Food and Drug Administration Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014
Floor Speech
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, we are almost a full week into this self-inflicted government shutdown because the Speaker refuses to stand up to a vocal minority in his own party. There is no end in sight. Instead, we sit here watching the Republican majority talk out of both sides of their mouths and pretend to hold positions they have been voting against from the first day that they took power.
This bill is today's daily exercise in cynicism. I served as chairwoman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, the body that oversees funding for the Food and Drug Administration. We worked hard to increase the resources at FDA so that more food could be inspected, more outbreaks prevented.
We also passed the Food Safety Modernization Act in 2010 to improve FDA's ability to respond quickly and efficiently in a proactive, science-based fashion to contaminated food outbreaks.
Since taking office in 2011, this Republican majority has tried to undercut and hamstring the FDA at every step. In 2011, the first bill this majority passed included a $241 million cut to the FDA. In 2012, they tried to slash salaries by 21 percent, hampering the agency's ability to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act. In 2013, they tried to cut FDA by another $16 million. They rejected an amendment that I offered to increase funding by $50 million for monitoring foodborne pathogens and implementing the new food safety law.
For years, we've been trying to get the Republican majority to be serious about the FDA and food safety funding. Food illnesses account for 48 million illnesses, 128,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths each year, and particularly affect children, pregnant women, and older adults.
Meanwhile, over 80 percent of the seafood and 30 percent of the fruit and nuts consumed in the United States are produced elsewhere, yet less than 1 percent of imported food is inspected by the FDA.
The Republican majority has refused to fund these food safety initiatives. Now they are bringing up this disingenuous bill for political show. The health of American families is not a game. These are people's lives.
Over 13 Federal agencies have important food safety responsibilities. The Centers for Disease Control identifies food safety pathogens in sources, and they are not funded in this bill. The Department of Justice prosecutes food contaminators, but they are not funded in this bill. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration carries out seafood inspections for the FDA, but they are not funded in this bill. USDA is responsible for a whole host of critical safety measures, but they are not funded in this bill.
Now, if you think there should be only one food safety agency, that's something that we can talk about.
This bill does not protect our families from contaminated food. It doesn't adequately fund the FDA. It's another in a series of purely political bills put forward by the Republican majority.
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