Political Quotes

“When the gentleman and I started this conversation 3 or 4 years ago, 2 percent of food was inspected. This Congress continues to cut the budget on food inspection. And understand it is not just the adulterated food coming in. The way the trade law works on food safety, there are certain pesticides in the United States that are banned for use. It is illegal to put them on fields. It is not illegal to make them. So in many cases, American manufacturers manufacture these pesticides, sell them to Guatemala to spray on the strawberries or on the raspberries. Those products then come back into the United States with pesticide residues, making the farmers sick that apply the pesticides, and then coming across the border. We do not spend the money at the border to detect either adulterated food, anything from fecal matter to other kinds of contaminants, nor do they detect any kinds of residues from pesticides. And that is one of the reasons that in this country, and it is not all foreign food, but in this country 5,000 people a year die from food-borne illnesses and 300,000 people go to the hospitals with food-borne illnesses.”