01/31/05 Wheat grower hears familiar complaint

01/31/05 Wheat grower hears familiar complaint

Farm and Ranch January 31, 2005 When he visited Japan recently on a U.S Wheat Associates team tour, Washington producer Randy Suess heard a familiar complaint from the Japanese, and that's about the cleanliness of U.S. wheat and dockage. Suess: "They have a specific one that they say that they have been specifying wheat at three-tenths and they have been receiving it over there at six-tenths. This is of such concern that FGIS is sending people over to Japan to see what the difference is. Our we sampling it different in the U.S. than they are over there? There is some small differences. When we take samples of ships down in Portland they are done every 12 seconds with what is called a pelican which takes a few kernels out. When they take samples in Japan they do one every 20 minutes, but it is taking a full dump, the entire stream is dumped. So there are some differences, but we need to resolve that issue and clear that up." Despite the complaints about dockage Suess points out that Japan has always continued to buy U.S. wheat on a weekly basis. He thinks maybe they complain to our competitors like Canada too. In fact, Suess saw a container of Canadian western red spring wheat in the Japanese quality control lab he says was loaded with dockage an foreign material. Suess says soybean fragments in wheat shipments are of concern to the Japanese because of the genetic modification issue and the fact soybeans may become listed as an allergens. Tomorrow, Japanese testing for chemical residues. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
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