USDANEWS VOLUME 56 NO. 2 - FEBRUARY 1997

We Help Send Ag Exports to Paradise
The Foreign Agricultural Service operates 15 agricultural trade offices around the world--from Hamburg to Hong Kong to Seoul to Mexico City. But there is only one located in the United States--and it just opened in Miami.

FAS officially opened its Caribbean Basin Agricultural Trade Office in Miami on January 8. According to Willis Collie, an FAS agricultural trade officer who is the director of the agency's new office, its purpose is to promote the export of U.S. agricultural products to islands in the Caribbean. That includes the Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Dominican Republic, the French West Indies, Haiti, and Jamaica.

"The Caribbean Basin islands already are a hot market for foods and beverages--with total imports of $3.7 billion a year," Collie said.

"Rising incomes and increasing tourism revenue are creating new demand for food and beverages," he added. "So U.S. exporters need to position themselves to take advantage of these trends, and thereby increase their trade beyond the $1.3 billion in U.S. exports to that region in FY 1996."

"And the very purpose of our office is to provide trade support for exporters looking to tackle those particular markets."

Jim Parker, FAS's deputy administrator for commodity and marketing programs, explained that FAS's 15 agricultural trade offices provide a starting point for U.S. companies, trade associations, export cooperatives, and state departments of agriculture with an interest in overseas markets.

"Our FAS staffs in those offices are knowledgeable about their respective markets," he emphasized. "And while they aren't a research service, they can answer questions about the appropriate market and product potential in their geographical area."

Parker said FAS also administers four regional export outreach offices--in Sacramento, Calif., Denver, Colo., Des Moines, Iowa, and Portland, Ore. Their function is to increase the awareness of export opportunities within local governments in this country and the agribusiness community--particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises, including cooperatives.

Collie said he anticipated that U.S. agricultural exporters will concentrate their efforts on providing consumer-ready food products to the Caribbean Basin.

"We'd like U.S. exporters to look to these markets as sales opportunities," he said, "and our new office is here to help."
--Sally Klusaritz

A Whole New Dimension in Training
USDA employees are generally able to take advantage of job-related training opportunities at various points during their career. But a sizable number of employees with the Food Safety and Inspection Service are currently involved in some mission-related training that could be viewed as a whole new dimension in job-related education.

Eduardo Vendrell (left), an FSIS inspector based in Aibonito, Puerto Rico, concentrates on a super-magnified image of some E. Coli bacteria, while Linda Uriarte, an FSIS inspector based in Kerman, Calif., makes notes on her microscope-based observations. They were among the many FSIS meat and poultry inspectors to receive both academic and "cultural change training," because of FSIS's recent major overhaul of its meat and poultry inspection procedures.
--Photo by Paulette Platko

It's because, effective January 27, USDA began implementing the first two phases of a four-phased major overhaul of meat and poultry inspection. According to Mark Mina, FSIS's associate deputy administrator for field operations, the first two phases require meat and poultry plants to test for generic E. coli bacteria and implement standard operating procedures for sanitation.

The last two phases will require testing for Salmonella and the implementation of a new system of process controls, known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), to prevent potential food safety hazards at meat and poultry plants.

"This new preventive and science-based inspection system constitutes a major change in meat and poultry inspection," advised Jerry Skufe, project director of FSIS's Inspection Management Program. "And that has resulted in the biggest change ever in the history of our organization."

"Nothing has changed our culture as much, touching every employee."

As part of their training regimen, FSIS inspectors Cornelius Jackson (left), based in Detroit, and Jim Brautlacht, based in Auburn, N.Y., get a precise measurement of a sample of meat from a device known as a "Metzler balance."
--Photo by Paulette Platko

Accordingly, FSIS initiated a two-fold training process. First, between November and January it offered an estimated 4,400 inspection personnel and supervisors what was described as "cultural change training."

"The purpose of this training was to help employees understand the reasons for implementation of the new regulations," Skufe said. "It focused on not merely the new regulatory process but, more importantly, its impact on our employees."

He said that FSIS has been 'doing business' for over 90 years, and thereby was perceived by many as being, in effect, the 'quality control department' of the industry. "However, if something went wrong, inspection-wise, some may have considered us, in a way, a party to it," he said.

"But now, under the new regulations, all parties involved in inspection recognize that the responsibility rests with industry to produce a safe and wholesome product."

"That really does mark a rather significant cultural shift," Skufe advised, "and we want to make sure that our inspectors follow the rationale in the change."

Second, FSIS is offering its estimated 6,500 in-plant inspectors "academic education." According to Mina, this education is designed to provide the agency's in-plant inspectors with a more scientific background in the "new inspection environment."

He emphasized that the academic education is geared toward explaining why food safety problems occur, rather than just another training program that shows inspectors how to carry out their inspection tasks.

The curriculum, based on public health principles, emphasizes microbiology, risk assessment, and environmental sanitation.

