bility of many to reach their dream of owning their own home with 

 rising interest rates, and amongst all of that is now the charge 

 here that somehow APHIS is not doing its job, and I wanted to 

 quote from the Forest Service analysis for the record, Mr. Chair- 

 man, and then ask Peter a question. 



In the New Zealand issue, and I am quoting, the team members 

 screen the 30-year computerized list of insects and diseases re- 

 ported there. A screening procedure was developed to focus on spe- 

 cies that represented these groups of organisms identified as hav- 

 ing the greatest risk, and they list them all, and all pest analysis 

 were approached from the assumption that New Zealand would in- 

 stitute their mitigation procedures. That seems rather thorough to 

 me. 



The question on Chile, a six-member team of forest pest special- 

 ists provided technical expertise from the disciplines of forestry, en- 

 tomology, pathology, ecology, and economics. Three of the team 

 members previously worked in Chile. The team members met with 

 all of the Chilean government people, industry people, and, in addi- 

 tion, the pest risk assessment document prepared by the team 

 takes into consideration comments by people in Grovemment agen- 

 cies, universities, private forest industries in the United States, 

 Canada, and Chile. 



That seems, Peter, to me, to be a rather in-depth analysis of 

 what is going on, at least in Chile and in New Zealand. You are 

 suggesting that somehow APHIS is not doing its job. 



Mr. DeFazio. Yes. 



Mr. Smith of Oregon. How does this mark with your analysis of 

 what is going on? 



Mr. DeFazio. Well, I would urge that the gentleman apply the 

 same degree of skepticism to the so-called expert panels that have 

 formulated these rules that he has to other actions by the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture regarding forest products. And in this case, 

 they seem to have ignored the preponderance of scientific evidence 

 that is out there and comments from our own people at Oregon 

 State University. 



For instance, methyl bromide is effective perhaps 4 inches into 

 a log. Well, many pathogens, and particularly fungi, and other 

 things which other people can speak to with more authority than 

 I, similar to white pine blister rust and other devastating exotic 

 imports, they are not insects that live on the log or insects that 

 bore into the log. They are not evident. They are deeper within the 

 log, and methyl bromide will not do it. 



They will then be under the APHIS guidelines. They admit, actu- 

 ally, there is a problem because they do want heat treatments, but 

 that will be within 60 days after the logs arrive in the United 

 States and it is not heat treatment which reaches the standards 

 which were recommended in the report on the Siberian logs. So the 

 heat treatment is inadequate, and that 60 days later, which cer- 

 tainly gives time for things to escape from the logs into the yards 

 and elsewhere, such as Port Orford Cedar root rot which is spread 

 by mud, or fungi in mud. 



So they are admitting essentially that, yes, we are going to do 

 visual inspections like 35 out of 30,000 logs on a ship. We will get 

 the analysis back a few months later after we have sent those logs 



