Political Quotes

“tomorrow, apparently the Senate is going to have an opportunity to weigh in on the issue of whether it is good policy to allow uninspected, adulterated Vietnamese catfish into the United States. That will be the issue before us in the form of a resolution to disapprove a USDA regulation. The Senate will vote on whether it is a good idea to expose American consumers to catfish containing illegal antibiotics, heavy metals, and other carcinogens. I think the Senate will once again say that we need to protect American consumers from these harmful contents of imported catfish, and we need to protect them by continuing a new U.S. Department of Agriculture catfish inspection program. What happened before we had the USDA catfish inspection program? Under previous law, the Food and Drug Administration inspected catfish coming into the United States, principally Vietnamese catfish. What we found out in this program is that only 2 percent of the catfish coming in got inspected. The other 98 percent came through without the Federal Government taking a look at it. What we learned from the information given to us was that some of the catfish coming in did have these harmful chemicals in them. So the farm bill passed by the Congress changed the inspection regime from the FDA to where it is now--the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Under the Department of Agriculture program, almost all of the catfish will be inspected to make sure it is free of these harmful substances.…”