Political Quotes

“I rise to join Chairman Bonilla in opposition to this amendment. Mr. Chairman, the most important thing that should come out of this debate is that the American beef supply is very, very safe, the safest in the world. And that is based not only on the statistics maintained by the Department on food-borne illness, the lowest in the world, but also based on the fact that there is no evidence of any American ever contracting any disease from BSE based upon consuming American beef, ever. The enhanced surveillance program for BSE was designed as a one-time intensive assessment to test as many animals as possible from the portion of the cattle population considered to be most at risk for BSE. A surveillance program is not designed to test every single animal at risk for a disease, and surveillance is not a food safety measure. Surveillance testing looks for signs of the disease in the cattle herd. But it is USDA's other safeguards, such as the removal of specified risk materials from cattle at slaughter, that protect consumers and the food supply. USDA has tested over 714,000 samples. And they have tested the greatest at-risk cattle for having BSE. It has cost us more than $1 million a week to do it. The USDA's analysis of that surveillance data shows that we are dealing with an incredibly low prevalence of the disease in the United States, no more than four to seven cases in the entire U.S. herd of 100 million cows.…”