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FOREIGN PRESS CENTER BRIEFING WITH SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE ANN M. VENEMAN MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE AND EXPO ON AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, 23-25 JUNE 2003 THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.

3:00 P.M. EDT, TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2003

MR. DENIG: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Foreign Press Center. We are delighted to have for a briefing this afternoon Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman. She will be talking about the Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology, which will be held in Sacramento, California, on June 23rd to 25th. Secretary Veneman will have an opening statement to make, and after that she'll be glad to take your questions. Secretary Veneman.

SECRETARY VENEMAN: “Well, thank you very much, and thanks to all of you for being here today. I am joined today by our Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services, Dr. J.B. Penn, and we will jointly be taking your questions after my opening statement.

“I am very pleased to have the opportunity to talk with you about the Ministerial Conference on Agriculture, Science and Technology. The conference and the accompanying Technology Exposition will be held in Sacramento, California, next week. The U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development are joining the Department of
Agriculture in this effort.

“President Bush has made improved economic and humanitarian conditions in developing countries a high priority. Through the introduction of his Millennium Challenge Account, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, as it is referred to, his Emergency Plan for HIV/AIDS Relief that he announced in his State of the Union Address this year and which was recently signed into law, as well as a trade agenda focusing on the needs of the
developing world -- these all serve to demonstrate this commitment.

“Last year in June at the World Food Summit: Five Years Later, at a meeting held in Rome, the United States was one of more than 180 countries that met to review our progress toward the goal of reducing by half the number of hungry people around the world by the year 2015. Today, 800 million people face chronic hunger. One in three children in the world is undernourished ,and every five seconds we lose a child to hunger. Half the world population lives on less than $2 a day.

“To meet the goal of food security, agriculture productivity must be accelerated in areas where hunger and malnutrition are worst. The discussions we had in Rome with our fellow ministers kept returning to technology's role in enhancing agricultural productivity, and this was the genesis of the Sacramento ministerial. Science and technology offer some of the most effective tools to raise agricultural productivity. It may be through better seed varieties, better planting practices, better water management, or better food preservation or processing techniques. Whatever the technology, it must be appropriate and accessible.

“This conference is an important component of a broader effort to encourage countries to work together to take advantage of the opportunities that technology presents. The response from around the world has been very positive. More than 150 ministers from over 100 countries are planning to attend this conference. Ministers of agriculture, science and technology, environment and health will gather to focus on increasing agriculture productivity in an environmentally sensitive way, reducing famine and improving nutrition through the benefits of technology.

“The conference will not be about negotiations or major new initiatives. There are other forums for that. Ministers will be at the conference to learn from each other, to network with each other and to discuss common issues. We hope they will return home with new ideas, new relationships and a renewed commitment to apply what they have learned. They will have opportunities to meet with foundations, international research centers, private companies at the Expo, and others to share ideas and discuss partnerships.

“This conference presents a unique opportunity. It offers policymakers in developing countries an opportunity to focus on what science and technology in a supportive policy environment can do for farmers, consumers and countries. Technology is not an end in itself.

“It is developed to serve people and their needs. Science and technology can improve the nutrient content of foods, address issues of water quantity and quality, improve food distribution and increase farm yield. It can cut food waste, reduce the use of chemicals and provide new marketing opportunities.

“Technology offers new income sources for farmers in areas such as biodegradable plastic and bioenergy products. Technology has the potential to help farmers around the globe produce more with less while protecting the environment for future generations. Technology can help feed the hungry, improve nutrition, and elevate living standards.

“Our goal for this conference is to provide a path for more people around the world to share in these benefits. Thank you again for coming today, and I will be pleased now to take your questions.

QUESTION: My name is Adu-Asare, a reporter for AfricaNewscast.com. It has come to the notice of those of us who attempt to follow the events in agriculture around -- especially in the developing countries, to find out that, whereas, technology -- science and technology can improve productivity n the area of food production, for example, the major problem is getting the food and the other agriculture products from the areas of production to the markets and to the harbors and to the airports. Where is the science and technology for that?

