10/31/06 Getting Trade Up and Running

Getting trade up and running. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. As President Bush signed the Central America Free Trade Agreement - or CAFTA he said the U.S. will move to implement it as soon as possible. BUSH: The bill I`m about to sign is good for America. I`m pleased Congress has taken a step to eliminate the barriers to America`s goods and crops to 44 million customers. I welcome the opportunity to make our nation more secure by strengthening our ties to democracies that share our belief in free markets and free government. All of us in this room understand to keep our economy growing and creating jobs, we need to open markets for American products overseas. All of us understand that strengthening our economic ties with our democratic neighbors is vital to America`s economic and national security interests. CAFTA will end these unfair tariffs against American products and help insure that free trade is fair trade. Also talking about trade today, thirteen big international companies have appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President George W. Bush to speed Russia`s entry into the World Trade Organization, a representative of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia said. Twelve US companies working in Russia and British energy giant Shell wrote a joint letter on Thursday to the two world leaders urging a quick end to contentious bilateral talks on Russia`s joining the WTO, an AmCham representative told AFP. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. It was really something, in fact I couldn't believe what I was reading&. that the food safety guru at the very liberal, very vegan, Center for Science in the Public Interest responded to an AP story about food safety by stating that "The problems have changed, a decade ago beef was at the top of the list of concern , now we are more concerned about produce." Carolyn Smith DeWaal, Grande dam of CSPI Food Safety naturally didn't want to give "legs" to the recent AP story highlighting the fact that food born illness are actually occurring at the lowest rate ever recorded in this decade. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that nearly every food born germ now poses less of a threat to humans . So in Ms. DeWaal attempts to spin our attention away from any good news about food and agricultural production she actually did something abhorrent to the very people she represents she gave a shot in the arm to the beef industry. I'm tickled as pink as a rare steak. Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.