George Miller: “this legislation that we have begun debating here today, H.R. 2823, the International Dolphin Conservation Program Act…”

“this legislation that we have begun debating here today, H.R. 2823, the International Dolphin Conservation Program Act, I believe, is a declaration of surrender by this Congress to those who insist that American environmental and labor standards must be destroyed on the altar of free trade. H.R. 2823 is a complete capitulation to those who believe that U.S. consumers have no rights and our trade competitors must have all the rights when it comes to product disclosure. This is a bad bill: bad environmental policy, bad trade policy, and bad foreign policy. It does precisely what we were told NAFTA and GATT would not do. It demands that our own laws governing the environment, worker safety, species protection, and a consumer's right to know be sacrificed. Less than a decade ago, millions of American consumers, led by schoolchildren of this Nation, demanded the creation of dolphin protection programs because of the needless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of marine mammals by tuna fishermen. We passed the Dolphin Protection Act. We required that tuna sold in the United States be dolphin safe. The U.S. tuna industry, at enormous expense, complied with those requirements, relocated their ships and processing plants, and produced dolphin safe tuna. Those efforts have had a dramatic success. Dolphin deaths last year were a little less than 3,600, compared to 100,000 or more a few years ago.”