SECRETARY VENEMAN: “Well, you ask a very good question. And I think it's a critical question as we look at the developing world, in particular. And in many parts of the world where agriculture does hold some promise, there are issues of infrastructure within the areas for the very issues you talk about, whether it's transportation, roads, trains, bridges, ports, to be able to move products to where people are hungry.

“To some extent, that is technology in and of itself -- technology that's helping with infrastructure. But I think that one of the things that we want to do with this conference is address a broad range of technologies that can assist agriculture in various ways -- whether it's increased productivity, or it's water-saving technologies, or it's information technologies, transportation technologies. I don't know that we're going to have a lot of transportation technology at this conference, but I do think that you raise a very important question, that all of these issues need to be considered when we're talking about how to improve the efficiency and productivity of agriculture, particularly in the areas of the world where people are most hungry.

QUESTION: Jim Berger, from Washington Trade Daily. I just wanted to know if you know if there will be a EU delegation at the meeting and how high? I know they have other issues right now.

SECRETARY VENEMAN : “You're right. They do have other issues. And when we first planned this conference, Mr. Fischler and I discussed it, and he had hoped very much to be there. But then he called me to tell me that, in fact, they were going to be in the throes of their discussions about their common agricultural policy reform, which they have been doing over the last few days. And so, because of that we won't have a lot of participation from people from the European Union. And we're disappointed by that because, clearly, we want to have all regions participate and represented.

“We do have some Europeans attending. We have some Eastern Europeans. We have a number of countries from throughout the region. I believe the ungarian Minister is speaking, and so we do have a broad range. “At the last schedule, I saw that we still had the Spanish Minister of Agriculture attending, although I suspect with some of the things that are going on, I am not sure if that's still going to be possible or not, just for the reasons you bring up.”

QUESTION: Florence Rossignol with CTV, Canadian Television. I'm afraid I am going to have to ask you about Canadian beef. Canada -- Canadian

SECRETARY VENEMAN : “She asks me this about every other day.”

QUESTION: (Laughter.) Canadians are still wondering what it will take to reopen the border to beef imports. What are the standards that the USDA is looking for? And my second question is, some international experts have hinted that there might already be a case of mad cow in the U.S. that you wouldn't be aware of yet. Do you think that's possible?

SECRETARY VENEMAN: “Well, first of all, let me just address the second question. There is a lot of speculation about what may or may not be in certain countries. One of the things that I think has been very positive is that we've had total cooperation between the United States Government and the Canadian Government in the investigation that has gone on about the cow that was found in Canada. Now, very fortunately, that investigation, I think, has resulted in the depopulation of over 2,000 animals and the testing of those animals, and only one cow has been found to be infected. And that's involved trace back, and it's involved trace forward. So that's good news.

“You can speculate about what may or may not be there. Many people told us that they thought that through this trace out that there would be additional cases. I think that there is a lot that's not known about this disease. We don't know how this particular cow was infected. And so I think people can speculate, but indeed, it's certainly not a conclusion that that person draws with any evidence that I'm aware of.

“We are looking, as I have said many times over the last couple of weeks, at the whole range of issues as we are considering when and how we might reopen the border. As you know, our standard operating procedure when there is a case of BSE in a trading-partner country is to temporarily close off trade. “And so we are looking at the whole range of options.

“We are working with OIE standards. We are working with our Canadian counterparts looking at all of the issues that need to be addressed, and at this point in time, I can't give you what, exactly, the criteria will be, nor can I give you the timing.”

QUESTION: Secretary Veneman, on the same topic, Carl Hanlon, Global Television, Canada. On the same topic, Secretary, at this point then, can you offer any hope to Canadian producers who are going out of business waiting for the ban to be lifted?

