumers or trends?

DR. HUNT: What could consumers be expecting from the future. You know,
based on what we\'re seeing trends at the moment.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Daryl, then Greg, then Nick.

DR. BUSS: Well, if you look at it very simplistically we have six
categories. If you weight them all equal it means we need to accomplish
two of these in every session if there\'s three sessions. And, so, the
plan\'s going to have to reconcile how many speakers we can afford if
we\'re actually genuinely planning on completing these in three two day
sessions.

MS. DILLEY: So, the way you\'re saying that, Daryl, which may be the way
we want to do it is you talk about, I\'m just picking this randomly,
regulatory standards and compliance and stewardship in one meeting and
you say as much as you\'re going to say and then you move on? Is that
what you\'re looking at, do two issues per?

DR. BUSS: Yeah. You know, which ones fit. I\'m just trying to put \--
you know \-- we can be wonderfully informed, but, we\'re not going to
get this done in three years. So, at some point we need to come to grips
with how much time do we have to allocate and, therefore, we need also
to triage what we want people to talk about, what group and such. I
guess I\'m just trying to get this on some kind of a schedule basis.

MS. ZANNONI: It should be three in each meeting because we need one
meeting to edit.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: That\'s very optimistic.

MS. ZANNONI: At least one meeting to edit.

MS. DILLEY: Well, yeah, and we may find that we talk a lot about the
categories in regulatory standards. We can build on what we\'ve already
said and that\'s a relatively shorter discussion than the compliance.
You know, again, I\'m doing this out of \-- it may not turn out that
way. But, if we can kind of go with what else do we need up front and
kind of describe what is going on now, getting a better feel for that,
where are we? Do we have a particular lack of information?

I think that would be helpful to kind of see what we need up front, just
some more input on that would be helpful. Greg and then Nick and then
Sarah.

MR. JAFFE: Yeah. One of the things I think would be helpful up front is
a little more about the international context. I mean, this is a
discussion that coexistence discussion has gone on in other parts of the
world very extensively and different kinds of proposals and systems have
been set up or are being proposed there and I think we would be remiss
not to have some insight into some of those.

I\'m not saying those are things that we think are right or wrong, but,
to get some non-U.S. perspective, be it Europe or New Zealand or
Australia or somewhere to get some perspective on how they\'re viewing
this issue because I mean what\'s come across the last two days is
although we\'re primarily focusing on domestic here, it really is an
international issue because a lot of our coexistence stuff is in order
to satisfy international markets more than to satisfy in some ways more
than to satisfy the domestic market.

So, that\'s where I would like to see some insight having speakers or
something.

MS. DILLEY: Sarah? I\'m sorry, Nick, and then Sarah. No? You\'re done.
Okay. Sarah.

MS. GEISERT: I\'m wondering as you look at this discussion topic is
that, you know, in my mind I\'m still framing up. I\'m kind of like give
me an Excel spreadsheet on these six discussion topics. I think we have
the context points that we need to take on if we want to talk about
markets today, you know, the large, the small, crop differentiation.
It\'s like, okay, if those are our context, we have these that go across
the top, what is it we need to know.

And, so, do we know \-- we know international when it comes to market
scale size or commodity crop differences. So, I\'m still trying to get
my arms around the context related to the discussion topics and to be
able to say with some confidence, gosh, in order to get to this output
here\'s the type of information we need.

So, just for me, I\'m still trying to figure out kind of the grid that
says, okay, we\'re going to tackle these three in one meeting. We\'re
going to have all this context to be available to us so that we can
provide. So, I think that\'s where it would be nice, for me a little
bit, to frame what are all the questions that we need to be able to ask
in order to be able to talk the topic.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: This might turn into a work group, but, I also \-- I
think this is a caution that has happened before on this committee about
not trying to make this a really big task with great descriptions in
detail of what each of the issues are. I think we\'re trying to get this
\-- you know \-- you\'re going to need to think about these things.

If one of them becomes something that people agree on as a
recommendation that\'s great. But, apart from what is said in the
background introduction piece which maybe some of that description of
today the rest of the paper, if you\'re going to get it done, I think
based on how long things take, is going to be sort of a list of bullets.

I think if you\'re talking about, you know, what you actually can
legitimately accomplish on this, and I don\'t know if any of them will
be recommendations, but, I think if that\'s where you\'re going, if
we\'re talking about doing something in a year, if you\'re writing
lengthy descriptions on issues that are important to folks the words
will be fought over tooth and nail, every uh, the, and comma.

(Discussion off the record)

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, I\'m trying to figure out how we go forward in
terms of a work plan. It seems to me that the suggestions for additional
information for both in terms of flushing out that last page, so,
what\'s happening in the international context. What new products \--
you know \-- whether it\'s being driven by consumer trends or some other
dynamics are out there and then some of the categories we haven\'t \--
that the presentations either yesterday or the last meeting haven\'t
covered.

