Most of you here today have probably never heard of Joel and Mary Walker. In the late 1830’s, Joel and Mary lived 10 miles from where we are today in the then small town of Independence, Missouri. They woke at dawn and went to bed at sunset--their days consumed with tending their fields and raising their four children.

But Joel soon grew restless. He dreamed of the golden opportunities far away on the western edge of the continent. And on a warm spring day in late April, 1840, he and Mary packed their most valued possessions into a wagon and headed out in search of the vast, uncharted Northwestern United States.

Passing by this very spot, the Walkers pressed on for 135 days across the High Plains and the Rocky Mountains, the old growth forests and new-found grasslands. And on the 136th day, they halted in the heart of Oregon Territory, alone, amidst a silent sea of lush, green forest. They became the first European settlers to emigrate over land to the West Coast. An amazing accomplishment.

Like the Walkers, today’s American farmers stand on known soil staring out at the endless possibilities and challenges of tomorrow. And they, too, must explore the frontiers, forging new paths for others to follow. We at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) see ourselves as fellow travelers, using our knowledge and experience to help make sure the trip is safe and successful.

Nowhere are the possibilities and challenges more evident than with world trade. In the past 2 years, we have witnessed free trade agreements that expanded our horizons first to all of North America and then the rest of the world. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) provide us with the roadmap for improving trade. Just as importantly, they provide us with the safeguards needed to make a safe journey.

In fact, one of the central tenets of these agreements is that every country maintains the right to adopt measures necessary to protect the health of its agriculture. Hence, if a livestock shipment doesn’t conform with USDA’s animal health requirements, we won’t allow it to enter the country--not today, not tomorrow, not ever. With this right, however, we have certain obligations. We must develop our animal health regulations in a transparent manner and base them on sound science. We must also pursue the goal of minimizing negative trade effects.

I am pleased to say that, since the signing of NAFTA, trade in animals and animal products between the United States, Canada and Mexico has increased. Nonetheless, we continue to face new opportunities and challenges on the trade frontier.

One exciting opportunity that some of you might have heard about is a joint effort by Mexico, Canada and the United States to establish a formal North American animal health committee. Some time ago, Mexico proposed the idea, and we agreed that such a committee--one more structured than the informal one that exists today--could facilitate trade and resolve technical conflicts related to animal health. We also saw the benefit of the committee in improving animal health conditions throughout North America and in working to ensure that each country implements its NAFTA animal health commitments in a consistent manner. At this time, our Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) officials have prepared a draft agreement for the establishment of the committee, and they are preparing to present it to Mexican agricultural officials for review.

Another one of the challenges and opportunities we are facing on the world trade frontier is requests by foreign countries to develop disease-free regions from which to ship their livestock. Regionalization is one of the key agricultural health provisions of GATT and NAFTA. A provision we, at USDA, have advocated for many years as beneficial to world agriculture. And one we believe will benefit American agricultural producers. Canada has already made the commitment to regionalization by accepting parts of the United States as free of blue tongue disease. And the European Community is considering doing the same. We must move forward with regionalization and join these countries on the frontier of agricultural trade.

Already, Mexico is attempting to achieve recognition of Sonora as free of hog cholera so that producers there can ship swine or pork to the United States. As many of you know, Mexico has petitioned us on this matter, and we are currently working to develop regulations that would allow us to consider specific regions of a country disease-free.

Our focus in developing these regulations is to continue to protect U.S. animal health while providing expanded opportunities for world trade. The regulations still need refinement before they are completed, but many foreign countries, including Mexico, have already made a commitment to them.

Management guru Peter Drucker has said, "What is needed most for success in a complex environment, like today’s, is a clear and simple purpose." APHIS’ purpose and mission is clear and simple, it is to protect U.S. agriculture.

Accordingly, when people ask me whether USDA will continue to be able to protect U.S animal health from foreign pests and disease, I point to this mission. And I assure them that, whatever else USDA does, we will always remain committed to protecting U.S animal health.

