November, 1999
Uproar causes cancellation of experts’ trip to China
by Lee Dean
A planned trip by three USDA Agriculture Research Service scientists to
China was scuttled after sharp protests were lodged by the apple industry.
The scientists were planning to take the all-expenses paid trip to Yantai, China and speak to a gathering of fruit and vegetable growers and processors. USDA-ARS officials heeded the requests and canceled the trip.
The timing of the journey was particularly displeasing to apple industry figures, in light of an antidumping complaint filed against the Chinese, who have been accused of flooding the American market with cheap concentrate and thereby damaging U.S. interests.
“In our opinion there’s never a good time to share U.S. taxpayer-funded research with the industry’s competitors,” said Kraig Naasz, president of the U.S. Apple Association (USApple). “At this time, it’s a particularly bad idea in regard to China and the apple industry over there.”
In a Sept. 23 letter written to I. Miley Gonzalez, USDA undersecretary for research, education and economics, USApple said the trip was an invitation from the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The American scientists were to address the Chinese on ways to improve the competitiveness of their fruit and vegetable industries. One of these talks, according to USApple, was on controlled atmosphere storage of apples.
“The idea that our government’s agricultural research community would knowingly supply China’s apple industry with information, generated at U.S. taxpayer expense, to improve its efficiency and enhance its competitiveness, is unfathomable to U.S. apple growers. The fact that this ill-advised trip will occur at the same time that our industry is investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to combat the devastating effects of unfairly-priced Chinese concentrate imports is unconscionable,” according to the USApple letter.
After receiving the letter, USDA-ARS officials investigated the complaint and concluded the trip would not be advisable, said Ed Knipling, associate administrator of the ARS. Along with the timing of the trip, Knipling said the agency was uncomfortable with the fact that the group to be addressed was a commodity group and not an academic group.
If the Chinese were indeed footing the entire bill, that would also put the trip under added scrutiny. Foreign trips are usually paid for by the U.S. government or the costs are shared. Procedures do exist to evaluate if a trip will be taken when an outside organization offers to pay.
Approval for trips is given by one of the eight ARS regional directors, who then report to Washington, said Knipling. The trip has to be appropriate to the scientist’s line of work. Scientists are not to reveal any information that is not already available to the American public.
Naasz said the apple industry isn’t the only one that is potentially being harmed by such trips. The USApple letter requested that USDA take a longer look at such invitations in the future to prevent the dissemination of taxpayer-funded research results to foreign competitors.
“I’m hoping that by having taken issue with this particular trip, we have obviously garnered attention at the department. Once we’re in position to make this effort known to our colleagues at other produce organizations, we’ll find a willing chorus of support for our efforts and interest on the part of others to meet with USDA,” said Naasz.
Knipling said these types of trips, taken under the proper guidelines, benefit American agriculture. He said much of the U.S. fruit and vegetable production is based on germplasm from other countries. American scientists can also learn from their foreign colleagues.
“In general, we very much support our scientists to participate in international scientific exchanges,” said Knipling. “But this incident will probably sensitize all of us to when this comes up in the future. In this case, we did the right thing (in canceling the trip) and the apple industry was correct in calling this to our attention.”