Seed company perspective. I\'m sure there are others but I\'m blanking
right now. So, we\'re doing a little bit of \-- and I think it\'s fine.
It doesn\'t necessarily mean that we need to go in an orderly fashion
through each category. Maybe that\'s what we need to do at this point is
get some of the big missing pieces and then try and come at it.

Okay. Pat.

DR. LAYTON: I have a question. Is there a non-commodity crop that we can
talk about?

MS. DILLEY: You\'re looking at me?

DR. LAYTON: Are all of these commodity issues right this minute, or, I
mean for the next five years, because I was trying to go back to all the
crops that I thought we put stuff in and there\'s, from what I remember
almost everything that\'s in the system, in the pipeline, are
commodities. Was I wrong?

DR. DYKES: Are you talking about biotech traits?

DR. LAYTON: Yeah. Because doing this coexistence and the concept of the
relationship of modern biotechnology. So, I understand there\'s new
tools that we can use that are great. But, you know, I\'m sitting back
thinking about my collards at lunch and that\'s a scale crop and it\'s
probably a pollen issue and stuff like that.

So, I\'m just trying to think of, okay, what \-- can we slice that issue
out to where we really aren\'t talking about small crops because
there\'s no biotech research going on to put genes in them and so,
therefore, coexistence is what it is in the absence of biotech.

Now, that might not be the case for anything in the Prunus world in
terms of fruit because there is activity there, but, some \-- and
that\'s why I\'m asking that question. Is it worthwhile to take this on
for non-commodity crops?

And, yes, my grits aren\'t commodity because they\'re a by-product. Ohio
was the only one I thought about.

MR. JAFFE: We heard about alfalfa yesterday.

MS. DILLEY: I mean, I guess \--

MR. JAFFE: It\'s a commodity crop, but, \--

DR. LAYTON: Big feed crop.

MR. JAFFE: I don\'t think it\'s that big a feed crop when it comes to
commodity crops.

MS. DILLEY: I mean, there\'s one discussion around different types of
crops and those are the big categories.

DR. LAYTON: And that is my question.

MS. DILLEY: Commodity crops. I mean, you even have a difference between
corn and other kind of commodity crops. I think that\'s what Greg was
saying, but, you also then \-- we haven\'t talked about are we taking on
PMIP and PMP types of things.

DR. LAYTON: I was trying to narrow, Abby.

MS. DILLEY: I know, but, you\'re putting on the table the scope and, so,
and how we talk about that. At first I was thinking are we trying to
eliminate we\'re not going to talk about fruits and vegetables and I\'m
not sure that\'s the way we want to frame it. It\'s more the fact of the
matter it is different depending on the crop and there are lots of
different things that make that so and, so, isn\'t that the conversation
we want to have.

Duane.

MR. GRANT: Well, it almost sounds like how you\'re looking at maybe
doing more of a case study type approach versus the universe of crops.

DR. LAYTON: I\'m just trying to figure out how we can get this done in
three meetings.

MR. GRANT: Yeah. So, just to flush it out a little bit. I mean, I\'m not
sure I would support that or not, but, one way you could do that would
be to take one of the crops that is a commodity but also has food uses
and then limit our discussion to events surrounding that crop and could
be soybeans, it could be corn, either one. Cotton, I don\'t \--
technically, yes, but, it wouldn\'t fit near as intuitively into that
framework and then just, you know, just as a way to limit our focus
rather than exclude anything as a way to ensure that we complete the
process and the project.

DR. LAYTON: And then in some summary piece say now this would vary.

MR. GRANT: Right. The principles we\'ve discussed could apply across the
board, etc.

MS. DILLEY: Nick?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I certainly hope we don\'t do that. I certainly
hope we don\'t take a case study approach to this because whatever we
produce is going to be limited and very minimal and, so, if I
communicate a single point, you know, anything that I\'ve learned over
the last ten years on issues of coexistence and traceability, identity
preservation systems, there is no such thing as the general rule.

So, I think we would be better off if we stick with issues rather than
try to do it crop-specific, region-specific, and so on. I think we can
condition many of the statements that we make that regions matter, that
size of market matters, that farm size and so matter, that there are all
these compounding factors that might change the dynamics of the issues
from one market to the other or from crop to the other.

I hope we don\'t go down a case study crop because we\'re going to
produce something that\'s not going to be very meaningful. I certainly
hope that we bring somebody in to discuss issues around liability and
the legal framework that\'s out there. When we narrow about the
different tiers on the legal side of all of this, cases that are being
prosecuted, where the legal scholars stand, you know, all of this, these
issues.

MS. DILLEY: Russ?