Just as many Americans have made the trip West since Joel and Mary Walker blazed their trail to Oregon, we have made significant progress over the past 100 years in our ability to prevent disease introductions. In addition to working at the borders and implementing quarantine measures, we have developed an effective disease surveillance system that enables us to detect, isolate, and eradicate foreign diseases before they become a serious threat. We use this system to monitor for diseases like bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the deadly affliction of cattle that has been causing serious problems in Great Britain. With our prevention efforts for this disease and monitoring for possible introductions, it has never been detected in cattle in the United States.

However, as APHIS officials are quick to remind me, we must always be on our guard for possible disease introductions--the frontier of animal trade requires continuous surveillance. As an example, they point to the detection of a deadly strain of avian influenza on a gamebird farm in Eastern Maryland in November 1993. While the strain hadn’t been detected in the United States in some time, we suddenly had a small outbreak on our hands. Because of our early detection and isolation of the disease, we were able to keep the outbreak small and eradicate it before it became a threat to U.S. poultry producers. This detection provides a valuable lesson. We must continue our vigilance in monitoring for disease introductions. And, with over $80 billion dollars in U.S. livestock at risk, we must be poised to act quickly when breaches in our preventative security occur.

I understand that many of you are particularly interested in how the Farm Bill might affect our disease prevention and eradication efforts. Secretary Glickman will be holding rural town hall meetings around the U.S. in April which will conclude in Ames, Iowa, on April 25 with President Clinton. The purpose of these meetings is to gather information which will be used, not only for agricultural policy in general, but to complete our recommendations for the 1995 Farm Bill.

Congressional field hearings for the Farm Bill are also getting under way throughout the country. We expect that it will probably be several weeks before draft legislation is prepared and formal congressional hearings begin. You should be assured that Secretary Glickman does understand the importance of animal agriculture to this country and the importance of maintaining its health.

For our part, I assure you that we will continue to use our authority to develop pest and disease programs that best meet the needs of livestock producers and our stakeholders. In this regard, we are asking for your help. Over the next several months, and in addition to the town hall meetings, other USDA officials and I will be travelling throughout the country to meet with you and learn your views about USDA’s role in protecting and promoting U.S. agriculture. The goal of these meetings is simple: to obtain valuable input from you, our customers, on how you believe USDA can be more effective. I encourage you to participate. We need your help.

These meetings are part of our overall effort of improving customer service--an effort that has been ongoing for the past two years and includes the recent departmental reorganization. As I like to point out, the reorganization may involve many complex administrative aspects, but its overall goal is straightforward: to simplify USDA and provide our customers with the best possible service--service that reflects their needs today--not those of 10, 15, or 20 years ago.

Nowhere are these needs more evident than with food safety. Ever since the outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 in Seattle, Washington, a little over two years ago, the public has demanded that USDA take a more active role in preventing pathogens from entering the food supply.

In response, we made the commitment to improving our meat inspection program. As many of you know, an important part of our effort was to expand the program to cover food animal production the entire way from the farm to the table. Toward this end, officials with the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) worked to improve their existing inspection activities, while APHIS officials used their many years of animal health experience to develop a prototype preharvest food safety system. Last fall, the departmental reorganization took the final step in the development of this initiative by merging these two separate efforts and other related food inspection activities under a new subcabinet level position dedicated solely to food safety.

I know that many of you have been interested in how this consolidation will affect APHIS’ field personnel who were previously involved in the agency’s food safety activities. I am pleased to report that APHIS has maintained these field positions, as well as its laboratory positions pertaining to food safety, for at least the remainder of fiscal year 1995. The only APHIS personnel who have been transferred at this time are 25 employees who formerly worked in policy-related positions at the agency. APHIS and FSIS continue to discuss different options for best carrying out the food safety program after this fiscal year.

Another area about which USDA is receiving a great deal of public input is the handling and treatment of farm animals. Indeed, I see this as one of the major changing frontiers of American agriculture. Last year, an ad placed in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers regarding our proposal relative to a face branding requirement for Mexican breeding cattle resulted in over 12,000 comments to USDA. And much of the mail wasn’t from animal welfare organizations. It came from lawyers in New York, doctors in Texas, veterinarians, congressmen and women, farm groups, homemakers in California, and others.

