Marcy Kaptur: “I just want to say to our colleagues, do not take a safe food supply for granted. We have to thank the lab workers…”

“I just want to say to our colleagues, do not take a safe food supply for granted. We have to thank the lab workers across our country who work at wages below what they would earn in the private sector and in this Los Angeles lab I want to pin a gold star on every one of them because they work under terrible, terrible conditions. Yet they are there because they are dedicated to the public health and welfare of the people of the United States and to food safety. We still have the safest food supply in the world but we have got some tears in the fabric. One of the answers for us is to try to provide a more modern facility where we can test faster, move more product through and increase the amount of surveillance that we do as imports absolutely avalanche into this country. Remember, we only check now under 2 percent of the food that you buy, the fresh fruits and vegetables that you buy in the store, we only check less than 2 percent. The question becomes, are we going to put our money where our mouth is in terms of food safety for our families and for our children? Defeat the Tancredo amendment.”