MR. KREMER: I agree with Nick. I thought we got fairly clear directions
from the Secretary on the question that we need to talk about, you know,
emerging crops and emerging uses of biotech and I think we got some
pretty clear indication this morning from the Deputy Secretary that, you
know, we need to look beyond five years. We need to look at fifteen,
twenty years and so to do a case study I think would be wrong.

I agree. I think we\'ve got some great issues and I think it will take
care of itself. I don\'t think we have to worry about being bogged down
by taking one crop at a time. I think the issues will take care of
themselves. And if anything, my request is we don\'t have to bring a
speaker in to leave some information about the overall market structure
and where it had \-- in other words, the structure of the industry both
\-- all the way through the system from seed to \-- biotechnology to the
seed production through, all the way to the distribution of food to the
consumer.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Can you try to flush that out a little bit more because
I don\'t know who I would invite. I don\'t quite know what your \--

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Michael, I can provide information on that, I
mean, as to who you might want to consider.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I\'m not yet understanding exactly \-- maybe you can
just explain that a little bit more, Russ, because I don\'t quite
understand what you\'re looking for.

MR. KREMER: Basically, we talked about quantitative economics a while
ago, some actual numbers, see some actual numbers of, you know, usage,
geographic distribution of products.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Different cultures, different products?

MR. KREMER: Different products, different food products, you know,
different seeds, different availability. I\'m saying don\'t bring it \--
it\'s some information. And I can help you compile that. This would be
helpful.

MS. DILLEY: Well, I guess, Michael, you\'ve raised the compliance and
stewardship. Did you have particular pieces of that category that would
be helpful from your perspective?

DR. DYKES: Well, let me reflect on that for a minute, Abby.

MS. DILLEY: I kind of feel like that\'s where we are right now is just
to gel a little bit more. And it maybe, I don\'t know, Michael, it may
be that, you know, we\'ve gone as far as we can and you need to gel and
we need to come back to the committee with a proposal in terms of taking
suggestions for \-- we\'ve got a framework which is huge, I have to say.

And in the time that we\'ve had we\'ve got a lot of good information and
we\'ve got suggestions for additional information that the committee
would like and I think we need to look at that, see and come back with
maybe a proposal and it may take a work group or, you know, having a
conversation between now and the next meeting to kind of really firm it
up.

But, I don\'t know how much more we can push today. So, I\'m putting
that out there because my energy level is a little low, but, a couple of
cards went up during that comment. So, Carole and then Nick, is it yours
or Brad, and then Alison. Okay. Nick, Carole, Brad, and Alison.

DR. CRAMER: Well, you started in response to sort of what would be in
compliance and stewardship. Would it be useful, interesting to have \--
somebody mentioned that there\'s already a third party verification firm
that does work for Jack Nice Companies (sic) in the U.S? Would that be
somebody that would be interesting to bring in just from the point of
view of, you know, you have to be careful what you wish for because if
you standardize then you sort of block yourself from moving to new, more
efficient technologies potentially and like who do they need buy in in
order to, you know, create a structure?

Where do the international agreements sit for them as far as having the
ability to kind of standardize that sort of testing protocols? So, that
might be in that compliance, somebody that would be interesting to bring
and learn a little about the technology but then also the market drivers
as to where do they sit.

Liability might be a huge issue for them, for example. Codex might be
beneficial.

MS. DILLEY: Brad, Alison, and then Michael.

MR. SHURDUT: More comments here on the structure. Again, I think
everybody else mentioned, I do like the way it\'s set out, but, I think
there\'s even a strong convergence between the regulatory piece and the
compliance and stewardship. Maybe we ought to condense it, limit the
subjects.

But, what makes it very interesting coexistence is because it\'ll define
where it intersects between compliance, what\'s good to do, what we need
to do versus what the regulatory function is in all that. So, I\'m just
suggesting that we may want to put to the hybrid section which sort of
condenses those two topics and make the task easier. But, again, that\'s
the complexity of coexistence, the blurring of those lines.

DR. DYKES: Standards and stewardship.

MS. DILLEY: Alison?

DR. VANEENENNAAM: Having only ever been on this committee when we\'ve
been editing words, I don\'t remember those words ever came into being
and I was just curious was this written in committee or was it like
somebody took a jab at it and then it came into being.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: It started in blood.

DR. VANEENENNAAM: Are we going to come and have some words to look at
next time or are we just going to have this and some presentation? It
seems \--

MS. DILLEY: We\'re going to have some words. We\'re going to have words.

DR. VANEENENNAAM: Some type \-- okay. When do they come up? Do they get
done in the sub-group meeting?

MS. DILLEY: It happens like our committee processes. It happens in all
different directions and comes from individuals, groups, collectively in
the conversation from the meeting notes.

DR. VANEENENNAAM: I guess I\'m just not sure, are we going to get
assigned a section and pull together?

