81 



even on the same tnickload, and some of that is the nature of the 

 beast, I think, as you mentioned, Mr. Keith. But it is regrettable. 

 Is there anything that can be done to elevate public confidence in 

 the testing procedure? 



Mr. Keith. Well, we have had the same experience with 

 aflatoxin. We don't know exactly what. In aflatoxin we know that 

 sampling errors can be tremendous, simply because the aflatoxin 

 itself becomes concentrated in single kernels, and if you happen to 

 pick up one contaminated kernel in a sample and it gets to be ana- 

 lyzed, then you have the risk for a very high level. But the sam- 

 pling error is what contributes to variability in measuring 

 aflatoxin. 



In other areas, like vomitoxin, we are not sure what is contribut- 

 ing to the variability in measurement at this stage. A few years ago 

 we had no test for vomitoxin that could accurately measure it, and 

 so we are at least in this year better off than we have been in pre- 

 vious years. 



Mr. POMEROY. The prospect of blending the 1993 crop for pur- 

 poses of reducing dramatically vomitoxin levels, you indicate, is im- 

 pacted by a relatively low amount of earlier crop that is in storage? 



Mr. Keith. Yes. Of high protein wheat. 



Mr. PoMEROY. Even in light of the record harvest in 1992, those 

 stocks are not very high. 



Mr. Keith. Those stocks are not very high, by historical stand- 

 ards, they are I think about the second lowest in 20 years, I be- 

 lieve, yes. 



Mr. PoMEROY. North Dakota State University has done tests that 

 show that the milling of wheat produces much lower concentrations 

 of vomitoxins in the flower, higher concentrations in the bran and 

 by-products. Will this have an impact, do you think? Will this im- 

 pact — what, if any, marketing impact will be based on growing 

 market confidence and what happens to vomitoxin in the milling 

 process? 



Mr. Campbell. I think the millers are still trying to sort this out 

 themselves, but the market is showing us smaller premiums, but 

 not significantly smaller premiums for 2 or less vomitoxin. But in 

 our own case, we have a feed company, and what happens is that 

 the vomitoxin concentrates in the mids, so when a flower miller is 

 trying to make money, they have to make it not only on the flower, 

 but on the by-products. 



Our own feed company has refused to purchase anything over 

 five parts per million vomitoxin in the mids, which I am told may 

 be one part per million in the wheat. So it doesn't necessarily fol- 

 low that the fact that you can clean up the flower is a great benefit 

 if you are concentrating the vomitoxin in your coproduct, and in 

 order to sell your coproduct, you have to buy even cleaner wheat. 



Mr. Pomeroy. That is my last question. I found your responses 

 excellent. Thank you. 



Mr. Johnson. I want to thank the members of this panel. Yes, 

 Mr. Keith. 



Mr. Keith. Before we close, Mr. Chairman, could I make one 

 comment. I think we have some concerns about Congressman Pe- 

 terson's bill he discussed earlier from this standpoint. We are not 

 sure if you set up some kind of a screening process on shipments 