SECRETARY VENEMAN: I understand -- and I am just going to say to everybody, this is the last question I'm going to take on this because I really do want to stay on the topic of our conference, and we only have about a few minutes left -- but we are working as closely with the Canadian authorities as we possibly can. We are very aware of the difficulties that are being experienced by Canadian cattlemen. But we do have to look at all of the ramifications, not the least of which is what other trading countries are doing. I don't believe that any other country has opened up their borders to Canadian beef yet.

“We are discussing that with other countries -- with just one cow finding --we are looking at with other countries as well, what are going to be the criteria. One of the things that we think needs to be done is more discussion needs to be conducted in places like the international standards setting body, the OIE, on how do you go from a single case like this to what the next steps ought to be.

“So certainly, we're very aware of the plight of the Canadian cattlemen. It's difficult, we know. But again, the U.S. isn't taking action that's any more stringent than what any other country is taking.”

QUESTION: Some Canadian producers actually think that, at this point, the ban is being maintained -- some of the producers believe the ban is being maintained -- to help the American producers increase their profits. What would you say to them?

SECRETARY VENEMAN : “That's not true. I'll just say it's not true.”

MR. DENIG: We'll take the lady in the back --

QUESTION : Hi. I'm Catherine McConnell with the Washington File. Could you just give some specifics about the field trips, like maybe give an example of what the ministers are likely to experience?

SECRETARY VENEMAN: “Well, there will be a range of field trips. Let me just say a word about why this conference is being held in Sacramento, California. Of course, as you know, California is one of the most diverse agriculture-producing regions in the entire world, so it is also very technologically advanced.

“And so, Sacramento is very near to, for example, the University of California-Davis, where a lot of technology research is conducted. And so we thought it would be an ideal place to bring ministers from around the world to showcase, not only the diversity of agriculture, but also some of the technologies and also the proximity to areas that would be appropriate for field trips.

“So I think we have got field trips to rice-producing areas; obviously, some field trips to the research sites at UC-Davis. I think we've got field trips to dairy production. I don't have them all in front of me, but that gives you some kind of idea of the range of opportunities that the ministers that are visiting us from around the world will have to see some of the kinds of production, the kinds of practices and the kinds of new research and technology that are being developed.

“In addition, we will have this exposition in the conference center, in the convention center where this is being held, where private companies are coming to actually showcase their technologies, whether they're information technologies or seed technologies or global positioning systems or new product technologies, so that there will be a range of technologies that are available for people to see and discuss, as well as some of the research agencies within USDA will be exhibiting, as well.”

QUESTION : Bill Thompson, Oster Dow Jones. I believe consultation meetings began this week between the United States and the EU over the WTO suit on their moratorium. Can you give us an update on what's going on? Do you expect this to be resolved in the consultation process, or do you expect this to go to a dispute? And how closely are other countries, such as in Africa and in other places, watching this?

SECRETARY VENEMAN: “I believe the consultations start tomorrow, if I'm not mistaken, in Geneva, and it's hard for me to speculate at this point as to what may be coming out of those.

“You know, I really don't have a handle on how closely other countries are watching this. It's in a very technical dispute settlement mode at this point. I haven't seen a lot of press about this internationally in terms of people saying that the consultations are going to result in something this week. I don't think they will. I think this is the beginning of the process.

“But certainly, when Ambassador Zoellick and I announced that we were going to begin this process under the WTO, one of the things we did was we had people with us, including a farmer from South Africa, a professor from Africa, some professors from universities, talking about the promise of these technologies to really help people in developing countries. So, certainly, I think as we made this announcement there was certainly some interest because we had people from Africa when we made the announcement.”

QUESTION : Nestor Ikeda, reporter for Latin America of AP, and I have two Quest ions. What would be the specific areas where would you like to see as primary potential destination for technology to -- in the field of agriculture? And the second question is: What kind of announcement would you expect from the meeting?

SECRETARY VENEMAN: “Well, thank you very much. I might add that we do have very good participation from Latin American ministers. We have, I think, a very large number of ministers coming from Latin America and we are very much looking forward to their participation in this conference.

