Mitch Landrieu: “One of them is a small, relatively small industry in my State. That is the industry of turtle farmers who grow and…”

“One of them is a small, relatively small industry in my State. That is the industry of turtle farmers who grow and produce and trade and sell turtles to be used in a variety of different ways. One of the ways is by selling them for pets. In 1975, the FDA banned the sale of small turtles for pets domestically but allowed those sales to continue internationally. So there is a group of farmers, turtle farmers, in Louisiana particularly, but I am sure there are others around the country, who have maintained their business by selling overseas. Recently, because of the competition and development of overseas markets, they are getting very constricted in what they can sell because they have now gotten competition from the countries in which most of these sales occur. There has been a great deal of pressure to try to reopen the domestic market. That is what this amendment will do. It will open a domestic market again because the science has caught up with the regulations.”