41 



a well-organized country with an established form of government 

 by the British for quite some time and I don't believe they suffer 

 those same problems. 



So let us just, absent the question of whether or not we can be 

 assured that we have heat treatment following certain guidelines, 

 adequate heat treatment which meets both the concerns those 

 members of your industry are worried about, overtreatment, and 

 the concerns of the scientists here about undertreatment or treat- 

 ment at cooler temperatures, how much would that add to the cost 

 of imported timber per thousand? 



Mr. Berg. We prepared our comments, we had some discussion 

 with our members on that. The feedback we got was that to put 

 new facilities into a developing country would be cost prohibitive. 



Mr. DeFazio. New Zealand is not a developing country. It is rec- 

 ognized I believe as an industrial nation. 



Mr. Berg. For New Zealand, the argument we had was with fa- 

 cilities here in this country already in place to do it, why not do 

 it here in this country? Why not have it done in another country 

 that would have to build these facilities itself? 



Mr. DeFazio. So you cannot give me a cost figure? 



Mr. Berg. I cannot give you a cost figure. Our sense was that 

 if you can control the pests, the mobile pests on the surface of the 

 wood into 4 inches, the fungi and other things that are inside the 

 wood are not going to be leaping off the back of log trucks as they 

 drive by. 



Mr. DeFazio. You, unlike Ms., I think it was Lorimer, who is 

 from APHIS, you have been in a log sort yard? 



Mr. Berg. Absolutely. 



Mr. DeFazio. And a mill? 



Mr. Berg. Yes. 



Mr. DeFazio. Do you know any mills that are run to sanitary 

 standards where we remove all the sawdust on a sort of nightly 

 basis from the conveyors and underneath the machines and every- 

 thing else, or on any regular basis between runs of logs? Do you 

 not think it would be kind of expensive and impractical for a mill 

 to sanitize itself after a run of foreign logs and only be certain that 

 they run foreign logs? 



Your average sort yard, in addition to the question of sitting out 

 in the rain for 90 days in Oregon, or 60 days, whatever this stand- 

 ard is, on the edge of a sort yard with the forest 10 feet away, you 

 are totally sanguine about this? You do not think there is any risk 

 even for unknown pathogens which Ms. Lorimer admitted exist or 

 we do not know they exist? 



Mr. Berg. We acknowledge there are risks in this enterprise, but 

 life is not without risk. There are certain risks we are willing to 

 anticipate and our members are willing to accept that risk. 



Mr. DeFazio. So is your industry willing to put up a trillion dol- 

 lar bond or something to accept that risk? It is great to be san- 

 guine, but we heard from DNR that the cost of spraying was 13.5 

 million for six gypsy moths; hundreds of millions for the European 

 gypsy moth that was not borne by the industry. It is borne by the 

 average taxpayer. 



It is nice to be sanguine, but when you are passing the risk on 

 to somebody else or on to another generation, I am not sanguine 