In reviewing these comments, there was a common theme: a concern with the way food animals are treated up to and including slaughter. Branding, transport and living conditions are only a few areas of concern. It is obvious that the public is holding us accountable for our actions in this regard.

We at USDA recognized the public’s concern and worked with the cattle industry to develop a suitable alternative to the face branding requirement. We ultimately amended our proposed rule by moving the brand to the tailhead and allowing freeze branding as an alternate method of identification.

On an unfortunate note, I should point out that, if the House Congressional Moratorium is enacted as introduced, our amendments to the face branding requirement could be overturned. As a result, Mexican cattle could once again be branded on the face. This would indeed be unfortunate for us all. Everyone with whom I have communicated has agreed that there is no reason to return to such inhumane treatment.

There are many other new challenges ahead of us, the threat of exotic agricultural pests and diseases has confronted us since the Walkers’ era and will undoubtedly challenge us for many years to come.

We in USDA remain as resolute today as we were 100 years ago when we eradicated bovine pleuropneumonia. Since that time, APHIS, the states, and the livestock industry have quite a successful record in establishing outposts on the frontier of pest and disease eradication--eliminating foot-and-mouth-disease in 1929, screwworm in 1966, and even the outbreak of avian influenza in late 1993.

We are continuing to battle bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis. Last year, we declared two more states free of tuberculosis, bringing the total number of accredited disease-free states to 42 plus the U.S. Virgin Islands. We also recorded a 50-percent decline in the number of TB-infected animals identified at slaughter--from 613 to 318. We must continue our efforts to eliminate tuberculosis from the last seven infected dairy herds in Texas, New Mexico, and Florida, and push on toward the goal of total eradication by 1998.

We are also achieving a large measure of success in our fight against brucellosis. With only a little over 100 infected herds nationwide and 33 states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands declared free of the disease, our goal of eliminating brucellosis from the United States by 1998 is within reach.

However, to do so, we must work hard to resolve difficult issues like the presence of brucellosis in bison in Yellowstone National Park. For a long time, we seemed to be at an impasse on this matter. But as you learned at yesterday’s panel discussion, APHIS, the National Park Service, and the Forest Service have reached agreement on the long-term goal of eradicating brucellosis from the Yellowstone area. In essence, we agreed to address the disease, while ensuring the continued viability of the bison herd. As a result, we are confident that we can continue to move toward our goal of total eradication in 1998.

In addition, we feel confident that we can achieve eradication of two of the major swine diseases in this country--swine brucellosis and pseudorabies. Currently, there are only five brucellosis-infected swine herds left in the United States--two in Florida, two in Alabama, and one in New Jersey.

We are still optimistic about eradication of swine brucellosis in the U.S. As Dr. Taft noted in his update on the swine brucellosis program earlier this week, APHIS continues to work as planned toward eradicating the disease from the four herds in Florida and Alabama. But the agency also had to respond to the recent detection of the disease in a herd of 4,000 hogs in New Jersey. The herd has been placed under strict quarantine, and we are working with the owner to determine whether an arrangement can be made to purchase the animals under the indemnity provisions of the swine brucellosis program. We are confident that these negotiations will be successful and that we will remain on track toward total eradication of this disease in 1998.

The pseudorabies program also remains on track. We continue to work with pork producers in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and other affected states to eradicate the disease. Four years ago, we had over 10,000 infected swine herds in this country. We have just over 5,000 left today. We will not slow down. Prior to the world pork festival this June, APHIS officials are holding a national training course in Ames, Iowa, for federal officials, state officials, and the major pork producers from the 12 states primarily affected by pseudorabies. The purpose of the training is to provide them with latest techniques for managing the disease. Through these and other efforts, we will continue to work with the pork industry to reach the goal of total pseudorabies eradication by the year 2000.

When the Walkers started on their journey from Missouri across the frontier, they were headed to Oregon. Today, our agricultural frontiers are worldwide. By preventing and eradicating pests and diseases, helping to develop practical and humane animal handling practices, ensuring a safe food supply, and facilitating world trade, we at USDA are committed to making the journey easier for U.S. farmers and ranchers. We want U.S. agriculture to continue to be the strongest in he world, and we are committed to that goal.