09/05/07 Asking For Help

Asking for help. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. When was the last time you heard this? Hi, I'm from the government and I'm asking for your help. Never? In fact, that is what is happening. An interagency group is working on the import safety issue and is getting ready to welcome public comment according to Jerry Regier, Executive Secretary for the Import Safety Working Group. REGIER: The President signed the Executive Order in mid-July on creating this Import Safety Working Group and that really came out of the number of incidents that we've seen over the last few weeks and months related to the safety of some imported products. We really haven't had the time, particularly with the summer months to get as much input from the public and so we are creating some opportunities over the next several months that the public can provide their input because really this is all about protecting the consumers. The group is looking for comments from individuals, trade organizations and businesses about what they have to say about import issue. They will not be focusing only on China even though there have been a number of incidents from that country as of late. REGIER: Obviously they are in the news and people immediately when you talk about import safety talk about China but we are really trying to make it broader than that both from import source standpoint as well as from a product standpoint because product-wise even though food certainly has taken a front and center and toys, it's really looking at all products and secondly we're looking at all countries. Regier says that some of the members of the various organizations have already been visiting with people about the issue but they are planning a much larger forum. REGIER: We are actually setting up one opportunity for everyone that wants to comment and they can comment in both a written manner as well as come and do it personally. And it will be a public meeting in Washington DC on October 1st. Even though this might be opening a big can of worms so to speak, Regier believes it's important to hear what people have to say. REGIER: We feel that we should hear what everybody is thinking. Just how we are going to utilize that information, we're certainly going to look at it, we're certainly going to sift through it, we're going to look for recommendations that people make. For more information on that public forum visit their website at www.importsafety.gov. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.