45 



REMARKS OF THE HONORABLE PETER DEFAZIO 

 Before the Subcommittee on Specialty Crops and Natural Resources 



June 29, 1994 



First Mr. Chairman I want to thank you for holding this very 

 timely and very important hearing. The Department of 

 Agriculture's Animal and Plant Inspection Service — which is 

 charged with regulating the importation of possibly harmful plant 

 materials into this country — has proposed rules to govern the 

 import of unprocessed wood products from the forests of Siberia, 

 Chile, New Zealand and elsewhere. 



The stakes are extremely high and the risks great. The only 

 decent assessment of the risks posed by log imports that has been 

 done to date was undertaken after I led an effort to force the 

 Department of Agriculture to place a temporary ban on log imports 

 from Siberia. The Agriculture Department took this belated step 

 only after at least one test shipment was allowed into the 

 country. Following the ban, the Forest Service undertook a pest 

 risk assessment in Siberia that spelled out the risks to the 

 health of our forests posed by imported wood products. 



The Siberian Pest Risk Assessment concluded that foreign 

 plant pests and pathogens have the potential to cause between $25 

 and $58 billion in damage to public and privately owned forest 

 resources in the Western United States. The aesthetic, 

 recreational and other non-quantifiable costs could be vast. 



Unfortunately, the pest risk assessments for New Zealand and 

 Chilean timber were nowhere near as thorough as the Siberian 

 team's effort. 



The record of damage to U.S. forests from devastating 

 foreign plant pests and pathogens gives us ample reason for 

 concern. Asian Chestnut blight, Dutch Elm disease, white pine 

 blister rust. Port Orford Cedar root rot — the list goes on and 

 on. The ongoing costs of controlling these introduced pests are 

 astronomical. Take for example white pine blister rust, which is 

 estimated to have infected pine stands covering more than 9 

 million acres in the West. More than $100 million has been spent 

 on largely ineffective control efforts since 1959. 



The toll during the latter part of this century for damage 

 inflicted by foreign pests and diseases is certainly in the range 

 of trillions of dollars. 



Unfortunately, APHIS does not seem to be taking its 

 responsibilities very seriously. Instead of placing the health 

 of U.S. forests first, the agency has buckled under to the short 

 term interests of a few timber importing firms. APHIS'S proposed 

 strategy to eliminate plant pests and pathogens on logs from New 

 Zealand and Chile is a joke without any proper foundation in 

 science and seems to have been decided upon after only cursory 

 consideration of the potential impacts. 