DR. LAYTON: For example, if I could. You know, tracing and labeling,
like labeling, had a very small, well focused group that kind of wrote a
lot of it and then we edited it. Some of the \-- this paper \-- I think
the future\'s paper had a fairly well constructed work group that wrote
a lot of it and then we edited. This paper has gone through so many work
groups.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Written by every member in each section of these groups.

DR. DYKES: That\'s not a failure on the part of the work group, however.

DR. LAYTON: No.

MS. DILLEY: So, that brings a lot of clarity to your question?

DR. VANEENENNAAM: Yes. I guess I\'m just trying to get some clarity.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Your part will be in blood.

MS. DILLEY: As soon as you leave the room you\'ll get an assignment.
Okay.

DR. VANEENENNAAM: Will this by e-mail or is this something worked out by
\--

MS. DILLEY: It\'s very magical.

DR. VANEENENNAAM: Okay.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I\'m just thinking off the top of my head. I\'m not yet
sure whether there\'s an \"s\" on work group. You know, it may well be
that we will break this down; that we may be able to go to more than one
work group after the next meeting. We may need one more group to do a
little more focusing on what this is going to be like and we may be able
to divide into two work groups to tackle different chunks of this after
this meeting.

But, it seems to me that there are a few tasks and things that have to
happen at this point. To sort of go back to one of the original things,
I think there are several items of work that were mentioned as
intercessional things going up to the next meeting are going to be
important. One of them was, again, looking at each of these things and
seeing what we add that\'s different having to do with coexistence
relative to our previous report.

And you added another one, reports rather, and you had had another piece
of homework.

MS. DILLEY: Looking at presentations of the previous \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yes. Looking at the text that have already been written
and then going back and seeing, you know, what is the new piece or the
piece that is different from what was there before. And I think it also
pays to go back and look at these things and see, find any of them that
we think are related to coexistence but that we really could say, you
know, we could leave it out of the paper, you know, not because of their
importance or not, but, because it\'s really not talking about
coexistence.

MS. DILLEY: Michael, Daryl, Pat, and Carole.

DR. DYKES: Two comments. I was going to follow up on Carole\'s about
what\'s really happening in the marketplace. One thought there might be
someone from Randy Giroux\'s organization that can talk about \--
because we\'re thinking about Lynn\'s. Lynn\'s is about finding domestic
producers, basically finding domestic producers and come up with
international buyers, simplistically said, I think he has international
producers as well, but primarily that\'s it.

Whereas, somebody like a Cargill and others may talk about they don\'t
care where they move them from so they may be \-- they can talk about
some trends they\'re seeing as the demand for some particular types of
products are increasing they\'re moving more of them from fruits and
vegetables, for example, going back to what Michael Dwyer told us two
years ago, Chinese production of fruits and vegetables is increasing.
Demand for organic fruits and vegetables and conventional fruits and
vegetables increases you assume you\'re going to see some shifts from
that.

And they talk about all, any kind of product that\'s traded on the
market. It may be helpful to get some report on what they\'re seeing in
terms of changes and shifts of products, buyers and sellers over time
and how that impacts us and I\'d say there are some things and then get
them to look as to what they see the marketplace as being.

And one of the things that came up yesterday is the labor costs over the
next five to ten years, thinking about choices for consumers and organic
side, is the U.S. going to be a major producer of organic products.
Don\'t know. That\'s a big question. What are those guys seeing?
They\'re trading in those products. Where are they buying organic crop?
Where do they see that coming from? The security markets as well.

I guess the other thing is coming back to Brad\'s comments. I would
agree that these two could probably be clumped into standards, some
regulatory, some market-based standards, whatever, and stewardship and
then stewardship is whether you have compliance, whether they\'re not.

So, I could see clumping those two together and make a category of
standards and standards and stewardship.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. Daryl?

DR. BUSS: This thing in terms of how we do our work, the most valuable
time in terms of actually creating something is the time we have
together face-to-face. And, so, I think we need to think about trying to
preserve that time as much as possible and think beyond having the sage
on the stage as the only source, the way we get information.

So, I think that we ought to be thinking about if we have specific
questions can that be delivered in a different way that would preserve
the time for this meeting and even if we feel that the presentation may
be necessary we still ought to have the questions on the front end. I
guess I\'m concerned about sort of global, somebody coming to talk to us
about something or for what purpose.

I think we ought to have specific questions in mind. It doesn\'t mean
that they have to elaborate on those, but, I think the more we can get
it in the form of either white papers or things that we can look at and
preserve the meeting time is in our best interest.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: If I can just follow up on that. I\'m not sure that
we\'re going to be able to generate white papers that we can get
agreement on to get you those. But, by the same token I think you can
probably ask for really interesting and very informative presentations
that would take up a full meeting and a half already in the last twenty
minutes.

