09/22/06 Tree Fruit Trade Fairness

Tree Fruit Trade Fairness. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Congressman Doc Hastings led a bipartisan coalition of Pacific Northwest lawmakers in urging U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns and U.S. Trade Representative to work with Indonesia and push for an end to Indonesia's unfair trade barriers against Northwest apples, pears and cherries. HASTINGS: We sent a letter to the U.S. Trade Rep., Susan Schwab, a bi-partisan group of members from the northwest to call to the attention that Indonesia is using phyto-sanitary issues to deny access of our tree fruit, specifically apples, into Indonesia. So we asked her address this with the Indonesian government. We keep hearing over and over that we have a level playing field but a lot of these countries use phyto-sanitary issues to deny access to bar fruit from their markets when there has been no evidence that in fact there has been any of these problems that have arisen. According to Hastings other countries continue to use these non-issues to block trade. HASTINGS: They're not the only country. A number of countries do exactly the same thing and this is something our trade representative has to be aware of because we're not supposed to have these impediments with trade issues and yet they continue to come up from time to time so this letter is to go specifically to what Indonesia is doing but other countries have also done the same thing. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.