021002 American Food Industry Builds Bridges to Cuba

Havana - American food companies, led by Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, expanded their foothold in Cuba's long forbidden market on Friday, advocating normal business ties with the communist-run island.

Ventura, a former wrestler turned maverick politician, met with Cuban leader Fidel Castro for an hour at the first U.S. food fair in Havana since Castro's 1959 revolution.

The two men talked wrestling. Castro told Ventura no American flag had ever been burned in Cuba, despite four decades of ideological enmity and U.S. sanctions.

Castro, 76, dined and chatted with U.S. egg producers until 2:30 a.m. after tasting cheese and wine, a chocolate shake and fries at Thursday's opening, where he enjoyed bottle-feeding a Midwestern bison calf among the livestock exhibits.

Dressed in a navy blue pin-striped suit instead of his customary military fatigues, Castro has hobnobbed into the early hours every night of the five-day event with executives of capitalist corporations, some with annual revenues larger than the economy of his one-party workers' state.

Hundreds of food and agriculture businessmen continued bargaining with Cuban officials for sales of grain, cereals, animal feed, meat and supermarket products.

Under a two-year-old easing of the trade embargo, Cuba has bought more than $140 million in U.S. food for cash and offers American producers the major share of its market if credit and travel restrictions are lifted.

EMBARGO A FAILURE

Ventura, whose trip to Havana was opposed by the Bush administration and criticized by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said it was time to take politics out of U.S.-Cuban relations.

"If the original reason for the embargo was to run President Castro out of office, after nine U.S. presidents and 43 years, the policy has not worked," the governor said.

"You'd think that after 43 years, you would try Plan B," Ventura, who leaves office in three months, said from Havana on his weekly "Lunch with the Governor" program on Minnesota's WCCO Radio 830.

"The governor that told me not to go, his state is the most represented at this fair," he said, pointing to the interest shown by Florida farmers, shipping companies and ports in the Cuban market of 11 million people just 90 miles away.

Two U.S. food processors sponsoring the show, Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill landed $55 million worth of contracts by the second day.

"We have built a good bridge of trust," said David Radlo, whose Watertown, Massachusetts, family-owned business signed a deal for the sale of 30 million eggs to Cuba on Thursday.

Among the industry giants promoting their products in Havana are Cargill, ConAgra Foods Inc., Tyson Foods Inc. . Hurricane threats and shipping glitches left some participants out, among them Kellogg Co. .

The food industry has been the major force behind growing political support in the United States for dismantling the remaining sanctions on Cuba, including a ban on Americans tourists visiting the island.

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