Thank you, Chair, and I thank all of you for coming.
Ms. Crews, I was interested that you used the term “this level” for traceability. I think you're the first person who has spoken to us about traceability being an issue, not so much in food safety but about managing something that may have occurred and finding a way to track—because really that is what it is all about: tracking where that particular product has gone, or to whom we sent it, or who may be consuming it. It's interesting to note your comment around what level that should be at. Your suggestion that the market may want to see something else, which would allow them to have a Cadillac model—using your words—I found interesting.
Based on that and on the whole sense of food safety—because I don't think you'd get too many arguments from most of us who sit on the agriculture committee that the producer seems to bear the brunt of the cost for a lot of the programming—it's difficult to get consumers to be aware of trying to get the primary producer a decent return on the investment. I don't think they're opposed to it, but if you went to most farmers' markets or supermarkets, you'd find most consumers aren't aware of the plight farmers find themselves in from a financial perspective. They would probably be shocked by that.
I was interested in how you see the dynamic of how we engage consumers to make them understand that somehow we need to make sure primary producers are compensated in a fair way. I'm not sure how you see that linkage. You talked about some education—and that's important unto itself—but clearly for the producers you represent, and for the producer you are, you need to find a way to get those dollars back into your purse. I'm not sure I see the linkage between the two simply with education. For the consumer, if the price of milk or bread goes up at the store, they just believe the store takes it. They don't necessarily see it going back to the producer.