Gluesenkamp Perez: “Mr. Chair, today I rise in support of my amendment to direct the Secretary of Agriculture, in coordination with the…”

“Mr. Chair, today I rise in support of my amendment to direct the Secretary of Agriculture, in coordination with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, to develop a low-risk classification for healthy fresh fruits and vegetables and other fruits that are typically consumed raw. I have a 4-year-old. I was touring a daycare, like many in our State, and a daycare worker came up to me. She asked me: Hey, Congress lady, why can I legally open a bag of chips for the toddlers, but I can't peel a banana? This was perplexing and annoying to me. I dug into this, and I kept asking questions. What I heard from regulators and licensers over and over and over was that this woman was stupid, that her boss had lied to her, and that she just didn't understand the rules. When I dug and I dug and I dug, what I found was that, yes, buried deep in the bowels of the 1,200 pages of documents a licensed daycare provider has to follow in my State is the number of sinks they would need per exterior linear wall foot. I am not kidding. This daycare would have needed six more sinks before they could legally peel a banana, because peeling a banana apparently is considered food preparation, but opening a bag of chips is not. I doubt anyone on God's green Earth would have chosen to advantage Cheetos over a banana.”