MS. DILLEY: I think that\'s what our work group potentially could do is
do. Michael came up with some really good questions for the presenters
yesterday and I think that really helped shape the conversation. I think
one of the things that would be of value is to have a group sort through
some of the questions that would be really helpful to do exactly \--
let\'s make the most efficient use of the time and the presenters and be
on the same page in terms of what information we\'re looking for from
them so that it\'s not just a global presentation on testing.

But, there are some particular things that we want to know and that
could be very helpful for a work group to come together on conversation
around that. What are some instructions we\'re giving to the presenters
to shape their remarks around.

DR. SHURDUT: And just to clarify when I was referring to, for example,
white paper, I wasn\'t referring to something new to write. But, if we
had questions of Cargill, for example, what do they see over the horizon
given to us as a one pager and let them expound a little bit beyond
specific questions, we all may not agree, but, that\'s not \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Just to sort of add one more thing. I think also it\'s
still going to be necessary to think, okay, really, realistically, how
many more presentations can we do and not have it take up all the time.
I would think that having more than four more presentations is going to
be \-- I\'m just setting that as a \-- recognizing that I probably have
ten good ideas for things, so, that\'s going to need to be sorted out
with.

MS. DILLEY: Daryl.

DR. DYKES: It\'s better to have those after we have had some one session
of working on it and got more deeply involved in it to know what
questions we really want to piece out. So, I wouldn\'t envision \-- in
my view, I wouldn\'t envision it for the next meeting. It might be the
second meeting.

MS. DILLEY: Carole, Duane, Greg. Go ahead.

DR. LAYTON: One thing that would help me and I would hate to feel \--
maybe it\'s because I only had three hours sleep last night, but, I
think, Nick, you have an idea of what this paper would look like because
you\'ve got like three contracts and this thing. I don\'t see that on
paper so for me that\'s really hard for me to conceptualize how I\'m
going to \-- I can talk about it forever.

But, it\'s hard for me to conceptualize. Are my topics the three things
and then I\'m covering stuff underneath it or am I covering stuff
underneath it and I\'m taking three topics as I go? So, I think one of
the things that would really, really help me is if I think you\'ve got a
vision of it, if you wrote me an outline, not of what the points are in
it, but, maybe what the outline is, not the facts underneath, but, what
goes where on a piece of paper, on the paper.

And I think until we got to that point with especially this paper which
was difficult we weren\'t able to put a lot of words down that made
sense and got quick or got consolidated. So, that would be one thing
that I would like. If I could have anything before the next meeting it
would be sort of an outline that showed me how to do this.

MS. DILLEY: So, are you asking for that generally or are you asking Nick
to, in the spirit of no good deed goes unpunished?

DR. LAYTON: Because I think he has a vision of how that would look and
I\'m not sure that Sarah and I understand it.

MS. GEISERT: I\'m still a little foggy and I have great confidence that
Nick will support it. I just can\'t quite see it yet.

DR. LAYTON: And I know I\'m very visual so you can talk about it all day
long and I\'m not going to get it until you kind of say it and I see it
later on. So, that helps me. Because this didn\'t tell me how I\'m going
to lay out paper. It tells me how I\'m going to make sure I get all the
data for the paper but it doesn\'t tell me how to lay out.

MS. DILLEY: I think that we can do it.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: Yeah, that\'s fine.

MS. DILLEY: I think we will do it.

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: And it\'s too bad that Randy\'s not here as well
because Randy has been absolutely deep up to his eyeballs into this for
the longest time and I\'m not really sure who else around the table,
but, I\'m sure that we might have a couple of other people. But, I\'ll
be happy \-- I mean, if the question is \-- I\'ll be happy to do that.

MS. DILLEY: And that would be the subject of a discussion by a work
group. Could be.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: If I can just add one thing that may help clarify this
and this is my concept going on the idea of reduced expectations. At one
point when we were in one of the very difficult struggles for the
previous paper we talked about having a paper which had an introduction
describing the current situation, some additional context, and then it
was perhaps a list of issues.

And if that were, you know, one or two sentences at most describing
whichever of those things in that list that turns out to be something
that the Secretary needs to think about that may be the size of what can
be accomplished in a year providing that, you know, you want to
articulate.

A lot of the articulation of the difficulties or the concerns will have
to go in the context up front and then the list of things following.
That\'s just one concept. And is that what you were \--

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: I\'ll be happy to take a whack at this, circulate
it and then see where you guys want to take it to.

MS. DILLEY: Carole, Duane, Greg.

DR. CRAMER: My card went up like three weeks ago. You were talking about
something else, but, why is IP up here? Can we take IP out?

DR. LAYTON: It\'s identity preservation, not \--

DR. CRAMER: Not IP? Okay.

MS. DILLEY: Sorry you had to agonize for three weeks. Duane, Greg,
Michael.

