Rosa DeLauro

A question on the two initiatives that you are proposing, the Regional Innovation Initiative and the Healthy Food Financing Initiative.

If you do not have access to a grocery store, you do not have access to fruits and vegetables and nutritious food.

The dollar amount is $4.6 billion, which is in the legislation.

I know with the Food Safety Working Group, one of the key recommendations was to focus on the need to give FDA and FSIS improved statutory authorities.

I want public-private partnerships for infrastructure.

Mandatory recall, Mr. Secretary.

I for one do not understand why FSIS is exempted from this particularly, as I see, it comes out of the recommendation of a group that is moving this initiative forward.

I think it is important to note that it seems to me anyway that USDA is aggressively encouraging the Chinese to seek equivalency determination for the slaughter operations.

I strongly support HACCP. I do. But I think that we have gone too far in removing FSIS inspectors from the active role they had prior to HACCP.

It appears as if from the letters that I have looked at that China has so far refused, flatly refused, to provide information on their new food safety law to FSIS as they are required to do.

These folks are not struggling to put food on the table. They are eating high on the hog.

I have introduced legislation that is designed to compensate women farmers for the discrimination they suffered at the hands of various USDA offices.

We will not spend good money after bad.

I want to wait to see what this system is all about before we take $14.3 million and add it to this process.

I know I will not be for another $14.3 million. I just will not do it. That is a waste of money.

It cannot work, it cannot work. We will not have it.

If we wanted to deal with consistency, it would just seem to me that there would be a real necessity for review of our entire trading policy.

Given the clear impact it would have on exports and on farmers, do you support the lifting of the embargo as part of your export initiative?

We currently allow agricultural exports to Cuba through a number of restrictions that are in place because of the embargo.

What I would like to do is to suggest and we will think about how we try to put together a program since most of the farmers in this world are women, how in fact we are trying to assist women farmers around the world.

And let me be clear, it is our goal and our intent to get this chapter, these series of chapters, closed in USDA history.

I would like to say that I would like that list, $54 million is going to FAS.

I think the grant component of that program, which was part of what the recovery program was about, was a very good addition in terms of trying to move into underserved areas.

I am not satisfied that if we continue to see repeated violations that compromise the safety of our children, I think it is fairly important to take steps to basically say, not just to that company but to the industry, this is not going to…

So let me just say, we are not going to see what happened with Beef Packers again and we are not going to see what has happened with salami being on the market for over a year?