On the recordNovember 29, 2010
Mr. President, I wish to first acknowledge the Senator from Maryland and to say I appreciate her work in reforming the system of congressionally initiated projects. I also wished to mention, before I get to my main topic today, which is the expiration of the volumetric ethanol excise tax, the important vote we are having this evening on food safety. As the Chair knows, coming from the State of Minnesota, we had three people who died during the last foodborne illness tragedy--the salmonella in peanut butter episode. One of those individuals included Shirley Ulmer, mother of Jeff Ulmer, who has worked so hard to get this bill passed, and we are hopeful we have finally gotten the votes to improve our food safety system, which hasn't been improved since the 1930s. Clearly, we have seen a lot of changes to our food supply since then, and so this is long overdue. ____________________