MR. GRANT: Yeah. So, my issue is different than this too. If I could
just respond I think to Michael\'s last comment though. I mean, I hope
we don\'t have to lower our expectations that far. If we do, I don\'t
really see why we need to bring the speakers in. I think we can probably
come up with a list right now and we probably don\'t need to get any
more educated. So, I hope we can do a little bit more than just the
list.

And I would just say, you know, a couple of speakers and let\'s spend
the rest of the time on the work. I would think if somebody feels the
need to become more educated there\'s resources out there. They\'ve got
time, do it.

MS. DILLEY: I mean, I can just see a work group. Okay. We take a cut at
writing something down on paper and our work group got together and
maybe it\'s everybody on the work group and they respond to this is kind
of a conceptual, we\'re trying to capture it in black and white, so,
what is it we need. What are the key \-- what do we need to know; who
are the critical providers of information and if there are presentations
what are the questions we really want them to focus on.

That\'s kind of what a work group would help put together for the next
meeting and that\'s a lot of work between and getting ourselves
organized to build up to this. Does that make sense to people as a
potential model? Greg and Michael or did you want to \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I\'d just respond to that, just one clear thought. And
that was that I see a lot of the information and a lot of the work that
makes it beyond the points of things that the Secretary needs to think
about as going into that context setting section that, you know, with
all of the information that we\'re going to be getting about trends and
all of those other things, that\'s going to provide the context for
saying, okay, you need to think about this, you need to think about
this, you need to think about this.

And that list can be relatively bulleted, but, a lot of that more
development of stuff and analysis in part is sort of introduction.

MR. GRANT: But, then we\'d fight over the introduction instead of the
list.

DR. CRAMER: Yes, which is what we\'ve done.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Choose your battles.

MS. DILLEY: Greg, Michael, and then Carole.

MR. JAFFE: Yeah. I guess I found the speakers very helpful yesterday. I
don\'t have a lot of experience in some of these areas. I\'m not a
farmer and that was very, very helpful. I think things like Nick asking
for somebody on the liability issues, I\'m asking for somebody on
international issues. You know, I think we have some expertise around
the table. We\'re lacking a lot of expertise.

And if you want to delve into this you need some education. Ideally, it
would be great to have white papers written by experts and for us and
then given to us, but, I don\'t think the Secretary, the USDA has money
to do that kind of thing. So, I don\'t think that\'s going to happen and
I\'m not sure we\'re going to find white papers on the seed supply or on
the kinds of issues just out there on the internet for us to sort of
look at.

And for some of us that would be a fairly difficult thing, but, I do see
off of the impact of having speakers, the impact they had on the
discussion we had this next day on the topics they brought and having a
visual presentation and oral presentation from an expert does have a lot
of impact on it.

So, I don\'t want us to limit ourselves to four speakers or something
because then we\'re going to be limiting to the speakers we had today
plus a few others and that\'s going to form the bulk of our knowledge. I
mean, it may skip some very important issues that we don\'t have
expertise on. So, I think we need to think a lot more creatively about
how to get information to us on this topic.

One suggestion I have is, I mean, if there is a lot of time for somebody
to write a white paper or something like that, but, you know, we do have
\-- want to have a conference call for the speaker and have them put
around \-- you know, we all have computers. We got a power point
presentation e-mailed to everybody and have a half hour conference call.

I know we have \-- one of the critiques I\'ve had in this work group is
it\'s always three hours. It\'s a long time, it\'s a big thing. But, if
we set up, you know, a 25 minute time period and you ask the speaker to
speak on the phone to us and have a 20 minute presentation and questions
we could do it. It wouldn\'t be as useful as an oral presentation in
front of all of us here, but, it might suffice to have a lawyer talk on
liability and somebody from the seed company.

They don\'t have to travel here. They might easily do that and it
wouldn\'t for us, whoever wanted to do attend, participate, and it
wouldn\'t be such a big block of time that would be difficult to use.
So, we just need to think a little more creatively.

To me, that would be more useful of our time to do that and then say
instead of having work groups for doing the substantive writing and
things like that then use our plenary meetings for some of that.

One further comment just on Randy. I worked with Randy a lot on
traceability and labeling. He\'s spent a lot of time on that report. He
did a lot of the writing of that report. He is extremely knowledgeable.
I don\'t know whether he\'ll say, we did this all before and he\'s not
particularly pleased about doing this or he might be very pleased about
doing some of this. I don\'t know how he\'ll react, but, he does have a
fair amount of knowledge, but, he also did a good lion\'s share of the
writing for that other report and he may think that some of these topics
is already covered.

That\'s it.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Two thoughts. Two comments. One, Randy was actually
quite interested in talking about the subject and I recognize that\'s
different from writing a paper. And the other thing is just, and this is
not to dampen the enthusiasm for what you said, Greg, because I think we
can use some conference calls as such for that, but, if we\'re doing one
of these things where it\'s information that\'s being provided to the
committee it will be a committee \-- it will be an official committee
meeting. It will just not be one in person and it will probably need to
be, I\'ll need to check with the lawyers, notice to the public and are
the lines offered to the public to listen in.

