01/17/07 Frozen Citrus & Restarting Doha

Frozen Citrus Crop & Restarting Doha plus Food Forethought. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. President Bush has instructed negotiators to push ahead in the Doha Round of World Trade Organization negotiations. And U. S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab is optimistic the collapsed Doha trade negotiations can be restarted, despite a number of obstacles. She reiterated that an agreement on important issues, like agricultural market access, would determine whether a deal could be hammered out. In an effort to move talks forward, WTO Director General Pascal Lamy met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday in London. It`s all part of Lamy`s step-by-step diplomacy. The California citrus crop has taken another beating. Three nights of freezing temperatures may well have destroyed up to three-quarters of California`s $1 billion citrus crop. And forecasters warned the weather could continue. Other crops, including avocados and strawberries, also have suffered damage in the cold snap, agricultural officials said. Brad Rippey, USDA meteorologist, explains what a severe freeze does to oranges. RIPPEY: As the freeze gets into the inner core of the fruit it just kind of turns it into a pulpy slush and there's really no recovery unless it's juiced immediately which we often see during the Florida freeze situations. But about the only way you can determine is go out and take the fruits off the trees, slice them through and see what kind of ice deposition there is inside the rind. Now with today's Food Forethought, here's Susan Allen. Finally, animal genetic engineering that could prove beneficial for man kind. Instead of cloning a tropical blue fish, pet cat or barrel horse scientists have come up with a way to genetically engineer cattle making them free from the protein that causes mad cow disease. In this breakthrough an international team of scientists from both Japan and the US announced that they had "knocked out" the gene responsible for mad cow. To make certain that the genetically enhanced cattle continue to remain free from BSE, the surviving cows have been injected with the diseases itself and scientists will monitor the cattle's immune responses and release the results latter this year. While anti-BSE cattle makes Japan all a twitter, I wonder if the all the money spent on this research is prudent especially light of the fact that BSE doesn't pose a high threat in the US. Given the number of people killed by cancers, and even e-coli in food born illnesses, why are we investing millions to fight mad cow disease that has killed only 180 people worldwide in two decades. Thanks Susan. That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.