My constituents literally are choosing between groceries and staying on their prescriptions.

I think they support the concept of country of origin labeling, that our consumers deserve to know the origins of the products they feed their families.

Thank you, and I thank Senator Byrd, as well, for his leadership and guidance and his courtesy here.

I have to say that there are a number of areas where I feel some concern.

Would it not make sense to maintain the prohibition on Canadian livestock and meat exports into the United States until the United States can be comfortable that they have eliminated their backlog and that their inspection regime is…

$200 million would be eliminated from water and sewer grants to small communities.

there is a widely held and growing view across much of America that the Department of Agriculture is teaming up with the packers to sandbag country of origin labeling for meat.

The reason you are hearing that is because they are scared to death of extraordinarily bureaucratic, red-tape filled, expensive recordkeeping requirements that the packers are telling them USDA is going to require.

And I would only conclude that among the things the law requires is that there not be third party verification requirements for every animal in the country.

And that self-verification is indeed what we do in many other labeling circumstances, whether it is school lunch programs and all kinds of other things, Black Angus, you name it.

I want to welcome Under Secretary Hawks, Under Secretary Bost, Under Secretary Murano today, as well as FDA Commissioner McClellan.

The country of origin labeling law gave USDA discretion to create an audit verification system, but not a mandatory system.

It seems to me that it should not be rocket science to figure out a monitoring system.

Would you agree that the law prohibits on-farm mandatory animal identification and does not permit third-party mandates by packers?

America remains the only major industrialized society in the world that does not negotiate on behalf of its citizens a better price.

These firms weren't looking out for their retail customers. They were looking our for themselves.

Millions of American investors relied on what they believed to be an objective investment advice from at least 10 of this Nation's largest Wall Street firms.

Time will tell whether the structural reforms and the global settlement will reduce such outrageous violations in the future.