MS. DILLEY: I think basically your plea for being creative about how we
go about doing our work is \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Is a great plea. But, honestly \--

MR. JAFFE: Doesn\'t that take away from our four meetings a year if do
one of them by phone or is it only four meetings a year in public, in
person?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: It\'s creative. I need to ask the lawyers. I don\'t
think we can have more than four official meetings in the year so that
is a point. Certainly would save us a lot of money. I think it\'s great.
We\'ll try to be more creative in those ways. If I have to talk to them
and write down notes and send it to everybody, you know, we\'ll figure
out how to do it.

MS. DILLEY: Michael. Carole, did you put your card down? Michael,
Carole, and Nick and, so, go ahead, Michael.

DR. DYKES: I think we should come out here with some \-- it would take
about three more meetings realistically, just to call on Daryl\'s point,
but, the last meeting we know by experience will be merely reviewing and
editing and everyone leaving the room saying, okay, this is it, we\'re
going to have a conference call and you\'re going to be up or down.

So, the last meeting is out in my view. It\'ll take us that long to do
it all. So, we\'re really left with two real working meetings and it
seems to me that we need to think about, as this discussion\'s gone,
we\'ve kind of got two major thoughts.

One is, the introduction, and to paraphrase what Michael said, an
introduction where a lot of meat and substance is, and then follow up by
a list of different things to be thinking about that may have two
sentences each about that. Don\'t forget that the last report we did
started off to have one to two sentences and a topic sentence as well
and each of those, to look at them, they ended up to being a paragraph.

So, think realistically, that\'s a great goal, but, we\'ll have more.
So, I think we should maybe leave this meeting with some either this or
you guys agree that you\'re going to go at some point in time and soon,
but, we\'re going to have to do some things, get some words on paper, in
order to make the next face-to-face meeting being of really any value
because we\'re going to have, in my view we\'re going to have to have
text to begin to say we\'ve all seen it, we\'ve got our edits in, and,
you know, where the final is, bracket it, and that kind of stuff.

So, we got to develop, in my view we got to organize ourselves now so
that we have some work product to review at the next plenary, however we
go about doing it.

MS. DILLEY: Carole?

DR. CRAMER: So, I\'m visual too. I like to see what it looks like. I
think if we had the concept and if we can get some of this written ahead
of time basically where is coexistence right now. So, describe what
we\'ve heard to some degree and then say, what\'s worked, what works,
and then where there are still sort of outstanding issues.

If we then sort of go to the next paragraph, what are the major impact
effects that talks about international, it talks about big versus large,
essentially the type that you\'ve done is essentially the second little
section, and then you say, well, here are a series of issues or topics
that basically highlight these things.

You\'ve almost got a structure and you could imagine based on sort of
what we\'ve heard in the talks and discussed a lot this time, we may be
able to at least do the first kind of contextual piece that sort of says
here\'s where \-- you know \-- get the nuts and bolts of here\'s where
it sits now and highlight some of the things that like we were surprised
worked so well and highlight some of the things that were raised as
barriers just based on the speakers that we\'ve had at this meeting.

I think, you know, we have the ability to do that and that might get us
a little bit of a start in placing it and we could do piece number one
of Nick\'s outline.

MS. DILLEY: Nick?

MR. KALAITZANDONAKES: So, to Mike\'s point. I think in order to be
effective along the way progressively adding to the document after
omitting and after incorporating what the representations we have or
what the various information we have and getting that before we come to
the meeting would probably improve the efficiency of adding more
substance and being more prepared.

And I want to add my voice to Greg\'s and say the more substantive
presentations we bring to the table in whatever form, however creative
we can become, the better because this is, in my view, like the eight
blind people touching the elephant and so the more touches we get the
more likely it is that we are going to describe the animal correctly
and, so, that\'s part number one.

And, secondly, the information that we are going to be looking for is
not in the public domain because, in my view, there\'s a lot of
mythology about what is and what is not an issue when it comes to
coexistence and, so, in some cases you may not want to have the
information which is in the public domain.

So, having people who actually have the kind of information, which in
most cases is not public, and share some of that with us would be
extremely useful in adding substance to the report.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, I think we\'ve got a game plan and that is to take
a cut at the concept and we\'ll work with Nick to do that. We need to
identify what additional information is necessary and think creatively
about how to get it, what presentations, what other mechanisms can we
use to get additional information gathered and before the group. We need
to get some words and part of that is also refining some specific
questions to put to either shaping, white papers, or, whatever
mechanisms we\'re going to use or presentations.

