Advisory Board Meeting Notes

The Grain Inspection Advisory Committee met in Kansas City November 4-5. FGIS reported a loss for FY 2003 of a little over $2 M, of which approx. $1.2 M was in the Agency trust account. Their new fees for original inspections (export) are still in clearance, and they hope to have them published for comment in late winter/early spring. They are in the process of looking at the user fee structure for official agencies, with the possibility of a user fee imposed for commercial official inspections. FGIS was able to reprogram some funds from appropriated money to operating accounts, but has not yet been able to obtain supplemental funding. With the new fees in place, they hope to be able to recover the deficit by mid FY 2005.

John Giler, Chief of GIPSA's Policies and Procedures Branch, reported to the advisory committee on single factor reinspections, which will be permissible as of November 28, and new D/T checktest procedures. Approved models of mechanical samplers in simple in-spout installations, with a simple grain flow system and good drawings and documentation, will be able to be approved without checking samples, subject to a case-by-case approval in DC.

GIPSA's Marianne Plaus reported to the advisory committee on the results of the pilot study of the ANN (artificial neural networking) calibrations for NIRT wheat protein. The study demonstrated that the overall average protein change across all classes would be insignificant, but that the consistency of results would improve. Among individual classes, protein results would go up for durum wheat, down for white wheat, and down for hard red winter, with spring wheat remaining about the same. The committee resolved to advise GIPSA to implement the new calibrations by June 1, 2004.

Among other issues of interest to AAGIWA, the committee was given an update on the status of the open boundary pilot program in Minnesota. The committee recommended, with one dissension, that the GIPSA proceed with the pilot, currently slated to be introduced early in 2004. GIPSA also reported on several standards issues, including the impact of removing test weight as a grading factor for soybeans, which the committee recommended that they move to implement; the separation of hard white wheat into two subclasses, Hard White Wheat and Hard Amber White Wheat, or, alternatively, Hard Bright White Wheat and Hard White Wheat; and some changes in definitions in the sorghum standards. Also addressed were ongoing projects by FGIS to explore end-use functionality testing in wheat, with a view towards approving rapid test methods for those qualities.

AAGIWA members are pleased to recommend Larry Kitchen, Program Administrator of the Missouri Department of Agriculture, Grain Inspection and Warehousing Division as their nominee to the Advisory Committee.