Methyl Bromide
Testimony
of
Mark Norton
Vice President, Production
Bay State Milling Company
Winona, Minnesota
House
Agriculture Subcommittee
on
Livestock and Horticulture
July 13, 2000
Thank you Mr. Chairman and
members of the committee. My name is Mark Norton. I
am vice president for production at Bay State Milling
Company. We operate mills in Winona, Minnesota;
Mooresville, North Carolina; Tolleson, Arizona;
Clifton, New Jersey; and Indiantown, Florida. We also
are partners with wheat farmers in Texas, Oklahoma
and Colorado through our management of mills in
Saginaw, Texas and Platteville, Colorado. Through
those seven mills, we grind more than 187,000 bushels
daily to produce more than eight million pounds of
flour each day.
I am here to testify on behalf of the North American Millers' Association (NAMA). NAMA's 43 member companies operate 172 wheat, corn, oat and rye mills in 37 states. Their aggregate production capacity is more than 160 million pounds of product daily, which is about 90% of the total U.S. capacity.
The other testimony you will hear this morning will focus on the importance of methyl bromide as a soil fumigant in fruit and vegetable production, or as a pre-shipment treatment for fruit and nut exports. My testimony, however, will describe the use of the fumigant in another vital industry - grain milling.
Methyl bromide is typically used in the milling industry twice annually to fumigate the physical mill structure and the equipment it contains. We do not fumigate grain or products like flour.
It is a highly effective treatment for ensuring the production of high quality, wholesome food in a sanitary environment free of insects. Doing so is good business, not just because the Food and Drug Administration requires it, but because consumers expect it.
As an industry we have already taken steps to reduce our usage of methyl bromide by applying it at levels 25 percent or less of what is approved by EPA. Despite that effort, and despite legislation passed by Congress in 1998 that specifically gave EPA the authority to exempt this important use, we are still facing a ban on the compound.
Banning methyl bromide in the US must not really be about saving the environment, for if it were the US would insist on it being banned everywhere at the same time. And that would be a legitimate public policy debate - food production and food safety on one hand versus environmental goals on the other. That is a debate we'd welcome. Banning it here, but not worldwide, only handicaps US farmers and industry without any offsetting environmental gain. That doesn't make any sense.
Northern European countries pat themselves on the back for their aggressive stance against methyl bromide. But they are not agricultural competitors. Many of our competitors will use it at least until 2015, and probably beyond since about one-half of the developing countries that are parties to the United Nation's Montreal Protocol have fulfilled their responsibility by enacting legislation to ban the compound.
A potential alternative is not truly an alternative if it is not readily available and commercially feasible. USDA has spent more than $100 million over the last 6 years investigating alternatives and really has nothing to show for it. In fact, for years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has had a fast-track policy for registering methyl bromide alternatives, yet none have been registered.
The industry is experimenting widely with potential alternatives, with mixed success. For example, phosphine, effective in treating stored grain, is not a good selection for the mill as the fumigant is highly corrosive and seriously damages the many electrical contacts, motors and programmable controllers in the mill.
High heat treatments have shown some promise in certain facilities. However, industry-wide experiences with heat treatments have shown that many mills do not have the structural integrity to make heat treatments feasible. Those mills are just not tight enough to facilitate raising and holding the temperature at levels high enough to provide good sanitation.
Those technical problems, however, are minor compared with the lost production resulting from the longer time necessary for a heat treatment. For example, the flour mill I work at produces about two million pounds of flour each day. A high heat treatment requires four days to complete, versus two for a methyl bromide fumigation.
The two day's production - four million pounds - that we did not produce during that longer heat treatment was worth about $500,000. Since the mill runs 24 hours per day, that is revenue we can never recapture by working overtime - it's simply gone. With two treatments per year, I assure you that $1,000,000 in lost revenue each year is a major impact.
Who would bear those costs? Farmers, in the form of lower wheat prices? Consumers, in the form of higher food prices? Or if it's the mill, what more incentive could we have to pick up and move to Mexico, where methyl bromide will be legal until at least 2015?
If U.S. agriculture is going to be expected to make that kind of a sacrifice, then it seems there should be real scientific certainty about the need for that ban. We recommend that Congress commission a panel of science experts from outside of government to review the state of the science and report back as quickly as possible. If the U.S. government is going to force the small company I work for to sacrifice millions of dollars of revenue annually, we'd like to be certain it was necessary.
Absent that certainty, Congress should take action to delay any further reductions pending the development of alternatives. Where no alternatives exist, Congress should create exemptions for critical uses like sanitation for food processing facilities.
Read the testimony of Rick Siemer to encourage Congressional action to extend the use beyond 2004 of methyl bromide as a food safety and sanitation tool by the flour milling and food processing industries.
NAMA calls on Congress and Administration to save fumigant important for food cleanliness, June 2, 2003
NAMA Calculates Impact of Methyl Bromide Ban to Exceed $60 Million Annually - Sept. 23, 2002
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