Radio Address of Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman
                                
                                            Release No. 0008.99
                                
      Radio Address of Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman
                         January 11, 1998

     Though recently we have see some upward movement in hog prices,
dramatically low prices continue to plague pork producers.  I want you to know
this situation has my full attention and that of the President and Vice
President.  

     On Friday, Vice President Gore announced that USDA will make
approximately $50 million in cash payments to family-sized hog producers
hardest hit by this crisis.  I will announce details of this emergency effort
in the next 24 hours.   I urge all eligible hog farmers to take advantage of
this program as soon as sign-up begins.

     I also recently announced that USDA will provide $80 million to
accelerate our voluntary pseudorabies eradication program, an action  that
could remove up to 1.7 million hogs from the market.  It will also help us to
achieve pseudorabies-free status for the United States much sooner than
planned   giving us an added bonus of opening up new foreign market
opportunities. 

     Some other steps we've taken include working to ease the credit squeeze on
hog farmers,  accelerating pork purchases for our federal feeding programs, 
buying pork for food assistance to Russia and including pork in an expected 
package of export credit guarantees to South Korea.   The work USDA is doing is 
being coordinated by a Pork Crisis Task Force that has been working overtime and 
through the holidays to help pork producers get through this crisis.  

     I want to remind everyone that these are unusually tough times for hog 
farmers.  Unfortunately, the situation became critical too late for hog farmers 
to be included in last fall's $6 billion emergency assistance package for farmers.

   So we are doing everything we can at the federal level to help, and  I 
want to urge all folks from state and local officials to bankers to local merchants 
-- to pitch in and do what they can to help our fellow citizens get back on their feet.

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