Our cooperative efforts with Tunisia’s Ministry of Agriculture to set up a central feed analysis lab are well under way. The staff, including two technical engineers and five specialized technicians, is on board and we arranged for three of the technicians to train for two weeks in Cairo at the Egyptian central grain quality laboratory (one of the USGC’s earlier successes).

The Ministry of Agriculture has just issued a decree that asks all importers and feed millers to provide samples of imported ingredients for quality control analysis, so our next step is to help the Tunisian lab as they begin operations. They are trained to do grain inspections and test for minerals, crude fat, and fiber.

Our ultimate goal is to make sure all feed grain imports meet the same quality standards as U.S. exports do. We believe that can close the price gap we see between U.S. feed grains and our competitors, especially from the Black Sea.