“What we hope to have in terms of the kinds of discussions that come out of this is we don't expect -- at many international meetings you have big communiqués. We don't expect to have people sitting around writing communiqués. We see this conference much as an education process, as an opportunity for people from all around the world, particularly from some of the least developed countries, to have exposure to the promise of some of the technologies that may help address this issue of world hunger.

“I mean, again, I go back to what precipitated this conference is the summit, or the World Food Summit: Five Years Later, where we are addressing through that process the fact that there are 800 million people in this world who are hungry. It's hard for us here in this city to imagine that, but the fact of the matter is, is that this is a serious problem around the world. And this conference is really about giving people the opportunity to look at a wide range of technologies and to see what may work in different parts of the world, to meet people, to develop partnerships.

“And that's the kind of outcome we hope to see. New ideas. We may have, for example, there may be people in certain regions of the world that say we would like to have these kinds of people come to our region for further discussion about what the opportunities might be. It's hard to anticipate exactly what the partnerships and what the discussions may result in, but that's the hope is that it will create real opportunities for people in the future to address the problem of world hunger.”

QUESTION: Adu-Asare. You answered the question, a question I had in mind, and is regarding whether the seminars or the side meetings will be regionally directed in order to take care of the needs of specific regions. And I have in mind particularly the genetically modified food issue. And do you have an idea of how many people and who are coming from Africa?

SECRETARY VENEMAN: “I don't have a list of people that are coming from Africa, but we have a broad range of people coming from Africa. I think we have people from South Africa, we have a minister from Uganda who is going to be a speaker. But there are a number of people who are coming from Africa, and maybe we can get you some additional information on the attendees.

“During the first two days of the conference, there will be what we call plenary sessions in a large room with speakers, for about the first half of the day, and then the second part of the day will be breakout sessions in various areas so that people can go to a seminar on areas that they are interested in. And we have a number of those breakout sessions both on Monday afternoon as well as Tuesday, and then there will be a plenary session again on Tuesday evening to discuss sort of what came out of all of this, to look sort of at the broad overview.

“In addition, we are doing some bilateral meetings and some regional meetings, and particularly we will be meeting with a whole group of African ministers as a group to talk about some of the issues. Dr. Penn was part of the U.S. delegation that went to the AGOA conference in Mauritius earlier this year. We're going to try to do some follow-up meetings from some of the people that he and others met there and continue the discussions. But that is another forum in which this conference was discussed, and the opportunity for looking at new technologies, and the promise of technology was discussed there, too.

QUESTION: Jim Berger again from Washington Trade Daily. Do you think the outcome of this meeting will put to rest once and for all the misinformation in the debate over the safety of GMOs and biotechnology?

SECRETARY VENEMAN : “I think it would be hard for one meeting to put to rest the debate. The debate has been intense. But I do think that it's important to point out that while this meeting will address issues of biotechnology, it is not just about biotechnology. It really is about a whole range of technologies that impact agriculture.

“But I do think there's great promise. There's great misunderstanding about biotechnology. There is misunderstanding about the biotechnology that's been adopted in this country and what we've been able to do, not only with productivity, but with water quality, for example. I mean, we've seen tremendous benefits of water quality from not having to use so many chemicals.

“As some of these technologies are in their infancy, we will see further environmental benefits, we'll see health benefits as we can produce more products like Vitamin A enriched rice that could help people that are Vitamin A deficient around the world.

“And I think we need to keep in mind that the promise of these technologies for the future, not that people should be afraid, but they should understand the science behind it. This is a very scientifically based conference. It will have a number of people with science-based backgrounds who are discussing various technologies and what the future may hold for these technologies in various parts of the world.”

QUESTION: I am Simona Storkey from ANSA, Italy. Do you think that something could change in the relationship between EU and the U.S. on GMOs?

SECRETARY VENEMAN : “Well, we have been actively discussing the whole issue of GMOs and biotechnology with Europe since this administration came in, and before this administration came in, two years before that. So this has been a discussion where the approvals have not been forthcoming for almost five years now, and that really is part of the main reason that we began this WTO process, because of the fact that, basically, we were hearing over and over from the Europeans that we were going to see some movement, and yet it was never forthcoming.

