Political Quotes

“Let me shift for a moment to an issue that we have all talked about before, and I would like the last 10 minutes or so to discuss for a moment and that is the issue of food safety. We see in this country 5,000 people a year die from food-borne illness, not nearly all of them from imported fruits and vegetables, but certainly there is a problem in our food inspection in this country, too, but some significant amount comes from that. We see about 800,000 Americans get sick a year. About 1/10th that many get hospitalized from food-borne illnesses. Yesterday, Dr. Mohammad Akhter, the top public health official in this country, who is the executive director of the American Public Health Association, was talking about Fast Track. And he said that Trade Promotion Authority on which we will vote tomorrow, he said that we can count on the fact that if we pass Trade Promotion Authority and more trade agreements like this we will see more food come across the border and into this country by truck and plane and train and all, more food come into this country that is not inspected. He said we will see more infectious disease outbreaks. We will see more illness, food-borne illness. We will see more deaths. We will see more hospitalizations. When we consider that when NAFTA passed, 8 percent of fruits and vegetables in this country that we, 8 percent of the imported fruits and vegetables in this country were inspected. Today, it is 1/10th that number. It is .7 percent, 7/10s of 1 percent.”