Political Quotes

“I thank the gentlewoman who represents the other Portland. I deeply appreciated her leadership and insight in this area. Mr. Chairman, these are areas that touch Americans on a whole host of levels, but one of the things that is important to note is that the extreme provisions of the preemption bill, of the underlying bill that we are discussing, actually have significant negative consequences on hard-working farmers in our State. There are vast world markets that we export to, and most of the world markets care about whether or not the product is genetically engineered or not. You can argue the merits, but the world market has made a judgment. We had some cross contamination in wheat for the genetically engineered strain, which set off alarm bells. Oregon farmers lost business as a result of that. The underlying bill would undercut the efforts of 40 States in working with their local communities to try and provide protections. Whether or not you are going to label it, there is no reason that you can't provide reasonable buffers around crops that are genetically modified so that you can help provide some protection. {time} 1300 Why would we want to strip away the ability of State and local governments to provide those sort of protections? Now, in the long run, Mr. Chairman, what we need to do is just have a uniform national policy that labels these, that gets rid of all the problems of multiplicity of labels and the costs and the confusion. My good friend from Oregon (Mr.…”