33 



tax dollars that the American taxpayer is investing in this impor- 

 tant area. 



Mr. CONDIT. Mr. Goldthwait, will FAS field structures be affected 

 by reorganization of USDA field structures? Are you taking a look 

 at this? 



Mr. Goldthwait. The restructuring of USDA as it is currently 

 targeted, will not have a direct impact on our field structures. It 

 focuses more on the domestic field structures. However, in the 

 overall climate of budget constraint, we have looked very carefully 

 at our field resources. We have already independently done a good 

 bit of restructuring and a good bit of shifting of personnel into 

 countries where we think they will be more effective in terms of 

 the longer-term market development that we are trying to achieve. 



So while we are not directly affected by the reorganization in 

 terms of our overseas offices, we are restructuring as part of an on- 

 going program of being sure that we have our resources where they 

 are going to be the most effective. 



Mr. CONDIT. I am going to yield to Mrs. Thurman. 



Mrs. Thurman. Mr. Goldthwait, let me pose an issue to you that 

 I am very interested in, and Mr. Mendelowitz, as long as I have 

 been here, which is only about 11 months now or whatever. One 

 of the things that has concerned me and I think it does all of us 

 when we are looking at Crovemment, has been the lack of commu- 

 nications between one Department within an agency to another. 

 Let me pose to you something that happened to the Government 

 Operations Committee last week when we talked with EPA and 

 USDA on the issue of ethyl bromide. 



It has come to my attention that in some of your foreign markets 

 that unless you fumigate with ethyl bromide that you are not able 

 to take the product there. On the other hand, we are being told 

 that potentially we are going to have to look at the production if 

 they are going to actually reduce the use of ethyl bromide maybe 

 back down to the 1991 times. 



How, then, do you as a Department and agency get this informa- 

 tion from your part of this of promotion and international trade, to 

 the people that are making the decisions on some of the other — 

 what they are going to use and the pesticides or some of that? 



I think that is a very important issue, because one of the things 

 that will send mixed signals to the people that you are most trying 

 to help is that people are not communicating. And I think it has 

 been — I mean, I can't think of a GAO report or an Inspector Gen- 

 eral's report that I have read that this has not been one of the 

 major issues. 



Mr. Goldthwait. I would comment in a couple of ways. First of 

 all, the channel of communication that currently exists is from our 

 agency through other agencies within the Department that deal di- 

 rectly with EPA and other organizations. And, in fact, we have re- 

 cently established a separate office within FAS to monitor the 

 kinds of developments and the kinds of problems that you are re- 

 ferring to. 



But stepping back from that for a moment, I would say that this 

 is an area where we are going to increasingly face this kind of, if 

 you will, conflict between objectives. And we are going to have to 

 do a better job. I believe you have isolated an area where we do 