“But I've had very productive discussions with my counterparts in the EU, Mr. Fischler, Mr. Byrne, a number of the agricultural ministers around Europe. The problem is the lack of ability to get consensus about what the solution is. And I understand that difficulty. The way the process works makes it difficult for people to agree. But I do think a number of people have had a lot of very thoughtful discussion about this and what will work and what will not. Some of the proposals, frankly, are just simply unworkable, and I think that's one of the reasons it's taken such a long time to move this process forward. And that's one of the reasons that we in the U.S. lost patience and felt that we had to take action.

QUESTION: Hi, Julia Dietrich, National Public Radio. You mentioned earlier that you would be disappointed if you didn't have the European counterparts coming to participate, and I just wondered whether you thought there would be a lack of balance in terms of developed and developing countries represented at the conference.

And also, I was interested to know, are the presenters at the conference, are they mostly American? Are they from an international group of people?

SECRETARY VENEMAN: "Actually, we have a press release out today that goes through, actually outlines some of the people that will be speaking. It's just a very short list. But I think among the opening day speakers we have, as I said, the minister from Uganda, a minister from the Philippines. We have the White House Science Advisor. We have, I think, the National Science Foundation. I didn't, unfortunately, bring an agenda with me. But then we have all of these breakout sessions, and through those breakout sessions there will be moderators and then three people per session with people participating from all over the world on these various breakout sessions.

“Let's see, ministers of agriculture from Uganda, the Philippines, Georgia, Mexico, Lebanon and Spain will be among the speakers at the opening. And so we do have a broad range of countries that are participating. And this is only a partial list. These are people that are speaking at the opening plenary. And then we'll have, obviously, a number of people who are involved in the breakout sessions as well.

“Oh, I'm sorry. Emmy Simmons from AID is here, and she is going to be participating in the conference as well. AID has been a very, very strong partner in this conference. They have been with us throughout the planning stages and have been very valuable partners, and financial contributors as well, to the development of this conference.

“Did you want to say a few words?”

MS. SIMMONS: Thank you, thank you. We just do want to second the Secretary's words about the importance of this conference and getting the message of agriculture science and technology out, and providing this opportunity for people to sit down seriously and talk about the role of science and technology in addressing the issues of food and hunger worldwide. And we much appreciate USDA's leadership in terms of putting the conference together.

I noted the last speaker was asking about international participation, and I am really pleased that we have been able to get panelists in the breakout groups which is, for my agency has been working very closely with USDA and others to try to find speakers who can really be inspirational, who have both knowledge of the science, knowledge of the technology, knowledge of the markets in which these technologies are applied.

So we are looking very much forward to having these breakout sessions, these sessions where people can really get down to the factual information and down to what do we do next and how do we work together on the kind of networking issues that the Secretary mentioned.

So we are very pleased to be a part of this conference. My boss, unfortunately, is going to be traveling in the Middle East -- Andrew Natsios, our Administrator of USAID -- so I will be leading our delegation to the conference and participating, actually, in it. Thank you.

QUESTION : Just a final brief question, what U.S. reaction might be if the European Union can't get their act together and get agreement on CAP reform in a timely manner, say by the end of the summer?

SECRETARY VENEMAN: “Well, obviously, we've been hearing that CAP reform may come in June, and that's why the Europeans are obviously very tied up right now talking about CAP reform. It's difficult at this point to see whether or not they're going to make the kind of progress that Mr. Fischler has proposed. But certainly, if they make some significant progress in CAP reform, I think it will certainly create a greater opportunity for us to make more progress as we continue the Doha round, and particularly come into the Cancun meeting in September. So we're hopeful that they will make significant progress. I know that's what Mr. Fischler is aiming for, and he's got some difficult negotiations to do with his various ministers.

“Thank you all very much.

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