Anna Eshoo: “Mr. Speaker, I rise today urging my colleagues to oppose this rule and reject the Personal Responsibility in Food…”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today urging my colleagues to oppose this rule and reject the Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act. I think this is a trivial bill about obesity lawsuits that have not resulted in a cent in damages against anyone. So this is not about fixing something that is broken. This is pursuing something that, most frankly, does not exist. In something that refers to the food industry, it is an old quote, an old hamburger ad, 'Where's the beef?' There are more pressing issues for us to tackle, particularly regarding food safety. I want to direct my comments to this area of food safety, and I want to talk about lawsuits that have consequences and very serious consequences. Meat processors have sued the USDA to block the enforcement of food safety standards that are designed to protect the public from pathogens like e-coli and salmonella. The processors have either won or forced the government to settle these cases, and our food safety system has been terribly weakened. One of the processors failing to meet basic standards on three separate occasions was able to continue to sell meat for use in school lunches. To fight the impact of these cases, I have introduced a bill called Kevin's Law, named in memory of a 2½-year-old boy named Kevin Kowalcyk who died from e-coli poisoning in 2001.”