Chris Smith: “I want to thank Mr. Engel for his very kind remarks and for his strong support for this legislation. This has been a…”

“I want to thank Mr. Engel for his very kind remarks and for his strong support for this legislation. This has been a great partnership with Betty McCollum, and I know it will continue. Both of us--and others, of course--are totally committed to ending chronic hunger and providing self-sufficiency in countries where it is a matter of just conveying best practices and increasing the capabilities of people and their roads and bridges. It's all very much integrated. So I want to thank her for her leadership on this very important piece of legislation. Again, it bears saying over and over again that half of all deaths in children under 5 are attributable to undernutrition. Of course, for the others who die, very often, malnutrition is a complicating factor and it allows, as I said earlier, opportunistic diseases to take hold and to cause havoc, if not death, to that child. There are 161 million children stunted worldwide. I was actually in the Central American country of Guatemala when they signed up for the First Thousand Days of Life. The new President has indicated when he was here that it is a very, very important part of his program. We see it all over Africa and Asia. If nutrition is provided, it does mitigate disease.…”