05/30/05 Purchase some pears again

This seems be a yearly request by members of the Northwest Congressional delegation to U.S.D.A. HASTINGS: We sent again on a bi-partisan basis & a number of my colleagues in the Northwest & a letter to the U.S.D.A. to ask them to make a canned pear purchase again as they have done in the past. U.S. Representative Doc Hastings of Washington says the annual request for the Ag Department to make bonus buys of canned pears for the nation's nutrition programs stems from relief from a trade agreement made with South Africa. Under the terms of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, South African canned pears were granted duty free status into the U.S. marketplace. Before the Act, an over fifteen per cent duty was placed on canned pears from South Africa. Hastings says the additional purchase of U.S. canned pears from U.S.D.A. is a start in granting U.S. growers relief. HASTINGS: We hope that this will take some of the pressure off the fact that the canned pear industry is being inendated by imports from South Africa as a result of that trade agreement. We have been working to try to alleviate the pressure on that trade agreement to level the playing field if you will but we have been unsuccessful so far. But Hastings and other colleagues in Congress continue to lobby for changes in the African Growth and Opportunity Act to give Northwest, and U.S. pear growers, greater opportunity to meet the South African pear industry's challenge.