there's much good in the calgama initiative. it embodies the safeguarding of the american food supply. handlers responsible for growers' compliance with food safety metrics pay for auditors trained by the usda and hired by the calgama board to carry out inspections adopted voluntarily by signatory farmers. calgama, however, has some blind spots as well. it condones a processing activity favored by the ready-to-eat processing industry known as coring. coring lettuce in the field. and only suggests minimal guidelines for sanitary treatment of harvest equipment used for coring. in spite of recent scientific research identifying the potential for transferring pathogens deep into the cored lettuce. where the subsequent washing process would be unable to reach. calgama is silent on the use of certain packaging of ready-to-eat produce known as modified atmosphere packaging, the bags of ready-to-eat greens. calgama does not require an enforce at standard of cold chain of distribution. it does not impose tough requirements on packagers a

taylor, again, given calgamas purpose to protect public health by reducing microbiocontamination of leafy quote, from field to fork, distribution supply chain, end quote, wouldn't it be more consistent with the purpose of calgma to include science-based restrictions on the packaging distribution and marketing practices of ready daush to-eat produce rather than the current near silence of lack of specific requirements on those issues? >> mr. chairman i can't speak to the scope of the permissible scope of marketing agreements with the usda but the answer to whether we the answer is clearly, yes. >> science based? >> yes, sir. >> just to differentiate, the california marketing agreement is based on the california marketing act. we're looking at a national program and i think that to the process has was the public process to insure a final program does include all those components. >> well, i want to before conclude this i would like to go back to mr. taylor. i want to read a few opinions about the affect of the packaging used to market ready-to-eat produce. it is a quote: because of a higher