By The Associated Press
Friday, August 31, 2001
Filed at 2:14 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration wants Congress to look beyond the needs of grain and cotton growers as it overhauls farm laws and put more resources into programs that benefit farmers who raise livestock or fruits and vegetables.

The administration is developing principles for farm policy that will emphasize a number of issues besides farm subsidies, including food safety programs and efforts to prevent the introduction of mad cow and foot-and-mouth diseases, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Environmental issues and the food-stamp program also will be addressed.

``We really need to look at the whole food system and the agriculture system much differently than we have in the past,'' said Veneman, the daughter of a peach farmer.

Legislation approved by the House Agriculture Committee in July would guarantee a steady flow of money to the same grain and cotton farmers who have traditionally gotten most federal farm spending.

Grain and cotton account for about 20 percent of the nation's agricultural production, said Veneman.

``If you don't look at the food and farm system today through a more holistic approach you're leaving out much of agriculture and much of our production.''

Veneman declined to judge the House committee's bill, which the full House is expected to take up the second week of September. Nor would she discuss in any detail the policy principles the administration is developing.

However, she did say the administration would take no stand on whether benefits should be restricted to small- and medium-size farms, a controversial issue in Congress. The House bill, for example, would allow large hog farms to start getting subsidies for controlling manure.

Veneman rose through the ranks of the Agriculture Department in the 1980s and early 1990s to take the department's No. 2 post under the previous Bush administration. She later served as California's agriculture commissioner.

Veneman is taking a lead role within the administration in pushing Congress to give the president new trade negotiating authority. The White House wants the power to enter into agreements that cannot be amended by lawmakers, only approved or rejected.

She said American farmers will lose foreign markets unless the United States can negotiate new trade agreements. ``We are already seeing the loss of market share in certain areas.''

But she acknowledged that many producers -- including a group she met with in Florida earlier this week -- believe that they were hurt by previous deals.

Veneman has received high marks generally from consumer advocates for sticking with food safety initiatives taken by the Clinton administration over the opposition of the meat industry.

Her first action on food regulation was to move forward with bacterial testing requirements for processed meat. Industry groups say the rules, which could still be revised, go too far. Later, she junked industry-sought changes in standards for meat that the government supplies to schools.

She said the Bush administration will continue a legal battle with the meat industry over testing requirements for salmonella bacteria. A Texas judge last year agreed with the industry that the tests were not an adequate indication of plant sanitation and blocked USDA from closing a plant that had flunked them.

She said the chances of mad-cow disease getting into the United States from Europe were ``very, very slim to none.''

However, she said the government needs to do more research into the disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and develop tests that could detect it in live cattle.

This week, she sent the department's budget director and her top deputies for research and regulation to USDA's main mad-cow research laboratory in Ames, Iowa, to assess its needs.

The department also is trying to find money, she said, to computerize an antiquated record-keeping system used by inspectors to keep track of prohibited food products at ports.

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