Leader Photo by Tim Ryan Tom Bjelland, vice president of support services at Cooperative Resources International, takes U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin on a tour Thursday of CRI’s distribution facility in Shawano.
Leader Photo by Tim Ryan U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin participates in a round-table discussion with CRI staff Thursday at the distribution center in Shawano. Next to Baldwin, clockwise, are CEO Doug Wilson, Huub te Plate, vice president of international marketing, Larry Romuald, treasurer, and Keith Heikes, chief operating officer of animal breeding in the Genex division.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, visited Cooperative Resources International in Shawano on Thursday for a tour of the cooperative’s distribution facility and a wide-ranging discussion with CRI staff that ranged from food safety to foreign policy.
The cooperative exports products to 63 countries, including Iran.
“Iran has been a very good market for CRI,” company treasurer Larry Romuald told Baldwin.
Sanctions against the country, including wire transfer routes being closed down, have often made it difficult to do business.
“If you can’t get paid, you really can’t have any trade,” he said.
Romuald said recent talks between the U.S. and Iran and a relaxation of sanctions was a positive development.
Huub te Plate, CRI vice president of international marketing, told Baldwin that after frequent visits to Iran over the past 10 years, he has seen the effect of sanctions.
“The country is going downhill,” he said.
te Plate added that the Internet, where Iranian citizens can see what people in other countries have that they don’t, has put pressure on Iranian leaders to be more willing to negotiate with the West.
Baldwin said that would be important information to share with those in Congress pushing for a harder line against Iran.
“I’ve been in runs with my colleagues where we’ve been talking about, ‘is our action aggressive enough?’” she said.
On the domestic front, a major concern was the lack of any federal program for the registration and tracking of animals that would be vital in the event of an outbreak of disease.
“We are vulnerable,” CRI CEO Doug Wilson said.
Pete Giacomini, CRI vice president of business development, said the biggest single risk CRI faces is the outbreak of a major animal health issue.
“We have no one to blame but ourselves as an industry because our industry has not found consensus on this,” he said.
CRI was instrumental in helping form the Wisconsin Livestock Identification Consortium, but that model has not caught on on a federal level.
Giacomini said there is a culture, particularly on the cattle side of the industry and in the West, that sees such a program as government intrusion.
“Somehow we need to get past the idea that it’s infringing privacy,” Giacomini said.
Baldwin said after the roundtable discussion that there were a number of points made that would be helpful to her in her work in Washington, including the importance of research and development and innovation in growing domestic businesses.
“The cooperative is a key economic player in Wisconsin and certainly in this region,” she said. “I wanted to hear more about the public/private partnerships that exist to keep Wisconsin on the cutting edge with regard to agriculture.”
Baldwin said she was proud of the work CRI has been doing and said it is a model she could share with other policy makers.