While William Harrison (standing), an FSIS inspector based in Enterprise, Ala., gives his eyes a chance to adjust, Ronald Edmondson (seated, center), an FSIS inspector based in Boaz, Ala., focuses his microscope. The two were participating in both academic and "cultural change" training, offered by FSIS, in the wake of marked changes in the way agency employees will now conduct meat and poultry inspections.
--Photo by Paulette Platko

The four-week academic education program began on January 13 at Texas A&M University. Mina said that the course covers the amount of material equivalent to one college semester--and employees will get college credit for it.

He said that nine classes of 30 FSIS food inspectors each are planned for FY 1997.

"Because of these sessions, our food inspectors will be able to concentrate on the entire inspection process," advised Paulette Platko, an FSIS food technologist based at the agency's training center at Texas A&M University and a facilitator at the sessions.

"HACCP requires more knowledge and abilities--and this program will give it to them."
--Yves Gerem

A Lot of History in That Topsoil
It takes two to tango, it takes five minutes to learn the Macarena, it takes a village to raise a child--and it takes Mother Nature about 500 years to form an inch of soil.

The last item is what Natural Resources Conservation Service staffers are highlighting in a poster it recently produced. Titled "In the time it took to form 1 inch of soil...", the poster shows what happened in world history while one inch of soil was being formed.

"We've listed 125 items which represent important and/or unique events in social, cultural, and scientific history over a 500-year period--while nature, during that same time frame, was creating just one inch of soil," explained Brad Fisher, an NRCS writer-editor who came up with the idea for the poster.

"The purpose of this undertaking--as part of our ongoing efforts at conservation education--was to give people a real appreciation of how long it takes soil to form," added Chris Lozos, an NRCS visual information specialist who designed the poster.

Fisher recounted how the idea for such a poster came about. "I was sitting beside a hiking trail taking a break, and I noticed that several people who passed by me kept stepping on the same leaf," he said, "which had the effect of grinding it up with their hiking boots."

"So I wondered: how long would it take the leaf to become part of the soil?"

Fisher discussed this with NRCS soil scientist Maurice Mausbach and did some research--and the idea of a poster evolved.

NRCS printing specialist Doug Wilson checks out what was happening on the planet in 1895--during the 500-year period that it takes nature to form one inch of soil.
--Photo by Bob Nichols

He noted that, to ensure a broad-based, balanced, and inclusive cross-section of historical information, including items of world history from a cultural heritage perspective, NRCS staffers solicited input from a number of agency employees. They then reviewed the dates and events with NRCS historian Doug Helms.

Fisher noted that the oldest historical item contained on the poster was "John Cabot discovers Newfoundland--1497," while the most recent item was "New planets that could sustain life are discovered orbiting a neighboring star--1996."

In between are such historical items as "The toothbrush is invented by a Chinese dentist--1498," "Russian tsar Peter the Great imposes tax on beards--1698," "U.S. experiences worst grasshopper plague in its history--1874," and "Charles Curtis of the Kaw Tribe, Kansas, a U.S. Senator for 25 years, becomes Vice President of the United States--1929."

NRCS public affairs specialist Tom Levermann said that the NRCS poster made its debut at an international soil science consortium in Paris late last year--and it has since made its way into schoolrooms and offices all over the world.

"We even had an order for the poster from teachers on Palau, an island near the Philippines," he noted. "We're glad that this important message is part of a popular product."
--Ron Hall

Our Goal Is "Clean Drinking Water"
Most Americans take for granted turning on a faucet and having running water in their home. However, that doesn't happen for about a million residents of rural America who lack safe, clean drinking water.

But that's why USDA has been spearheading an initiative known as "Water 2000"--and on January 17 that initiative got an infusion of $9.1 million in supplemental funding to help provide an estimated 36,000 rural families with drinkable water during 1997.

John Romano, deputy administrator of the Rural Utilities Service--the agency coordinating USDA's Water 2000 initiative--said the program began in late 1994.

"RUS conducted a state-by-state needs assessment in all 50 states," he noted. "Our assessment determined that 2.5 million rural residents consistently experience water-related health problems, are forced to haul water, or are sometimes under orders from state or local officials to boil their water."

"In many of those communities," Romano advised, "fire hydrants are non-existent and business development is halted due to a lack of--or substandard--water service."

The assessment also showed that over $3.4 billion would be needed to carry out the Water 2000 program to address the need for safe, dependable drinking water.

Romano noted that, in the two years since the Water 2000 program began, RUS has invested more than $580 million in loans and grants to the nation's highest priority Water 2000 projects.

Jim Newby, chief budget officer for rural development, said that the most recent infusion of funds was provided by the "Fund for Rural America."

He explained that the Fund for Rural America is a three-year initiative created in the 1996 Farm Bill--funded at $100 million annually--to aid critical rural development programs, to boost agricultural, rural telecommunications, and other high priority research, and to assist beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers.

"We're currently targeting the supplemental funding for improvements in drinking water for low income families in distressed rural communities in Appalachia, the Mississippi River Delta, the southern parts of the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas, and on American Indian reservations," Newby said. ¤
--Jim Brownlee

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