13 



consistently because of the design of the program rather than un- 

 evenly as has been the case in the past. 



Mr. CONDIT. Are you suggesting possibly next year, I know Mr. 

 Penny and I have talked about it, next year possible additional rec- 

 ommendations for the MPP program? 



Mr. Mendelowitz. I think that we would during this coming 

 year like to assess progress that is made. We are looking forward 

 to working with Chris and the FAS folks and seeing how far down 

 the road we go and then we will see if we can make some addi- 

 tional recommendations if they are needed. 



Mr. CONDIT. Mr. Goldthwait, the FAS has experienced some fi- 

 nancial control problems in its programs. Commercially, the burden 

 of paperwork seems to be a major concern of yours. Is the answer 

 to give FAS less paperwork but more accountability for the finan- 

 cial integrity of its programs? 



Mr. Goldthwait. I would say that we take the financial integ- 

 rity of the programs to be of absolute paramount importance. We 

 have over the past several years introduced a whole series of addi- 

 tional program controls that are designed to protect the programs. 

 We have introduced those as we have seen particular problems 

 occur. I think we had some controls in place early on to prevent 

 some very serious problems that could otherwise have occurred as 

 well. It is time now that we go through very carefully and look at 

 the series of program controls that we have in place, look at the 

 series of requirements that we place on the program participants, 

 see if there are ways to achieve the same thing more economically, 

 both in terms of our time and their time. 



I want to emphasize and underscore that in that process we will 

 not step back from the goal of absolutely the best program integrity 

 that we can preserve and the absolute lowest level of program 

 abuse. 



Mr. CONDIT. Mr. Mendelowitz, you noted that the FAS reports on 

 honey were of little or no use to the producers interested in export- 

 ing honey. With the elimination of the honey program, we need to 

 improve our ability to export this product. How can the FAS report 

 on honey be improved to be responsive to the honey producers? 



Mr. Mendelowitz. The first issue that has to be addressed is the 

 extent to which our industry is competitive. We export relatively 

 small aniounts of honey, about half of it goes to the Middle East, 

 and I think most of the rest of it goes to Germany and Japan. I 

 think that the kind of reporting that would be helpful would be 

 that which explores the nature of those markets where our prod- 

 ucts are competitive and to which we can export. This would in- 

 volve a shift from reporting that dwells primarily on countries that 

 are currently exporting to the United States to include counties 

 which hold potential for purchasing U.S. honey exports, i.e., further 

 developing markets where we currently export and identifying good 

 prospects where we currently don't export. 



Mr. CONDIT. Mr. Goldthwait, could you expand on the FAS's plan 

 to review its reporting requirements and do you feel these plans 

 will respond to the problem pointed out by GAO? 



Mr. Goldthwait. We have recently completed an in-house re- 

 view of the reports that we currently require and we have restruc- 

 tured our reporting requirements from our overseas offices quite 