And then it\'s also trying to capture what information we have already
and some of the discussion that we\'ve had already to start putting text
on paper and having that pull together for circulation, review,
discussion perhaps by a group to sort through a little bit more and
hopefully reflect back to where we are at this point.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: So, I could be hearing that folks are talking about
having in some sense a straw man that may be about some of the details
which we have in the past been happy to write knowing full well that
they\'ll be \--

DR. CRAMER: Trashed.

MS. DILLEY: So, let\'s just \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: If it\'s only one straw man as opposed to four in
successive meetings it\'s a bummer.

MS. DILLEY: The enthusiasm is overwhelming.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Yeah. I mean, I think it\'s something we can do. And I
may \-- and that will probably be plus and we\'ll try to make it a straw
man that talks about what\'s going to be there as opposed to actually
saying, you know, indicating what the context is, a straw man composed
of place markers.

And there was one other point. Sorry, I\'ve lost the trend.

DR. LAYTON: In that first piece, can we say what we\'re going to
consider coexistence is in this situation or not? A journey but not a
destination, but, \--

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Oh, I think there will be a placeholder for that. I do
need to \-- I remembered what my other thought was and that was putting
in a little placeholder for Carol Tucker Foreman who I know was having
some knee problems yesterday and I\'m sure that\'s why she\'s not here
today and I\'m also for Randy but I know that she was very concerned
about setting the structure in stone before we had heard whatever
additional presentations we wanted to have.

So, I just wanted to put that out there and I\'m sure that the straw man
will be flailed so that it won\'t \-- that it won\'t stand the chance of
being held too firmly in place but I just want to make it known that
there are folks out there who wanted to be sure that we had the
flexibility to be able to adjust the scope and the way it works.

MS. DILLEY: Let\'s be optimistic. Okay.

(Discussion off the record)

DR. LAYTON: Could I totally change the subject? This paper was given to
the Secretary this morning. I assume now I can go public with it and
where is the final version? Last time we did this they were on the
internet within hours and I could send people who I work with the
citations. So, my question is, I\'m assuming that there is a press
release out and that we are going to have this on the website so that
any questions we can send it to our friends because this was a not for
distribution until today, right?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: That\'s good.

DR. LAYTON: So, I just wanted to make sure you clarified that for
everyone.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I have not had a chance today to go to the website to
verify but the paper was \-- a press release was supposed to have been
released today and the paper is supposed to be up on the committee
website. I don\'t know if it in fact went up on the front page of the
USDA website. But, the press release should indicate how to get to the
paper.

MS. DILLEY: So it\'s out there and accessible.

DR. DYKES: I\'ve seen no press release today. I usually get the USDA
press releases and I\'m sure other people in the room do. I\'ve seen no
toasting of USDA press release on this topic, a bunch of others, not
this topic.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Okay. Well, I spoke yesterday \-- no, Monday afternoon
with the folks in the press office and there was a press release to be
released today around noon. So, I can check on that and it\'s supposed
to be out but I will check to be sure.

DR. DYKES: I would find it helpful and perhaps others would, if you
would forward to all of us this afternoon the press release and the
attached paper because to Pat\'s point, there are lots of people I would
like to circulate it to just so nobody\'s surprised and says this
happened, here it is, here\'s the paper, here\'s the press release.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Okay.

DR. DYKES: That would be beneficial to me and I\'ll get that out yet
tonight if you get it to us.

MS. DILLEY: Okay. So, a follow up memo just in terms of getting dates
for the next plenary as well as covering next steps and we\'ll start
right away on making a cut of the concept, working with Nick to make
sure we get it on paper what additional information is necessary and
move from there in terms of our work plan.

Excellent two day meeting. Presented a completed report. Had some time
with the Deputy Secretary. Got a concept for how to move forward so
excellent job.

DR. LAYTON: Are we still thinking two day meetings or are we \-- you
know, we had one where we came in like it was a half day, whole day,
half day, or, you know, three quarter day, whole day, three quarter day,
or, are we thinking of that again? Not yet?

DR. SCHECHTMAN: I need to consult budgets and see about that, see about
those things.

MS. DILLEY: Three day, phone call, half day meeting. We\'ve got lots of
options.

DR. LAYTON: A webcast is better if you\'re going to do that.

DR. SCHECHTMAN: Really.

DR. LAYTON: And I know you all have the technology.

DR. DYKES: I just wonder if Carole remains optimistic after today.

DR. CRAMER: You know, the first couple of hours I was a little doubtful.

MS. DILLEY: We are finishing five minutes early from the time we set.

(Applause)

DR. LAYTON: We are adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 3:25 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 in the matter of:

ADVISORY COMMITTEE ONBIOTECHNOLOGY AND 21ST CENTURY

AGRICULTURE (AC21) THIRTEENTH PLENARY MEETING

By:

![](media/image1.wmf){width="3.0458333333333334in"
height="0.8923611111111112in"}

Beverly Jason, Transcriber